Failed asylum seekers will be paid up to £40k to leave the UK, Mahmood announces
Shabana Mahmood announced that families with children who cannot apply for asylum will be offered up to £40,000 to leave the country as soon as possible or face deportation.
As part of the Home Office’s overhaul of immigration, a pilot scheme has been launched for 150 families living in migrant hotels, with offers already sent out.
Families will be offered £10,000 per member (limited to four per family) to leave the UK voluntarily. They will have seven days to respond and if they do not accept the offer, the Home Office will try to forcibly remove them from the country.
Ms Mahmood told an event in Westminster on Thursday that the Home Office would launch a consultation on how to legally remove families with children, including considering how force could be used against children. If the pilot is successful, the government will expand it to all unsuccessful refugee families.
Officials say the pilot scheme will offer taxpayers value for money, with the average family of three costing around £158,000 to stay in an asylum hotel for a year.
But charities and campaigners have warned that detaining young children, even for short periods, would be “traumatising” and said the plans risked creating “chaos rather than control”. Reform UK likened Labour’s plans to “offering a £40,000 reward for entrants”, while Green Party leader Zack Polanksi said Ms Mahmood was “desperate” and “dangerous”.
Refugee Council director Imran Hussain said the seven-day ultimatum would not encourage families to participate in the process. He said: “Giving families just seven days to decide whether to uproot their children’s lives risks creating chaos rather than control, often without access to appropriate legal advice. Many families do not feel safe returning to their countries of origin. And no-one wants to see distressed children detained and forced into deportation.”
“Families are much more likely to engage if given appropriate time, support and legal advice, making this more effective and providing better value for taxpayers.”
Kamena Dorling, Policy Director at the Helen Bamber Foundation Group, said: “Introducing child detention and forced impoverishment to force families to leave the UK has already proven to be ineffective and will cause serious harm.”
Dr., a researcher on families in the asylum system at the London School of Economics. Ilona Pinter said financial incentives would “create more hostility and increase resentment against families seeking security.” He added: “Compulsory removals are expensive for the Home Office, so it would prefer that families leave without the need for detention and enforcement proceedings. Ultimately, however, families will not accept this plan if they do not feel safe returning to their country of origin.”
Children can be held in immigration detention with their families for a maximum of 72 hours or up to seven days with ministry approval.
The Home Office does not know how many unsuccessful asylum-seeking families are being housed in immigration hotels. Independent Last year it was revealed that the UK paid £53 million to immigrants to leave the country between 2021 and 2024.
Under the current policy, migrants can receive up to £3,000 as an incentive to return home as part of what is known as “supported return”.
On whether pilot payments are appealing to the UK, a Home Office source said: “Our intelligence suggests people smugglers charge between £15,000 and £35,000 per illegal immigrant. As a result, the pilot who would pay them to leave cannot act as a pull factor because it costs more to get here in the first place.”
The home secretary defended sweeping immigration reforms at a centre-left think tank IPPR (Institute for Public Policy Research) event, saying Labor would walk the line between Nigel Farage’s “drawbridge-lifting nightmare” and the Green Party’s “open borders tale”.
Ms Mahmood is facing a backlash over plans that include making the refugee status of people granted asylum in the UK temporary and subject to review every 30 months. He also proposes making permanent settlement rights in the UK much more difficult to obtain and increasing the length of the pathway from five to 10 years. He also suggested scrapping the 10-year residence route used by people who have spent 10 or more years legally in the UK.
Changes to the agreement are subject to a consultation, which was closed to applications in February, and the results have not yet been announced.
Ms Mahmood said her party’s identity was being “bitterly” debated but insisted Labor values were at the heart of “robust but fair” immigration reforms.
He also pledged to open a student refugee visa route in 2027, but announced that education visas for individuals from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan would be suspended immediately.
