Starmer braced for backlash from Labour MPs as Mahmood sets out asylum plans – UK politics live

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Starmer braced for backlash from Labour MPs as Mahmood sets out asylum plans

Good morning. At the 2024 general election Labour sought to appeal by right-leaning voters by telling them that Keir Starmer would not raise the main rates of tax, and to left-leaning voters by telling them that he would get rid of the Tories’ Rwanda scheme. These days there must be a lot of people in government who think life would be easier if they had done it the other way round – offering tax rises to the left, and Rwanda (or something similar) to the right.

Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, isn’t resurrecting the Rwanda policy today (although recently Josh Glancy reported in the Sunday Times that privately some government figures now believe that scrapping it was a mistake). But she will announce plans that would drastically tighten the UK’s asylum laws. One feature of the plans would require asylum seekers to wait 20 years before being allowed to get permanent settlement in the UK – which would be the longest wait in any European asylum system.

With the budget only 10 days away, we are now in a period bookended by two announcements that could decide the fate of Starmer and his government. The rise of Reform UK is driven more than anything by anger about the small boat arrivals, and Mahmood hopes that her plans will have a significant impact on the problem.

Like a budget, the asylum plan contains so many news lines that the Home Office has been dribbling them out over a period of days. Here is Alexandra Topping’s summary from yesterday of what we are expecting in asylum policy paper.

And here are the main developments this morning.

The Home Office has announced a further element of the plan – a threat to “stop granting visas to nationals of Angola, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of Congo if their governments do not rapidly improve co-operation on removals”. The Home Office says:

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.

Visa penalties could mean VIPs and tourists alike not being able to enter the UK unless co-operation improves in the coming months.

Similar measures against other countries remain under consideration. This includes a possible ‘emergency brake’ on visas to block entry from countries with high rates of asylum claims from legal routes.

Alex Norris, a Home Office minister, has confirmed that refugees could have jewellery or other valuables taken to pay for the costs of processing their cases. He was standing up a story first reported by the Sun. Peter Walker has the details here.

Starmer is braced for a backlash against the plans from Labour MPs. So far only a few Labour figures have spoken out against the plans publicly, but that may change when Mahmood gives a statement to MPs this afternoon (and when Labour MPs read the jewellery story). One MP who has spoken about this policy is Stella Creasy, who was written an article for the Guardian saying “if this policy becomes law the UK will require ICE-style raids to remove people – and their children”.

Another is Tony Vaughan, a KC specialising in immigration law who was elected MP for Folkestone and Hythe in 2024. Last night he posted this on social media.

The Prime Minister said in September that we are at a fork in the road. These asylum proposals suggest we have taken the wrong turning.

The idea that recognised refugees need to be deported is wrong. We absolutely need immigration controls. And where those controls decide to grant asylum, we should welcome and integrate, not create perpetual limbo and alienation.

The rhetoric around these reforms encourages the same culture of divisiveness that sees racism and abuse growing in our communities.

The Government is wrong to think that reviews of safety in the person’s country every few years will mean refugees can be returned at scale. That hasn’t happened in Denmark. Brutal dictators tend to hang onto power. It would just move huge amounts of resource away from making our asylum system work as it should - by cutting initial decision delays and the appeals backlog, sorting out asylum accommodation, making the UK-France deal work, removing those whose claims fail etc.

The Government must think again on this.

Commenting on Vaughan’s post, John McDonnell, the former shadow chancellor, said many Labour MPs probably share Vaughan’s concerns.

Tony Vaughan is one of the new MPs elected for Labour last year & in his contributions to Commons debates has displayed a considered approach to issues. He’s certainly not what the media would call a “usual suspect”. I suspect he is reflecting here what many in the PLP feel.

Reform UK and the Conservatives are dismissing the proposals on the grounds that they do not believe they will ever be implemented – either because of opposition from the Labour party, or from the courts. The Daily Mail is reporting this with a headline treating this as fact, not an assertion.

Mahmood has used an article in the Guardian to argue that her plans are necessary to stop “dark forces” overwhelming the country. She says:

This is a moral mission for me. I know that a country without secure borders is a less safe country for those who look like me.

Dark forces are stirring up anger in this country, and seeking to turn that anger into hate. We must take the opportunity we have to stop that from happening. And I know we can.

I will be mostly focusing on this story today, but there are other political stories around. Here is the agenda for the day.

