Illegal migration tearing us apart, says Mahmood
Shabana Mahmood has vowed to end Britain’s “golden ticket” for asylum seekers by forcing people arriving illegally to wait 20 years before they can apply for permanent settlement.
The home secretary warned of the dangers if the government does not tackle the rising number of illegal migrants coming to the UK.
She said: “I can see — and I know my colleagues can — that illegal migration is tearing our country apart. It’s our job as a Labour government to unite our country and if we don’t sort this out, I think our country becomes much more divided.”
Mahmood will also announce that refugee status is to become temporary, and those whose countries become safe will be immediately made to go home.
Their refugee status will be reviewed every 30 months. The home secretary argues that for too long those being granted asylum have ended up spending a lifetime in Britain.
Under the present system, introduced by the last Labour government in 2005, refugees can apply for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) after five years, providing access to benefits and public funds and a route to citizenship.
The new 20-year qualifying period will apply to those who arrive illegally, such as in small boats or in lorries, and claim asylum, or those who overstay their visas and then claim. It will be the longest route to settlement in Europe; Denmark is second with an eight-year pathway.
The changes, hailed as the largest overhaul since the Second World War, will apply only to new arrivals.
In the year to June, a total of 111,000 people claimed asylum in the UK. In the year ending March 2025, 172,798 people were granted ILR under the process.
There will be some mitigations for skilled refugees, enabling them to truncate the 20-year qualification period by going into “specific” work or study routes. “It will be essentially a system whereby the more you contribute, you can bring forward that [20-year] period,” Mahmood said.
A shorter ten-year pathway will also be created for those who arrive in the UK legally, under new specific refugee settlement routes to be announced by Mahmood on Thursday.
The plans are modelled on reforms in Denmark, which has reduced the number of asylum applications to a 40-year low, with 95 per cent of applicants rejected.
She will also revoke the statutory duty to provide support for asylum seekers. The government intends to repeal via legislation a European Union directive that underpins the requirement.
In future, housing and weekly allowances will be removed from those who have a right to work and can support themselves but choose not to. Those who break the law will also face having their support withdrawn.
Mahmood said: “Before that directive we actually had a much more discretionary power that we could use, where we could make our own decision about whether we are going to offer someone asylum support or not. The reason we’re doing that [reverting to the previous powers] is that there are some people who currently receive asylum support who can work, who have the right to work, and we want them to work.”
She will also announce reforms to the application of key elements of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), including article 8, the right to a family life.
She is expected to raise the need for international reform of article 3, covering torture and inhuman and degrading treatment. Both have been blamed for hindering Britain’s ability to remove illegal migrants and failed asylum seekers.
The home secretary believes the changes are necessary to address voters’ sense of unfairness when asylum seekers are treated more generously than economic migrants who arrive on visas, despite the fact that the latter group must meet strict financial and integration requirements.
President Trump told GB News on Friday that Sir Keir Starmer “better do something on immigration”, describing some of those who arrived on small boats as “bad people” and warning: “If you don’t get them out, you’re not going to have a country left”.
Mahmood argued that the changes would make it both easier to remove illegal migrants already in Britain and deter those considering crossing the Channel in small boats. “I can see a system that is out of control, I can see a system that is unfair and I can see a system that’s putting huge pressure on communities, including my own,” she said. Her reforms would seek to “change the assumptions” about what it means to be a refugee, while also changing the “calculus and the thinking” of those people who are risking their lives on small boats by reducing the so-called pull factors that are drawing illegal immigrants.
This will include ending the “automatic path” to settled status after a refugee has been in Britain for five years. That will rise to 20 years and will have certain conditions attached, such as having no criminal record.
“That is designed to essentially say to people: do not come to this country as an illegal migrant, do not get on a boat,” she said. “I think it’s important that we send a very clear signal to those people who are currently trekking across multiple safe countries across Europe looking to get on a boat in the north of France: this is not a journey worth making.”
Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, described the plans as “harsh and unnecessary”, arguing that they “won’t deter people who have been persecuted, tortured or seen family members killed in brutal wars”. He said that the system was already “very tough”.
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