Home Secretary delivers asylum update to Parliament, announcing end of retrospective nature of ‘unworkable’ Illegal Migration Act

Border Security and Asylum

The Secretary of State for the Home Department
(Yvette Cooper)

Most people in the United Kingdom want to see strong border security, with a properly controlled and managed asylum system where our country does its bit, alongside others, to help those who have fled persecution, but where rules are properly respected and enforced so that those with no right to be here are swiftly removed. At the moment, we have none of those things. Border security is being undermined by criminal smuggler gangs, and the asylum system is in chaos. Tragically, 19 lives have been lost in the channel so far this year, including children. No one should be making these perilous small boat journeys.

Criminal gangs have been allowed to take hold along our border, and they are making huge profit from undermining our border security and putting lives at risk. They should not be able to get away with it. Crossings in the first half of 2024 are up by 10% on last year—the number is going up, instead of coming down. At the same time, the asylum backlog is getting worse, as decision making in the Home Office has dropped. Home Office spending on asylum support has increased sevenfold in the space of just three years. This cannot go on. Since my appointment two weeks ago, I have reviewed the policies, programmes and legislation that we have inherited from our predecessors, and I have been shocked by what I have found. Not only are there already serious problems; on current policies, the chaos and costs are likely to get worse.

On our border security, it is clear that the security and enforcement arrangements we have inherited are too weak. Criminal gang networks are operating with impunity along our border, across the continent and beyond, and across the UK too. Action between Britain and France in the channel has improved, and is preventing some boat crossings. The work of the small boats operational command in the channel is important and will continue, but we need to go much further. We should be taking far more action upstream, long before the boats ever reach the French coast. Co-operation with Europol and other European police forces and prosecutors is far too limited, and enforcement against exploitation and trafficking in the UK is far too weak. Information sharing with our European neighbours has reduced, rather than increased. As a result of these weak arrangements, I am extremely concerned that the high levels of dangerous crossings that we have inherited are likely to persist throughout the summer.

Let me turn to the Rwanda migration and economic development partnership. Two and a half years after the previous Government launched it, I can report that it has already cost the British taxpayer £700 million—in order to send just four volunteers. That includes £290 million on payments to Rwanda and the costs of chartering flights that never took off, detaining hundreds of people and then releasing them, and paying for more than 1,000 civil servants to work on the scheme—for a scheme to send four people. It is the most shocking waste of taxpayers' money I have ever seen.

Looking forward, the costs are set to get worse. Even if the scheme had ever got going, it is clear that it would have covered only a minority of arrivals, yet a substantial portion of future costs were fixed costs—for example, the annual direct payments to Rwanda, the contracts for escorts, the staffing in the Home Office, the detention and reception centres, and more. The taxpayer would have still had to pay out, no matter how few people were relocated. Most shockingly of all, over the six years of the migration and economic development partnership forecast, the previous Government had planned to spend over £10 billion of taxpayers' money on the scheme. They did not tell Parliament that. I thank the Rwandan Government for working with the UK in good faith, because the failure of this policy lies with the previous UK Government. It has been a costly con, and the taxpayer has had to pay the price.

I turn to the Illegal Migration Act 2023, which has been in place for a year. We were told that it would stop the boats, but it has clearly failed. The legal contradictions in the Act are so great that they make it unworkable; indeed, 12 months on, the central duty has not even been enacted. It is also costing the taxpayer billions of pounds. Under section 9 of the Act, people who arrive in the UK can claim asylum and get asylum accommodation. However, under section 30, if they arrived after March 2023 and meet key conditions in the Act, no decision can be taken on their case; they just stay in the asylum system. Even if they have come here unlawfully for economic reasons and should be returned to their home country, they will not be, because the law does not work. Only a small minority might ever have been sent to Rwanda; everyone else stays indefinitely in taxpayer-funded accommodation and support.

The Home Office estimates that around 40% of asylum cases since March 2023 should be covered by those Illegal Migration Act conditions. The remaining 60%, under the previous Government's policy, should still have been processed and cleared in the normal way. However, even though previous Ministers introduced this new law 12 months ago, they did not ever introduce an effective operational way for the Home Office to distinguish between the cases covered by the Illegal Migration Act and the other cases where decisions should continue—that is, between the 40% and the 60%. As a result, decisions cannot be taken on any of them.

I have been shocked to discover that the Home Office has effectively stopped making the majority of asylum decisions. Thousands of asylum caseworkers cannot do their proper job. As a result, the backlog of asylum cases is now going up. This is the most extraordinary policy I have ever seen. We have inherited asylum "Hotel California"—people arrive in the asylum system and they never leave. The previous Government's policy was effectively an amnesty, and that is the wrong thing to do. It is not just bad policy, it is also completely unaffordable. The cost of this indefinitely rising asylum backlog in hotel and accommodation support bills is astronomical. The potential costs of asylum support over the next four years if we continue down this track could be an eye-watering £30 billion to £40 billion. That is double the annual police budget for England and Wales.

This newly elected Government are not prepared to let this chaos continue, so let me turn to the action we are urgently taking to restore some grip to the system, to tackle the chaos and to get costs down. First, I have informed the Rwandan Government that we will be ending the migration and economic development partnership. We will save £220 million on further direct payments to Rwanda over the next few years and we will immediately save up to £750 million that had been put aside by the previous Government to cover the MEDP this year.

Secondly, we will invest some of the saved money from the migration partnership into a new border security command instead. It will bring together the work of the Border Force, the National Crime Agency, the small boats operational command and intelligence and security officers. The recruitment has begun for a new commander and we will put in place additional cross-border officers, investigators, prosecutors, and intelligence and security officers with the new counter-terror-style powers against organised immigration crime announced in the King's Speech last week. We are immediately increasing UK officers' involvement in Europol and the European Migrant Smuggling Centre.

Thirdly, we will replace the Rwanda migration partnership with a serious returns and enforcement programme. We have immediately replaced the flight planning for Rwanda with actual flights to return people who have no right to stay to their home countries instead. We are immediately redeploying Home Office staff away from the failed Rwanda partnership and into returns and enforcement, to reverse the collapse in removals that has taken place since 2010. I have tasked the immigration enforcement team with intensifying enforcement activity this summer, targeting illegal working across high-risk sectors.

Fourthly, we will end the asylum chaos and start taking asylum decisions again so that we can clear the backlog and end asylum hotels. The new Border Security, Asylum and immigration Bill announced in the King's Speech will bring in new replacement arrangements, including fast-track decisions and returns to safe countries. In the meantime, I am laying a statutory instrument that ends the retrospective nature of the Illegal Migration Act provisions, so that the Home Office can immediately start clearing cases from after March 2023. Making this one simple change will save the taxpayer an estimated £7 billion over the next 10 years. Fifthly, as the Prime Minister has just set out, we will work closely with our European neighbours to tackle the upstream causes of migration, including through the Rome process.

This country will always do our bit alongside others to help those fleeing war and persecution, but we need a proper system where rules are enforced. There are no quick fixes to the chaos created over the last 14 years. It will take time to clear the asylum backlog, to bring costs down and to get new enforcement in place to strengthen our borders and prevent dangerous boat crossings, but there is no alternative to serious hard graft. We cannot waste any more time or money on gimmicks. The country voted for change, and that means it is time for a sensible, serious plan. I commend this statement to the House.