10am: Richard Tice, the Reform UK deputy leader, holds a press conference.

Morning: Kemi Badenoch is on a visit in the south-east of England.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

2.30pm: Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

After 3.30pm: Mahmood makes her statement to MPs about changes to the asylum system.

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Labour MP Simon Opher criticises asylum plans, saying government should 'push back on Racist agenda of Reform', not 'echo it'

The Labour MP Simon Opher, a GP who won Stroud from the Conservatives at the last election, has released a statement criticising the government’s asylum plans. He says Labour should “push back on the racist agenda of Reform rather than echo it”.

Here is the statement in full.

We should stop the boats because it’s dangerous, and we should stop the scapegoating of immigrants because it’s wrong and cruel.

Controlled migration is good for the country, helps build our economy and diversity strengthens our communities.

We need faster decisions, a relationship with the French authorities that works and better accommodation. In other words, a fair and workable approach that offers certainty, treats people with dignity and reflects our humanity.

Measures that create bureaucracy and insecurity do not offer clarity or strengthen control – they cost money, waste time and weaken the system.

We should push back on the racist agenda of Reform rather than echo it. And over all this, our focus needs to be tackling inequality: housing, the economy, education, health and all those other areas where we know that we can make a real difference to people’s lives.

Failing to deliver there is what leads to people looking for scapegoats and being persuaded by the dangerous rhetoric of those who don’t care about equality or improving the life chances of ordinary working people.

That’s why I came into politics, it’s why I’m a Labour MP and it’s why we elected our Labour government last year.

Tony Vaughan’s tweet criticising the government’s asylum plans has been shared by eight other Labour MPs, the Express is reporting. They are: John McDonnell, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Stella Creasy, Clive Lewis, Nadia Whittome, Kate Osborne, Olivia Blake and Peter Lamb.

But that does not count as “civil war”, as the Express headline implies. Sharing a tweet is about the mildest form of dissent available.

In private, there must be many Labour MPs uncomfortable about these plans. But at the moment the number speaking out publicly is very limited. No 10 has been unusually strict about removing the whip from MPs who criticise the government, and that may be one reason why people are holding back. But there are also Labour MPs who accept that drastic action is needed on small boats.

We’ll get a clearer sense of what backbenchers actually think when Shabana Mahmood addresses the Commons later.

Momentum, the leftwing Labour group, has also denounced the government’s asylum plans. In a statement it says:

The home secretary’s new immigration plans are divisive and xenophobic.

Scapegoating migrants will not fix our public services or end austerity.

The government must fundamentally change course. Refugees are welcome here.

'Truly frightening' and 'awful' - Diane Abbott condemns government's asylum plans

The Labour MP Diane Abbott has strongly condemned the government’s asylum plans in two posts on social media.

Draconian, unworkable and potentially illegal anti-asylum policies only feed Reform’s support.

The government has learnt nothing from the period since the general election.

Some of the legal changes being proposed are truly frightening:

Abolishing the right to a family life would ultimately affect many more people than asylum-seekers.

Overriding it if the risks of violence are greater is a mob’s charter.

Watering down the Modern Slavery Act. Awful.

Reform UK and Tories claim Labour's proposed asylum changes won't be implemented

Reform UK and the Conservatives are both claiming the government’s proposed asylum changes will never actually get implemented.

This is what Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, said yesterday.

The home secretary sounds like a Reform supporter.

It’s a shame that the Human Rights Act, ECHR and her own backbenchers mean that this will never happen.

And this is what Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said:

The government are pretending to be tough, but while inside the ECHR they will get stopped in their tracks by leftwing lawyers and judges – probably including their own attorney general.

The only way to control our borders is to leave the ECHR and deport every single illegal immigrant upon arrival, with no court hearings.

Minister rejects claim new, hardline policies risk stigmatising asylum seekers as cheats

In his Today interview Nick Robinson also asked Alex Norris, the border security and asylum minister, if he was worried the new Home Office asylum policy was sending a message to the public that asylum seekers were “cheats … illegals … people who should be hounded out of their accommodation”.

Norris said he did not accept that.

That is not the message that we’re expressing.

When you have low public confidence, that’s when people start to make perhaps unfair or superficial assessments.

If we restore order and control at our borders, it’s the government’s job to do it, then we can have the system we all want.

