Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is expected to unveil plans for expedited deportations of illegal migrants as part of a comprehensive overhaul of the UK’s asylum policy.
In a statement to MPs on Monday, she will outline proposals to eliminate multiple appeals against removal and reform legislation concerning human rights law.
Under the new framework, individuals granted asylum will receive it on a temporary basis, with repatriation to their home countries if deemed safe at any point. They will also face a 20-year waiting period to apply for permanent settlement.
Mahmood is also expected to warn that the UK will halt visa issuance to citizens from three African nations if their governments fail to enhance cooperation on the removal of illegal migrants.
Speaking to the BBC on Sunday, Mahmood stated: “This is a moral mission for me, because I can see illegal migration is tearing our country apart, it is dividing communities.”
Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp has stated he would go further and deport failed asylum seekers “within a week”.
The proposals have drawn criticism from some Labour MPs, including Rachael Maskell, who asserted that the government is moving in “completely the wrong direction” on immigration.
The government aims to decrease the number of individuals arriving in the UK via small boats, with the reforms designed to accelerate deportations of unsuccessful asylum seekers and foreign criminals, as well as to complicate the process for successful asylum seekers to remain.
The plans will limit individuals to arguing their grounds for appeal within a single appeal, leading to deportation if the case is unsuccessful.
The government intends to emulate the Danish model by establishing an independent body to expedite the deportation of foreign criminals and cases with minimal prospects of success through the appeals system.
Mahmood seeks to reform the application of human rights legislation, including Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which pertains to the right to family life, in migration court cases.
Only individuals with immediate family members in the UK, such as a parent or child, will be permitted to invoke Article 8 as grounds for remaining in the country.
The UK will join other nations in reforming Article 3 of the ECHR, which is intended to provide protection against inhuman or degrading treatment.
The government maintains that this article has been misused to support unwarranted claims, including instances where serious criminals have had their deportation blocked due to purported healthcare needs.
Similarly, the Home Office has indicated that the Modern Slavery Act will be strengthened to prevent last-minute claims aimed at obstructing removal.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer stated that the reforms would halt “endless appeals” to increase the removals of “those with no right to be here”.
Mahmood commented that the reforms acknowledge that the “pace and scale” of immigration has destabilized and divided communities and would enable the government to accelerate the removal of those without the right to be in Britain.
She added: “To maintain the generosity that allows us to provide sanctuary, we must restore order and control.”
Earlier, the home secretary told the BBC that she would create new safe and legal routes for refugees through work and study routes.
Under the new measures there will be tighter restrictions placed on successful asylum seekers, who will have their case reviewed every two and a half years and if their home country is considered safe they will be returned.
A refugee will have to have been resident in the UK for 20 years, up from the current five years, in order to apply for permanent residence or indefinite leave to remain.
They will not be able to bring family members to join them unless they are immediate relatives, including parents and children, while housing and weekly allowances will also no longer be guaranteed for asylum seekers.
Asylum claims in Britain are at a record high, with around 111,000 applications in the year to June 2025, according to official figures.
The appeals system currently has a backlog of more than 50,000 and a waiting time of at least a year.
There has also been criticism of the proposed reforms from within Labour, with Maskell saying lots of her fellow MPs were “really concerned”.
She said it was important to have a robust human rights framework and described “reordering our relationship with the ECHR” as a “step too far”.
Reform leader Nigel Farage said 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,” he added.
Liberal Democrats home affairs spokesperson Max Wilkinson said the government should “focus on processing claims quickly, getting them right first time, and swiftly deporting people with no right to be here”.
Enver Solomon, chief executive at the Refugee Council, said rather than deter migrants, the 20-year time frame would “leave people in limbo and in tense anxiety for many, many years”.
As first reported in the Times, the threat of the visa ban for Angola, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of Congo comes after thousands of illegal migrants and criminals from the three nations were said to be in the UK.
A Home Office source said the countries were being targeted “for their unacceptably low cooperation and obstructive returns processes”.
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