Immigration and Asylum Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Anna Turley and Zubir Ahmed

Tuesday 15th September 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Anna Turley]

Q What are your views on article 8 specifically? We know that the majority of our article 8 grantees have a history of immigration breaches. How can we best protect the immigration system while safeguarding family rights?

Jon Featonby: There is only so much that I can say on this, with my particular focus being on the people we support at the Refugee Council. The previous panel mentioned that, with article 8 rights, there has to be a balance between having a controlled immigration system and a focus on individual cases. From the Refugee Council’s point of view, we will continue to support the individual application interpretation of article 8. We see that in our work with refugee families: for a family that has been forced to displace, it is very much not one size fits all; these families can look like all sorts of different things.

One area where we focus a bit more on article 8, particularly around how the UK defines the core family, is the future system for refugee families to be able to safely reunite. We have shared our concerns around the suspension of that route. By our estimate, there are probably 20,000 people who have not been able to apply to be reunited safely through that route since it was suspended just over a year ago. For us, the important thing to remember about that route is that, for many years, nine in 10 of the visas granted to people on it were for women and children. In terms of family reunion in the future, we see it as important that some of the most vulnerable people who have been displaced from their homes and who are in danger have access to that safe route.

[Dr Ahmed]

Q Mr Featonby, thank you, and your counterparts at the Scottish Refugee Council, for the work you do to look after the vulnerable; we are very grateful. Of course, that work can go on only if there is public confidence in the system. As you know, applications have risen steadily since 2021. From your perspective, what is the urgency for a change in the legislation to return the trust and confidence in the system that have been eroded over the last few years?

Jon Featonby: There are definitely some positive signs that the Government should be quite proud of. Around the time of the election, we published a report that looked at the state of the asylum system. We described it as a “system in meltdown”, largely caused by the Illegal Migration Act 2023, which had seen productivity in the Home Office drop to its lowest level since the height of the covid pandemic. Since then, the Home Office has done a much better job of being able to make decisions quickly. The latest statistics we have show that about 75% of initial decisions are made within six months of somebody making an application. That is a good thing.

We think some Government priority should be given to how you make sure that people have confidence in the asylum system. That system needs to be doing its basics right: making decisions as quickly as it can that are right the first time; supporting refugees who are found to be in need of protection to get on with their lives, rebuild their lives and contribute fully to UK communities; and providing a way for people who are found to be not in need of protection to be removed safely and humanely. That is where we see some challenges in the Bill. We do not think it addresses some of that context.

The previous panels touched on how the backlog in the asylum system is now at the appeals stage, which is an almost inevitable consequence of dealing with the initial decision backlog. There will be more decisions and therefore more refusals, and therefore more people will go into that appeals process. There are probably three times as many people in the appeals backlog as in the asylum backlog itself. Some of that will work its way through the system as the Government get more on top of the asylum system—what officials refer to as having friction within the asylum system—where the number of decisions they are making is roughly the same as the number of people entering the system.

As a result of the speeding-up of decision making in recent years, we have also seen a reduction in the quality of some decisions, which we think has put unnecessary pressure on the tribunal and left people stuck in the asylum system, and in accommodation, for longer than they should be, at cost to the taxpayer and to those individuals. That is borne out by the appeals statistics that we now get from the first-tier tribunal, which show that in the last year, in two thirds of appeals that were disposed of, either the tribunal granted the appeal or—as is increasingly the case—the initial decision was withdrawn by the Home Office, because once the appeal got towards the tribunal hearing the Home Office found that it was not going to be able to defend the decision. That is why we think there should be a laser focus on initial decision making and on what else can be done to reduce the appeals backlog.

One of our concerns around the IIAA is that the appeals backlog is an urgent problem that needs to be dealt with now, but the best case scenario is probably that the IIAA starts to hear some cases at the back end of next year. It may well be the next election before the IIAA is really up and running. We think that more urgent things could be done without having to rip up the entire tribunal system as it currently is.