Immigration and Asylum (Provision of Accommodation to Failed Asylum-Seekers) (Amendment) Regulations 2026
Baroness Teather Excerpts(3 days ago)
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The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)
My Lords, these instruments—the Immigration and Asylum (Provision of Accommodation to Failed Asylum-Seekers) (Amendment) Regulations 2026 and the Asylum Seekers (Reception Conditions) (Amendment) Regulations 2026—were laid before the House on 5 March 2026. They relate to the Government’s stance that asylum support should be provided in a manner which is fair and only where it is genuinely justified.
These instruments are a key element of our sweeping reforms to create a fairer, more accountable system, one that protects support for those who genuinely need it while encouraging compliance and deterring misuse. Noble Lords might be interested in the fact that, as of December, there were 107,003 individuals in receipt of asylum support, with 30,657 in around 200 asylum hotels. In the financial year 2024-25, a total of £4 billion was spent on asylum support in the United Kingdom.
The Government inherited that situation and have to try to look at how we can reduce overall asylum costs. The Government have already reduced overall asylum support costs by 15% over that period, and we must continue to look at how we can make further reductions in the cost to the taxpayer.
One of the instruments before the House today removes the duty to provide asylum support, reverting to the discretionary power set out in the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. This reinforces our ability to make case-by-case decisions and gives the Government greater flexibility in how we assess and distribute asylum support. It also allows us to take firmer action against those who do not comply with the rules.
For example, removing Regulation 5 allows us to withhold support from individuals who have permission to work and therefore should be supporting themselves. This includes those who entered the UK on work or student visas after explicitly confirming, as part of their visa application, that they had sufficient funds to meet their living costs for the duration of their stay. It is not acceptable for individuals to make such declarations in order to secure entry and then subsequently claim asylum and move on to taxpayer-funded support.
The same principle applies to those granted permission to work where their asylum claim has been pending for more than 12 months through no fault of their own. Where a person has the legal ability to earn and maintain themselves, it is only right that they do so. Reinstating this discretionary power also enables us to deny support to those who have intentionally made themselves destitute in an attempt to access the system. This is essential to protecting the integrity of our approach and ensuring that support is reserved for those who genuinely need it.
The other instrument we are debating today focuses on illegal working and makes doing so an explicit reason to discontinue an individual’s asylum support. Previously, where an individual was suspected of working illegally, this had to be investigated as fraud or concealment of funds to establish that they were no longer destitute. By setting out clearly in legislation that illegal working is itself a breach of asylum support conditions, we create a direct and transparent mechanism to discontinue support, without the need for protracted fraud investigations.
Most asylum seekers do not have the right to work in the UK, yet some choose to work illegally while also claiming asylum support and accommodation. I suggest to noble Lords that that is not right. This undercuts legitimate businesses and takes genuine work opportunities away from other citizens. It is unlawful to undertake work without the requisite authorisation, and this measure ensures that there is now a clear and proportionate consequence for those who choose to disregard that requirement.
Through the statutory instrument before the House, illegal working will be an explicit ground on which Section 4 support may be withdrawn from failed asylum seekers, therefore aligning with the changes made to Section 98 and Section 95 support that were laid on the same date as these instruments and came into force on 27 March. This ensures that public resources are directed only to those who abide by the rules and who genuinely cannot support themselves, reinforcing the credibility and fairness of the system as a whole.
Taken together, these measures will deliver a coherent system in which support aligns with responsibility. I emphasise to the House that this shift is about fairness and responsibility. Rights must come with responsibilities, and the British taxpayer cannot be expected to fund support for individuals who deliberately disregard the rules of the asylum system and the laws of the United Kingdom.
Crucially, none of these changes alters the legal safeguards that remain firmly in place. Our human rights and equality obligations will continue to provide strong protections, ensuring that we operate within a framework that upholds fundamental rights. Our intention is to provide greater flexibility over who we provide support to, ensuring that support is targeted, proportionate and sustainable. The revocation of Regulation 5 is an enabler for the development of a new framework that provides us with the ability to make changes in relation to those who have the ability to support themselves or who fail to comply with the conditions set by the Home Office or who break UK law.
This is the first step in building a modern and controlled asylum support system, which protects the vulnerable, encourages compliance and ensures public confidence. By tightening eligibility, we strengthen public confidence in the system and, I contend to the House, ensure that support is focused on those who play by the rules. I commend both orders to the House.
