Immigration and Asylum Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Blake Stephenson and Zubir Ahmed

Tuesday 15th September 2026 Public Bill Committees

[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.

[Blake Stephenson]

Q Clause 23 would empower the Secretary of State to require successful asylum seekers to pay costs for the support that they had during their passage through the system. To what extent might asylum seekers factor that into their decision making?

Jon Featonby: I will take that decision making in a few stages. In terms of whether that measure will deter people from coming to the UK, I do not think it will have any real impact at all. A previous panel touched on how complicated this body of law is. For those who have engaged with successive immigration Bills, it is quite complex. To expect somebody who is seeking protection to follow it, and to expect Parliament or even organisations such as the Refugee Council to be the main place that those people get their information, does not reflect reality.

We are concerned about the potential impact on decision making because it is important to remember that asylum support is available only to those asylum applicants who would otherwise be destitute. The Home Office puts in place quite a high bar for someone to even access support. Our concern is that if people are aware that they may be faced with debts of around £10,000, that will prevent them from accessing support. Their alternative then is to remain destitute. That is obviously very bad for those individuals and families, but it is also well established that putting people in destitution has negative consequences from a public health point of view and for wider communities.

We are also concerned by that provision because, although it applies to anybody who receives asylum support, with some minor exemptions, the majority of people who will ever be in a position to even start to pay back that money are people who are going to go on to get protection. We are concerned that that will take money away from people who probably have very little in the first place and that, because not having paid back that money could be a bar on settlement in the future, it could lead to people looking to borrow the money from quite dangerous moneylenders, putting people at risk of exploitation at that point.

It is quite hard to work out exactly what this will look like because there is not much detail in the Bill, but there are potentially disincentives for refugees to work. In our work at the Refugee Council, we see that people want to be able to work—they want to contribute—and the people who we support into employment, including employment in the NHS, are contributing. We think a far better use of time and resources would be to help refugees to overcome some of the barriers that they face, particularly in employment. That would allow them to contribute far more to the UK, including from tax receipts.

Immigration and Asylum Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Blake Stephenson and Zubir Ahmed

Committee stage
Tuesday 15th September 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Blake Stephenson (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Q My question is for you, Alp, picking up on some of the earlier commentary. You made reference to Australia, Denmark, the USA and Greece, which have reduced numbers applying for asylum through measures that bear no resemblance to the Bill. What should we put in the Bill to replicate the success of those countries?

Alp Mehmet: We could start by declaring our intention to come out of the ECHR. Human rights can be dealt with perfectly well by a country like ours without our having to be signed up to the ECHR. We could also pull out of the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings. We should announce that the Human Rights Act 1998 will be repealed. All of that would allow us to deal with the sort of people who are, understandably, looking for a better life. I have no problem with that, but are we really saying that anyone and everyone of 118 million will be able to come here?

This may sound relatively minor, but the other thing I would do is put the onus on arrivals—we used to call them passengers in the old days. We should put the onus on the migrants arriving to satisfy the immigration official dealing with them of their bona fides. That is what used to happen. Our courts have pushed us in the opposite direction: we now have to disprove. If we do not have any evidence to back that up, we are effectively saying, “Okay, we can’t prove it otherwise. We don’t know who you are. You haven’t got a passport, but we’re going to give you the benefit of the doubt, because the Home Office can’t provide the evidence to do otherwise.” That is absurd. It is also dangerous.

Those are the things that I would include in the Bill. Perhaps you would expect me to say a lot of that. Look at what the Americans have done. Whatever anyone feels about some politicians in the United States, they have nevertheless been successful in closing the southern border to illegal immigration. We should put in place effective measures to stop those coming across the channel not just in boats, but in other ways. If the French were sensible and serious enough to stop the whole thing, they should volunteer to take the migrants who make their way to us from there, as should the EU. That is not going to happen anytime soon, I suspect. All in all, I am a little disheartened by the Bill, the measures in it and what is likely to happen.

[Dr Zubir Ahmed (Glasgow South West) (Lab)]

Q Mr Mehmet, you made some initial commentary about welcoming the Bill but suggested that it is not sufficient to reduce the small boat crossings. Why, then, are small boat crossings already down 41% even before the Bill has been enacted? Where does this legislation intersect with the need for further law enforcement across borders? Does it intersect with the fact that small boat crossings rose after we left the European Union and we have had less of an armoury and less flexibility to deal with them? You highlighted the American experience of reducing immigration and returns, but presumably you are not advocating a model with the level of aggressive behaviour of ICE agents. American citizens are being shot dead in the streets.

Alp Mehmet: I am not quite sure how you link what is going on at the border and Americans being shot in the street.

--- Later in debate ---

[Blake Stephenson]

Can or does? Is it an objective or a political assessment?

Neal Barcoe: If done well, it can absolutely improve. If we can ensure that the quality is there, that it is staffed up properly and that we have the right levels of independence, as set out in the Bill, I think it would be an improvement on the current system. I recognise what underlies your question—we have had a lot of immigration and asylum bills, and that change of perspective is difficult for people in the system, which it undoubtedly is—but I think there are very sensible things in the Bill that seek to improve the current situation. One of the things—the Public Accounts Committee has spoken on this, and the NAO—is about how Departments come together and co-operate more effectively in this space, looking at the whole system. I think that that is what the Bill is about; it is about trying to look at the whole system as one. As I say, at an official level, we are doing that much more than we were before.

[Dr Ahmed]

Q I must declare that I was once involved in a first-tier tribunal. Obviously, as parliamentarians, we are sometimes heavily involved in such matters on behalf of constituents. In the case I was involved in, it could be seen from space that there was going to be only one decision, yet it took a long time to get there. The persons present in that case seemed to be, let us say, overqualified. From your perspective, how will the IIAA affect the workload of the first-tier tribunal?

Daniel Flury: Clearly, as the IIAA grows, the expectation is that the work of the first-tier tribunal will decline. I am the senior responsible officer for a programme that is essentially managing that decommissioning process—that decline. As Neal says, there is still a pretty significant backlog of just under 152,000 appeals sitting in the system. There is still quite a bit of work to be done. The current approach in HMCTS and the judiciary is simply business as usual until further notice. We are striving to sit more and be more productive. We are striving for output, and I feel that we are partially succeeding this year. Over time, in the years ahead, that work will decline and we will eventually wind up the operations.