‘Tough talk, cruel policy — and it still won’t stop the boats’

Scrolling social media is no way to truly judge how a government announcement has gone down. But amid all the frothing of mouths in response to Shabana Mahmood’s asylum plans, on all sides, there was one comment which stood out for me.

It was from a friend in the quintessentially Red Wall area of Teesside, where I grew up. The Labour chair Anna Turley represents the Teesside town of Redcar and much of the area returned to Labour in 2024. But Brexit was well supported, and it is vulnerable to Reform.

My friend was blunt. He welcomed Mahmood’s statement – it was good to see someone gripping the issue, he said. But if it doesn’t stop the boats, he went on, you can forget the cost of living and NHS waiting lists: Labour is done.

READ MORE: Paul Nowak Column: ‘Fixing Britain’s migration system starts with fairness, compassion and common sense

That’s one of my main issues with the Home Secretary’s plans. I don’t think it will stop people risking their lives on battered dinghies to reach UK shores. I doubt that the undeniably tough changes to asylum rules and benefits will convince people that the risk isn’t worth it (there is limited evidence anyway that asylum seekers carefully take time to study asylum rules and regulations before heading here). I also think some of the proposals are needlessly cruel in relation to people to whom we grant refugee status – in other words, those we agree face a plight so serious that we will give them refuge from war or persecution. Saying we will always give sanctuary to those who need it rings very hollow when it is now to become conditional in ways which seem to contravene the very spirit of the pledge.

Of course there are deep and profound problems with the asylum system. We don’t have an actual policy for how we treat refugees or asylum seekers, we have a broken system, symbolised by the horrendous backlogs in the processing system, and the use of hotels to house people waiting for their claims to be heard. And of course there are the small boats, a problem caused almost entirely by Brexit and the end of EU agreements on returns, though few people will dare say that. 

There are simply no easy answers to the boats. Contrary to the wishes of some, we can’t just push them back to France (international law, humanitarian reasons, decency), or immediately deport anyone arriving on our shores that way. We have a limited agreement with France to return some people and extending that would be welcome, but that does involve the French wanting to play ball, and it’s far from clear why they would want to (not least because of the challenges of the far right there).

So the best one can really do in relation to the boats is to come up with enforcement action and deterrents. The former will work to a degree, but criminal gangs will usually find a way to evade the law, while the latter is the point of the Home Secretary’s announcement. Make our system so unattractive that it’s not worth the risk of a boat crossing.

I’m not sure it will work. And one of the reasons for that is one of the most overlooked points in this whole issue. Most of the people on the boats are genuine refugees, fleeing war or persecution. That’s not my view, it’s what the statistics show – around 75% of those on the boats are eventually approved for refugee status when they get through the system. 

In other words they are risking their lives in the boats because their lives are at risk at home. They come to the UK for many reasons – family and language being principal ones. There is no evidence that the UK’s welfare system is a pull factor. Making the asylum system in the UK even more unattractive is therefore unlikely to persuade people whose lives are already awful that it’s not worth taking a chance on a boat. Better stuck in our creaking system than being thrown off a crane in Tehran or hiding from the Taliban in Afghanistan. 

The next proposed deterrent is to extend the amount of time someone has to be in the UK to be granted settled status from five to 20 years, and to introduce a review every 2.5 years to assess if someone’s country of origin is safe for their return.

You can see how the review approach might work where a conflict ends. Most people would probably prefer to go home. But being a refugee is not always as neat as that. Iran is unlikely to be safe for the LGBTQIA+ community. Parts of Syria and Afghanistan are safe now, others are not. 

As for the extension to 20 years for approval as being formally settled in the UK, that seems unnecessarily cruel. Denmark, the inspiration for Mahmood’s proposals, only specifies eight years. 

The outcome of the new policy would be to give sanctuary to those genuinely seeking asylum but make their lives when in the UK deeply uncertain and uncomfortable. It’s hardly surprising that Lord Dubs, who came to the UK from Nazi Germany as a child, is opposed to plans which have a strong sense of “ok, but” about them. It’s hardly the action of a country with a deep commitment to the principle of providing long-term sanctuary to those in need. People from Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Ukraine who made their lives here, deeply grateful for the solidarity and support of Britain, might be thankful they didn’t arrive under this Home Secretary. 

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It also seems perverse. Surely we want refugees to contribute to the UK, yet this change will make it difficult, presumably, for refugees to find work or, indeed, homes. Some will be allowed to join a cohort of people working or studying and earn early rights to settlement – this seems sensible, as does a review of benefits to incentivise those who contribute most to the UK.

When it comes to work, the package is confused. It says that asylum seekers who have the right to work could have support terminated if they fail to enter employment. The only asylum seekers who can work are those who have been in the UK for 12 months, and only then in a tightly managed set of areas and with permission from the Home Office.

Taken together, it is hard to see how the package will deter desperate people from taking a boat across the Channel.

What might help would be proper safe routes which people could apply to in order to come to the UK. A capped system for those most in need, something which most people in the UK would accept, as they did the 200,000 Ukrainians who came to this country when Russia invaded their country. 

Unfortunately what was on offer from the Home Secretary in this area was thin pickings indeed, some mention of routes for study, skilled workers and community sponsorship with very little detail, presumably because the political risk of anything more than that is deemed too great.

Yet meaningful safe routes, a humanitarian visa applied for at a UK embassy, for instance, are defensible with a little courage and a clear narrative.

It’s worth stressing that that at present there are very limited safe routes for people from some of the countries from which most refugees come. Indeed, the family reunion route and the Afghan scheme were closed by this government.

Set up proper safe routes and cap them, and demand for the people smugglers reduces. It wouldn’t stop the boats altogether, but it might have an impact.

The package set out by Shabana Mahmood has been called many things, from all sides. Some say it was a shameful day for Labour. Others have welcomed what they see as a tough package to address a really difficult problem.

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Personally, I err towards the shameful side. The 20 year proposal does not sit well alongside protestations about Britain’s historic commitment to support refugees. But it’s not just that: the politics of this are really terrible: it won’t stop the boats, it won’t satisfy Reform-curious voters and it will anger great swathes of Labour supporters. In that sense it is very much a wasted opportunity.

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