Baroness Teather (LD)
My Lords, I see some of the same noble Lords in their places for this debate that were here for the debate last Tuesday. I trust that the Minister is feeling much better.
As with last week, these SIs on asylum support leave much unclear and have been tabled before the accompanying impact assessments or the framework the Minister just referred to, which would help the House understand the implications. I cannot approach a debate about destitution in the asylum system as an entirely abstract topic. I cannot not see the faces of the asylum seekers and refugees I had the privilege of working with at the Jesuit Refugee Service over a nine-year period. They were men and women from many different countries who, for one reason or another, found themselves destitute along their asylum journey.
Child Poverty and Homelessness: Asylum and Settlement Policies
Baroness Teather Excerpts(1 week, 3 days ago)
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Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I say to my noble friend that the aim of these measures is to reduce misuse of support, not to make people homeless or to increase child poverty, which it is a core mission of the Labour Government to eradicate. We will not deny support to those who genuinely need it and who have no way to support themselves. My noble friend will also know that we have consulted on these measures. We have had some 200,000 responses and we are currently assessing them. A full economic impact assessment and equality impact assessment of the regulations will be undertaken in due course, and we will look at the responses to the consultation to inform how we deal with these measures as we go forward.
Baroness Teather (LD)
My Lords, as a former director of the Jesuit Refugee Service, I am concerned that the changes to the duration of refugee protection may create a state of permanent vulnerability and instability for refugee households. What assessment has the Minister made of the likely impact of these changes on the mental health of refugees, and their implications for provision of services by the NHS and others?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I think the noble Baroness will know and will want to be assured that the whole purpose of these changes is to make both asylum and refugee status quicker in dealing with those outcomes. We have made some changes, and during the 30-month period of protection, if it is granted, refugees will continue to have the sanctuary their protection requires, and it will be renewed if they still require it. But the important thing is to assess claims quickly in order to make sure that we grant status quickly, so that people can earn a living and integrate into society.
Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules
Baroness Teather Excerpts(1 week, 3 days ago)
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Baroness Teather (LD)
It is always a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett. I am hugely grateful to the noble Lords, Lord German and Lord Dubs, for providing an opportunity for the House to discuss the Government’s changes to the asylum, refugee and settlement system.
I should begin with some context. After I left the other place, I spent nearly a decade working for the Jesuit Refugee Service, first internationally, supporting projects in the Middle East and South Sudan, and then running the UK office for nine years until early last year. JRS UK supports asylum seekers and refugees facing destitution or detention, providing legal advice, accommodation and much more besides. It is this perspective that I bring to this debate.
There is much to regret in the raft of changes announced by the Government to the asylum system, as many other noble Lords have already pointed out in this debate, and of course—as the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee pointed out—a huge amount that remains profoundly unclear. In the interests of brevity, I will focus my remarks tonight on the one change that I fear will create the most human misery for refugees and will be deeply counterproductive to integration and social cohesion. That is the reduction in the duration of leave to remain for refugees to 30 months and the requirement to reapply repeatedly for up to 20 years before achieving permanent settlement.
My experience of working alongside asylum seekers and refugees suggests that offering only temporary protection, coupled with the requirement to endure regular cycles of jeopardy to apply for renewal, will leave refugees in a near-permanent state of precarity and vulnerability. It is very likely to undermine refugees’ ability to settle, to integrate, to get work, to keep work—as the noble Lord, Lord German, remarked in relation to the Ukrainian scheme—to engage in education and to lay down roots. It is likely to affect their ability to rent housing, to leave them more vulnerable to exploitation and to damage personal relationships.
Children and young people in refugee households will grow up in this instability, which could potentially last the whole of their lives. How will that affect their schooling and educational choices? Concern about the impact of reducing the duration of leave is shared by every refugee charity that has spoken publicly about the changes. It is laid out in detail in submissions to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee by, for example, the Helen Bamber Foundation, Freedom from Torture, ILPA and the Refugee Council. All are also asking why this change has been introduced before making clear other elements of the core protection system and work and study route.
The Jesuit Refugee Service works closely with people with insecure immigration status over many years, giving a window into the likely impacts of temporary forms of protection for refugees. That experience suggests that uncertainty and insecurity over immigration status has a profound and lasting impact on people’s mental health. Indeed, the agony of enduring enforced limbo was an issue that came up repeatedly in JRS research documenting asylum seekers’ experiences of waiting for decisions, with many describing it as wasting their life. The Government are now proposing to extend this misery even beyond the point of grant of status.
