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Home secretary Shabana Mahmood will set out sweeping changes to human rights legislation as part of a package aimed at convincing the public that Sir Keir Starmer has a credible plan to dramatically cut clandestine crossings into Britain.
New legislation to modify the interpretation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees all people a right to family life, will be announced on Monday.
The Home Office said it would do this by giving more weight in human rights law to the “public interest” of removing foreign criminals and those who had entered the country illegally, although the government did not provide more information on how this would be achieved.
It will also stipulate that “family connections” must refer to immediate family, such as a parent or a child, thereby blocking people from using wider familial links as a reason to stay under Article 8.
The legislation will also ensure that once someone has been asked to leave the country, appeals will not be allowed to take into account familial connections made after that point. This will apply even if an asylum seeker has a child in the period between the rejection of their application and the launching of an appeal.
The move comes after a disastrous week for Starmer in which Downing Street itself fuelled speculation over a leadership challenge and market confidence in this month’s Budget was hit by a U-turn in the government’s plan to raise income tax rates.
The prime minister believes it is crucial that his Labour government shows it can significantly reduce clandestine migration to Britain to win back the public’s trust, according to people briefed on his thinking.
However, the moves are likely to face considerable pushback from MPs on the left of the party who fear the government’s rightward pivot on migration is causing Labour to shed support to the Liberal Democrats and the Green party.
Mahmood unveiled a series of measures over the weekend in an attempt to counter accusations that the government is failing to tackle clandestine migration to Britain, particularly in small boats.
This included quadrupling to 20 years from the current five the time that asylum seekers typically have to wait after being approved for refugee status before they are granted permanent settlement in the UK.
The issuing of UK visas to citizens of Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Namibia would also be suspended unless those countries improved their co-operation with the UK on immigration issues, the Home Office said late on Sunday.
Mahmood meanwhile vowed as part of the reforms to withdraw accommodation and financial support from anyone with the right to work awaiting an asylum decision who is not working. However, she accepted in a BBC interview on Sunday that less than 10 per cent of people currently in asylum accommodation had the right to work — 8,500 out of a total of 106,000.
The UK is the fifth most popular destination in Europe for asylum seekers, receiving fewer applications than Germany, Spain, Italy and France.
Asylum seekers who had their claim to protection rejected would not be allowed to launch repeated appeals and cases expected to have little success would be fast-tracked through the system, the Home Office said.
Mahmood told Sky News on Sunday: “This is a moral mission for me. I can see that illegal migration is creating division across our country. I can see that it is polarising communities across the country. I can see that it is dividing people and making them estranged from one another. I don’t want to stand back and watch that happen in my country.”
She added: “It’s not rightwing talking points or fake news or misinformation that is suggesting that we’ve got a problem. It is a broken system.”
The government has said it will also work with other European countries to re-examine Article 3 of the convention, which blocks states from returning individuals to a country if they face the risk of torture or “inhumane or degrading treatment”.
Mahmood will argue that the definition of “inhumane and degrading” has expanded “beyond what is reasonable”.
The appeals procedure has become a significant source of delay in the asylum process as the immigration appeals tribunal has struggled to cope with a shortage of judges and lawyers and a surge in the number of cases being brought. In August, there were at least 51,000 cases waiting to be heard, up from 27,000 as recently as March 2024.
Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council charity, expressed doubt that doing more to make the system harsh would deter clandestine migration.
“It is already a very tough system to navigate and making it more punitive will not be a deterrent,” he said, adding that immigrants chose the UK because of other factors such as having family in the country or speaking some English.
The visa bans on Angola, DR Congo and Namibia unless they agreed to accept returns of criminals and clandestine migrants delivered on Mahmood’s pledge to shut down visas for countries that did not “play ball” in returning migrants with no right to be in the UK, the home office said.
“The three countries face penalties for their unacceptably low co-operation and obstructive returns processes,” it added. “Thousands of illegal migrants and criminals from these nations are currently in the UK, with the Home Office continually frustrated in its efforts to remove them.”