But, in an earlier interview, Norris was talking about asylum seekers driving Audis. This is what he told Times Radio when he was asked about the proposal to ensure that asylum seekers with assets have to contribute to the cost of getting their claims processed.

The British taxpayer subsidises bed and board and support for individuals to the tune of multiple billions of pounds per year. It is right if people have assets that they should contribute to them.

You know, there’s an individual, for example, who’s getting £800 a month from outside the country, who’s just picked himself up an Audi, if people have cars, if they have e-bikes, well, they should be making a contribution to their support.

On the Today programme Nick Robinson put it to Alex Norris that only 2.5% of asylum seekers facing deportation challenge this in the courts on ECHR grounds. Robinson was getting him to respond to the Tony Vaughan argument that changing the way the ECHR is applied won’t make much difference. (See 9.36am.)

Norris said he would not challenge Robinson on the numbers. But he said even a small number of court cases affected decision making more widely. “The government’s legal appetite for pushing claims has been reduced because there’s a sense that the courts will not rule in our favour,” he said. He said Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, had encouraged government lawyers to resist this assumption.

Minister suggests most asylum seekers would be able to avoid 20-year wait for permanent settlement under new rules

Alex Norris, the border security and asylum minister, has been giving interviews this morning defending the government’s asylum plans.

Even though the government has said that people who arrive in the UK illegally could have to wait 20 years before they can get permanent settlement under the proposals, Norris played down the prospect of this happening.

When it was put to him that 20 seemed far too long to have to wait (one of Tony Vaughan’s main complaints), Norris replied:

Those individuals who were on that 20-year route to settlement – we will give them the chance to switch to work or study routes so that they are learning English, so that they are taking part in the economy, so they’re contributing to their own lives and to British society. And if they do that, they can earn their right to settlement, like others on on work and study routes do already.

When Nick Robinson, the presenter, put it to Norris that this mean that the 20-year would in practice apply to almost no one, and that the government was just trying to send out a “tough message”, Norris said he did not accept that. He went on:

Let’s not forget, I’m afraid, that of those who have successful [asylum] claims, 50% of them end up on benefits.

If your intention is to come to the country illegally, to have a claim assessed and, if you’re successful, then sit at home, not contribute, not learn English [or] integrate into [the] community, not to build a life away from the dreadful circumstances that you may have come from, then that is going to come with much greater checks.

Now, I don’t want anybody to do that. But we do know that that does happen. And this is a very practical way of making sure that it doesn’t in the future.

Changing how courts interpret ECHR unlikely to have big impact on asylum returns, Labour MP says

In her statement to MPs this afternoon Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, is due to set out further details of her proposals to legislate to limit the extent to which courts can use article 3 (protection from torture) and article 8 (right to a family life) of the European convention on human rights (ECHR) to restrict removals.

In an interview on the Today programme, Tony Vaughan, the Labour MP and immigration law KC, explained his opposition to Mahmood’s plans. He is particulaly opposed to the idea that people told they can stay in the UK because they are at risk in their home country should have their asylum status continually reviewed.

But he also implied that Mahmood’s ECHR plans were a bit of a red herring. He explained:

The numbers of people who are prevented from return by the Strasbourg court are very, very small.

And we need to be realistic about what those sorts of reforms are going to achieve. We can’t promise the public things which it’s not going to deliver.

The way to the way to solve the politically salient challenge of small boats arriving on our shores is [by] making things like the UK/France deal work, by sorting out the asylum accommodation problem, by sorting out the appeal backlog … not spend money on reassessing status after two and a half years or so.

This morning, in a news release sent to journalists (but not on its website yet), the Home Office said that it might stop granting visas to nationals from Angola, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of Congo if their governments do not start cooperating more with the UK on accepting removals (see 8.58am) and it said “similar measures against other countries remain under consideration”.

This morning, in an interview with Sky News, Alex Norris, the border security and asylum minister, was asked if countries like India could also face visa restrictions if they do not cooperate more on removals. He replied:

The countries that we’ve started with are the ones that we’ve named. We wouldn’t rule it out with anybody else.

The reality is, with most countries, we’ve got much better relationships. We need to see these agreements work, and we’re not going to rule anything out in order to make they do.

Why Labour is going Danish on immigration – podcast

Shabana Mahmood’s asylum proposals are partly modelled on policies that have been implemented in Denmark. The Danish journalist Nilas Heinskou and Syrian refugee Agob Yacoub discuss them here on our Today in Focus podcast.