Refugees have often experienced significant trauma, including torture and trafficking. Uncertainty and prolonged limbo are not conditions that facilitate healing and recovery. I recall vividly refugees who had attended the JRS UK drop-in for years but felt able to begin trauma counselling and to grieve for what they had lost only once they had papers and knew that they would be safe. This is a point echoed in the evidence submitted by the Helen Bamber Foundation and Freedom from Torture to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee.
The Government’s stated aim for this policy change is
“to change perceptions of what the refugee offer is in the UK”.
The pull factors argument is often employed by Ministers as an explanation for making the process more unpleasant, but it has never been shown in practice to make much difference. Furthermore, these rules will be applied to people who are already here, as it is applied retrospectively to anyone who made an asylum application or submitted further submissions to an asylum claim on or after 2 March 2026.
Lastly, I heard the Minister’s answer to my question and to other noble Lords in the Chamber earlier today that renewing leave would be a straightforward process, with reviews supported by AI. I gently suggest that, from all my dealings with the Home Office over a 23-year period, first as a constituency MP responding to immigration casework in my advice surgery in Brent, and then as director of JRS UK, the idea that the Home Office is likely to manage a huge additional volume of decision-making without delays, muddle and error does not bear any contact with reality.
What happens to people’s lives when renewal decisions start to take months to resolve? What will be the ramifications of delay for individuals’ personal decisions on whether to marry or take work or study, invest in volunteering or build relationships in their local community? If people lose work when the bureaucracy slows or because the anxiety makes sustaining that work difficult, will that be held against them in the new work and study route? It is an intolerable burden to place on the shoulders of people who have already suffered enough at the hands of their own country, in the journey to get here and in our byzantine asylum process. We risk crushing often highly gifted individuals, denying them the chance to begin their life again and contribute to Britain, as they are desperate to do. I urge the Minister to think again.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)
My Lords, I recognise that the Government wish to reduce migration and that this requires public support. However, like all others who have spoken this evening, I am very concerned about some of the changes to the Immigration Rules, including the reduction in time for refugee status from five years to 30 months, for all the reasons that have been given this evening.
I will focus on the visa ban for students from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan. I am utterly dismayed that brilliant students who were hoping to come to our universities, following rigorous selection procedures and on fully funded scholarships, have had their hopes, dreams and futures shattered. This has a profound effect on the individuals but also on their countries, on our universities and on our reputation.
The Written Ministerial Statement said of the ban:
“Its key aim is to reduce the strain on the asylum system. It will also strengthen public confidence in the immigration system”.
I believe that the ban poorly serves both purposes. The Home Secretary has spoken of a “surge” of people from the four countries claiming asylum in the UK. There has been a large percentage increase in recent asylum claims from these countries, but the actual numbers of students who have claimed asylum from those four countries is minuscule in the context of overall immigration. This ban is a monumental sledgehammer to crack a nut, which has a disproportionate impact on hugely talented individuals from the most difficult and dangerous parts of the world—young people whose talents are desperately needed to bring about change in our world. As the noble Lord, Lord German, said, all four of these countries are on the International Rescue Committee’s emergency watch list. This means that they are among the 20 most fragile and conflict-affected places on earth, with humanitarian emergencies that are likely to worsen in the next 12 months.
The visa brake will have a specific impact, as has been said, on women and girls from Afghanistan, who suffer such severe restrictions on access to education. I firmly believe that we have a duty to give opportunities to outstanding students from these countries. They would in future make outstanding contributions to democratic renewal, peace, institution building and economic and social reform in their own countries. Importantly, they would also make a fantastic contribution to our own universities. I know this to be the case because at Oxford I have worked with many students from the four countries—courageous young people and leaders of tomorrow, who have come through so much to come to our country. They have had to study so much in their own countries. They are quite extraordinary young people. They are sanctuary students. The concept of sanctuary is one that I firmly espouse. It is a principle that defines our humanity. I believe that the visa ban undermines that principle.
There are countless examples of exceptional young people from the four countries who come to this country on student visas. They excel in their studies, and some of them are now doing stellar research that will literally change the world in, for example, medicine, climate change and environmental policies.