Refugees: Community Sponsorship

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [R]]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford on securing this short but important debate on the process of allowing refugees to settle through community sponsorship, to assess the numbers involved and to look at whether the Government are giving adequate resources and support to sponsors. I join her in thanks to the many communities that have already supported refugees.

It is an honour to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Monckton of Dallington Forest. Her example as a sponsor of a Ukrainian family, and shortly to sponsor another, is absolutely to be commended. But I share her concern at the reduction of grants for host families and the consequential loss of hosts. Please, Minister, can this be changed?

The noble Lord, Lord Khan, spoke powerfully of the strength of a welcoming community, to ensure that arrivals settle and become part of the community, and I agree with him.

In 2016, under Prime Minister Theresa May, the community sponsorship scheme was launched. In that scheme, managed by the Home Office, families were allocated to approved sponsors, who could be charities, faith groups or other civil society organisations. It has developed very slowly. The Sunak Government said in 2023:

“Over 1,000 vulnerable refugees fleeing regions of conflict and instability, including Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Eritrea, Iran, Somalia and Afghanistan, have been welcomed under one of the UK’s safe and legal routes by local communities across the UK, so they can start their new lives here”.


That was not many, over seven years.

The scheme does have good ideals. The sponsors have to demonstrate capacity to deliver their side of the scheme, which includes available funding of at least £9,000, as well as the appropriate accommodation and written consent from the local authority. Once approval was given, they were given the responsibility of supporting a resettled family for at least one year, providing accommodation for two years, and providing support for all that they might need, from accessing medical services, language tuition, schools, social services, and, importantly, helping them to find employment. This absolutely encourages cohesion.

However, the low numbers have demonstrated a problem: the capacity of local authorities to be able to play a practical role in this, without any extra resources. Let me be blunter than that. Most local authorities are struggling to deliver anything beyond their statutory duties, and it is disappointing that yesterday’s Budget was not able to change that. However, even if it had, I suspect local authorities’ capacity to help community sponsors would remain a low priority compared with the statutory duties of children’s services, children in care and adult social services. The noble Baroness, Lady Monckton, graphically laid out the consequences to local authorities of the government grant to hosts being reduced.

What has also exploded in the last few years is a worrying resurgence of groups on the far right who, instead of objective to government about their concerns for refugee policy, have taken to demonstrating, marching and intimidating the refugees themselves. Too often, police resources have been needed to intervene to stop these aggressive patterns of behaviours by protesters. That is why, 12 months ago, then Prime Minister Starmer published Restoring Order and Control: A Statement on the Government’s Asylum and Returns Policy. Along with my party, and the noble Lord, Lord German, I have been arguing for years for effective, safe and legal routes to asylum for people with real cause, and I am not sure we have really got effective, safe, legal routes at the moment. I am interested in understanding how quickly this scheme, if it works, can be developed further from the scheme first introduced a decade ago by the previous Government.

Despite what many people want us to believe, there are refugees with a real and understandable fear for their lives in their own countries, who seek to come to the UK, often because of direct—that is, familial—or indirect reasons, for example the Afghan troops who worked with us in the war in Afghanistan.

The 2025 government policy paper said that refugee sponsorship would

“become the framework for most of the UK Government’s refugee resettlement efforts”.

The three new routes still include the route I described earlier but, unless resources are improved, I cannot see that increasing very much.

The second route is by universities, through the study sponsorship route, and by companies, through the work route. This too is very welcome, but I am sure I was not alone in absolute despair when our universities had found money and offered some places to prospective students stuck in Gaza last year and this year who could not leave their small children behind in a war zone. Some of those prospective students also could not get their status confirmed in time to start their courses. The sponsorship opportunities were wasted by the universities through absolutely no fault of theirs or the prospective students. What steps are the Foreign Office and the Home Office taking to improve visa processes for candidates under this scheme, especially for universities, where new students have a deadline that cannot be changed?

The third route is the UK refugee settlement route, which opened to new referrals recently. I echo the questions of the right reverend Prelate, who asked what numbers the Government expect in each of these three schemes over the next few years. The Government say they will set annual limits, but are the appropriate resources available to make sure that, once the community sponsors have fulfilled their side of the bargain, the Government will have capacity to deliver their side, especially the timely approval of visas? The other area that community sponsors, including Reset Communities for Refugees, are asking for is support in

“clear guidance, appropriate resources, effective safeguarding arrangements and access to specialist training and support”.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on those.

Finally, there is one community I know well and have worked with for some time which has been accessing a safe and legal route to settlement in the UK for many years, but not without some problems. Unfortunately, the Government still refer to this group as refugees, but I believe they are wrong to do so, and I have said so before. These are the brave opponents of the Chinese regime in Hong Kong, who already hold British national (overseas) status and have fled to the UK because the Conservative Government of the day recognised, when we handed Hong Kong back to China, that they were entitled to be British nationals.

Since that handover of Hong Kong to China on 1 July 1997, and especially over recent years, when people fleeing Hong Kong arrive in Britain, Home Office staff often treat them as if they are exactly the same as all other refugees without British national status. Please will the Minister ensure that this practice stops? Yes, they may seek help and support if they arrive in distress, with no or few possessions, and they will need help with resettlement, but the first and biggest hurdle for them is overcome already. They have a right to come to this country, and it is shocking that their first encounter is immigration staff who do not even know this.