Delivering control and compassion: Reflections on the home secretary's speech on immigration reform

Since taking office in September, Shabana Mahmood has announced sweeping reforms to the asylum system, launched a major consultation on settlement, and begun removals under the UK’s ‘one-in, one-out’ deal with France. Today she gave a major speech at IPPR where she sought to make a progressive case for her reform agenda.

The home secretary’s argument is that the UK needs an immigration system which is controlled and compassionate – which, in her words, neither “throws open the borders” nor “pulls up the drawbridge”. This is the right ambition. As IPPR has long argued, for progressives to secure and maintain public confidence it is vital both to manage immigration in an orderly way and to treat people fairly and with compassion.

The challenge for the home secretary centres on the policies themselves. Do they meet the test of a controlled and compassionate system? On both counts, there are risks ahead.

On the one hand, it is not clear whether the reforms will help to manage arrivals of small boats, which is one of the key concerns of the public. As the home secretary set out in her speech, this approach involves a shift from permanent to temporary status for refugees, alongside a host of other changes, including a new pilot for voluntary returns and tighter rules for accessing asylum support.

But the evidence this approach will work to deter asylum seekers is thin. Indeed, successive governments have made similar attempts – from Priti Patel’s 2022 asylum restrictions to the 2023 Illegal Migration Act, and more recently the citizenship ban on small boat arrivals. None of these changes appear to have had an impact on Channel crossings. This is unsurprising, given most of the evidence on asylum decisions points to factors such as language and family ties as the main drivers for why people want to come.

On the other hand, the Home Office’s reforms risk undermining the core principles of integration and fairness. This is perhaps most stark when it comes to its policy on ‘earned settlement’. The government intends to significantly delay the waiting time for when people can apply to settle, at which point migrants are able to stay in the UK indefinitely. The proposed rules are complex, but workers will typically face a default wait of up to 10-15 years, while refugees could wait up to 20. A public service job or a high income could bring this waiting period down, while claiming benefits or overstaying could bring it up.

The consequences are likely to be weaker integration. If people are uncertain about their future in the UK, the risk is they are less likely to put down roots and contribute. Indeed, there is evidence from Denmark that tighter rules on settlement for refugees can lead to a reduction in their working hours.

Moreover, the ‘earned settlement’ policy risks entrenching unfairness. As we raised to the home secretary at today’s event, under the proposals a child of a banker will get settlement after five or even three years, while the child of a care worker may have to wait for up to 15 years. Without changes in response to the recent consultation, this policy is hard to square with progressive values.

So, what could the government do to ensure these reforms are controlled and compassionate? Three things stand out. The government could first introduce a 10-year cap on the qualifying period for settlement, in order to avoid lengthy waits which damage integration. It could also make sure that it recognises other forms of contribution beyond a person’s job or salary, so that everyone has the opportunity to move on to a faster route to settlement. And, crucially, as we have argued previously, it could protect those already on routes to settlement from the proposed changes, so that people who have worked hard and played by the rules can settle at the point they originally expected.

But beyond these immediate changes, there are also a number of proactive steps the government should take to address the public’s priorities.

First, there needs to be deeper cooperation between the UK and France to tackle small boat crossings. The lessons globally suggest that cooperation with close neighbours is crucial to managing asylum more effectively. There is currently an opportunity to secure a new and improved three-year funding deal with France on small boat crossings and to negotiate a successor to the ‘one-in, one-out’ pilot introduced last year.

Second, the government must get a grip on asylum hotels. Replacing the duty to accommodate asylum seekers with a power, as the home secretary announced today, is a red herring: regardless of the change, most people will continue to need support to avoid destitution. The government should instead focus on reforming the appeals system to deal with the growing backlog, which is slowing down efforts to close hotels. And money used for hotels should be put into a new capital fund for temporary accommodation, which would expand housing options for both existing communities and asylum seekers.

Finally, the government needs an ambitious new strategy for community cohesion, which focuses on how to respond to the local pressures the home secretary spoke of today. A renewed migration impacts fund – first introduced under the Brown government – would provide funding to communities to support integration and help alleviate any potential pressures of migration on local services.

The truth is that the government is already either planning or considering a number of these proposals. But in trying to do everything everywhere all at once, the home secretary risks fighting on too many fronts: announcing policies that undermine her own objectives, while losing focus on the things which could truly make a difference. If the home secretary can refocus her efforts on diplomacy with France, reform of asylum accommodation, and a strategy for community cohesion, she stands the best chance of delivering on her ambition for a controlled and compassionate immigration system.