Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood called on Labour MPs to unite behind her controversial migration and asylum blueprint, which would see families with kids forcibly deported
Shabana Mahmood has defended plans to forcibly deport children as she called for Labour to unite around her controversial migration blueprint.
The Home Secretary announced the Government would trial offering failed asylum seekers up to £10,000 each – and up to £40,000 for a family – to return to their homelands or face forced removal. In a landmark speech she doubled down on controversial proposals which include ripping up permanent refugee status and changing settlement rules for legal migrants already in the country.
In a fiery attack on Reform, she warned failure to get a grip on asylum and migration could let Nigel Farage into power – to send people to their deaths. And in a defiant message to Labour rebels, she said: “Restoring order and control at our border is not a betrayal of Labour values.
“It is the necessary condition for a Labour government to achieve anything it hopes to.” Ms Mahmood announced a pilot has been launched which will see families offered up to £10,000 a person to leave if they have no right to be in the UK.
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Those who refuse will be forcibly removed. The Home Secretary said a consultation is underway on how deportation of children would be handled.
The Home Office estimates it costs £158,000 to accommodate a family of three for a year in a hotel, and said its plans would save up to £20million a year. The department later denied this would draw people to the UK, with a spokeswoman saying: “Illegal migrants pay smugglers tens of thousands of pounds to get to Britain.
“If those families offered the time-limited payment refuse, we will forcibly remove them.” Under Ms Mahmood’s plans, refugee status will no longer be offered on a permanent basis.
Instead, those granted it will have reviews every 30 months, and face removal if their country is deemed safe. And the standard waiting time for migrants to be eligible for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) will be doubled from five to 10 years.
Meanwhile those who are able to support themselves or who break the law – including working illegally – face having support, including hotel accommodation, withdrawn.
The proposals have sparked an outcry, with 100 Labour MPs signing a letter to Keir Starmer calling for a rethink. Ms Mahmood delivered jabs at Mr Farage and Green Party leader Zack Polanski as she set out her path to reshaping the system.
But in an olive branch to the left, she announced that new safe and legal routes would be set up for people seeking asylum. She told doubters: “If the left does not secure our borders, the hard right will be given the chance to try, and they will not be restrained by values like ours.
“Instead, they will pull up the drawbridge. Those who have been here for decades, legally with settled status, will suddenly hear a knock on their door one night, bundled into the back of a van, separated from children and grandchildren, and deported from this country that they have made their home.
“With deportations on the scale that Reform now promise, there is no way of achieving them without sending people back to a country that is not safe and where on return they could be killed.”
Mr Farage’s party has previously said it would be prepared to reach a return agreement with the Taliban. It would also rip up indefinite leave to remain (ILR) altogether and order legal migrants to leave.
Ms Mahmood stated: “Make no mistake – we are fighting for the very existence of a humane asylum system and legal migration in this country.” But critics voiced their scepticism.
Following Ms Mahmood’s speech, Mubeen Bhutta, of the British Red Cross, said: “There is little evidence to suggest that making life harder puts people off coming to the UK, when they have been forced to flee their homes.
“In fact, evidence from where similar changes have been implemented shows it leads to real human suffering and holds back integration in communities. These plans risk leaving men, women and children who have already endured the trauma of war and persecution in a perpetual state of limbo, unable to recover or plan for their future.”
Nathan Phillips, head of campaigns at Asylum Matters, said: “The government’s fresh wave of asylum policy proposals are incoherent: punishing people for not working while banning them from work; re-creating a ‘destitution test’ which is already a routine part of the system.
“Worse, it risks making our already brutal asylum system impossible to survive.”