Asylum Reforms: Protected Characteristics

Carla Denyer Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair again, Dr Huq. You can be assured that I plan to be brief. I am horrified by the proposed changes to the asylum system set out last month, which seem to be performative cruelty, and I am deeply concerned about their impact on all asylum seekers. I welcome this opportunity to focus on how the Secretary of State’s reforms will affect those with protected characteristics, and thank the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) for securing the debate. I will focus on women and LGBTQ people especially.

I will start with women asylum seekers, who are often survivors of sexual and gender-based violence. Tomorrow, the Government will proudly publish their strategy to tackle violence against women and girls, and I look forward to it, but their asylum reforms are putting refugee women at risk. Requiring refugees—not asylum seekers who are waiting for their decision, but refugees who the Government have certified as legitimately fleeing persecution—to wait 20 years before they can apply to settle permanently, with their refugee status subject to reviews every two and a half years, alongside a ban on working and meagre weekly allowances, leaves women in an extremely vulnerable situation. As we heard earlier, research by Women for Refugee Women found that, shockingly, 38% of women in the asylum system were pushed into or stayed in an unwanted or abusive situation or relationship, and 8% were forced into sex work. Given that appalling data, will the Minister reconsider the 20-year wait for settlement and give all asylum seekers the right to work?

We also need more transparency to help us to tackle the vulnerabilities that survivors of sexual violence face in the asylum system. I wrote to the Minister in the last few days—I understand that he will not yet have had chance to act, but I take this opportunity to highlight it—to ask that his Department publish disaggregated asylum statistics for claims based on sexual and gender-based violence. Similar data is already published on sexual orientation so I hope that that request is non-controversial and that the Minister can take it forward—I think it will be constructive.

LGBTQ people also face unique impacts from the proposed asylum reforms. The new safe return reviews of refugee status make it harder for people to integrate. The Home Office expects those seeking asylum because of gender or sexuality to be living openly, yet it simultaneously dangles the constant threat of being returned to the country that they were persecuted in. Some claim that asylum seekers need to integrate better into British society, but how can they? How can they build lives, friendships and communities when creating an authentic life in the UK puts their safety at risk, given the prospect of being returned home?

I want to highlight a specific issue in my constituency that has been brought to my attention, though I am certain it does not exist in Bristol alone. Refugee organisations in Bristol have told me that they are seriously concerned about the state of accommodation and support for LGBTQ+ people seeking sanctuary in our city. Some individuals have faced hate crime while in asylum accommodation, and have attempted suicide as a result. What are the Government doing to ensure that LGBTQ+ asylum seekers get the specialist support that they need? Will he consider providing separate, safe accommodation for particularly vulnerable LGBTQ+ asylum seekers?

In this debate, we have heard heart-wrenching stories about how asylum seekers with protected characteristics are hit by the Government’s callous new policies. However, I will conclude on a small but hopeful note by thanking those who are working tirelessly to defend the rights of asylum seekers, including Women for Refugee Women—which has been mentioned multiple and times and does fantastic work—Rainbow Migration, Praxis, and Stand Against Racism & Inequality, which is based in Bristol. Their advocacy inspires me in my role here, and I will continue fighting alongside them for a compassionate, just and workable asylum system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Norris]

Thank you, Dr Huq. I have a lot of things to say today, but I am basically not going to say any of them. I will try to respond instead to what colleagues have said, because I think it makes for a more interesting debate.

There are no children in detention. We have no intention to detain children. I take pelters in the main Chamber when I say what I am about to say, which is that the best level for voluntary returns is 100%. I would happily have every return be voluntary, and that is particularly true in the case of families—that is why we are seeking to improve the support for that—but detention is not in our plans. I hope that that gives my right hon. Friend a degree of assurance.

What I am most surprised not to have heard in this debate is that the people who have the most agency in our system at the moment are human traffickers. The worst people on the planet—the people who have the most callous indifference to harm, the people who will exploit any pain to monetise it—have the most agency over who comes to this country. We should be really angry about that, and we should be resolute in changing it. Of course our important work around organised crime and the provisions in the Act will help us in that regard, but we have to change the demand. That is at the root of the changes to the protection model, which I will come to momentarily.

The hon. Member for Bristol Central (Carla Denyer) made a point about the 20-year period. I will come back to that point, because my carriage is going to turn into a pumpkin shortly.

The hon. Member for Strangford made an interesting contribution about the experience of people in Newtownards. I know only a little about Newtownards, mostly from our conversations about it, but I know that it is not that dissimilar to my community, and that it can therefore be at the crunchy end of the immigration conversation. What he points out is exactly the same for my community. When the schemes were ordered and controlled—be that the Syria scheme, as in his example; Afghan resettlement, which other colleagues have mentioned; Homes for Ukraine, as the hon. Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers) said; or the Hong Kong BNO scheme—my community leaned into them because they were confident that we knew which people were coming and that they needed our protection. They stepped up.

We want to capture that spirit outside individual country circumstances, because there are other people around the world who would benefit from such protection. I think my community will step up to that, but they will not do that while they feel that the people with the greatest agency are human traffickers and there is a lack of control over who comes and crosses our borders. I think that that is right, which is why I say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington and to colleagues that we cannot have one without the other.

We cannot have a new, orderly, humane, dignified system with safe and legal routes and maintain public confidence if we are not willing to say that we have zero acceptance of people coming through trafficking routes and across the channel on dangerous journeys, and that the right number for that is nil. That informs our point around protection in “Restoring Order and Control”.

The 20-year route is for a person who comes to this country illegally and then chooses not to learn the language and not to work or contribute. We want everybody to switch out of that core offer and on to a protected work and study route. If people learn the language, work or contribute, they will be able to earn a reduction in that period to 11 years. Moreover, if they enter the system through safe and legal means, their starting point is 10 years, and they can earn a reduction to five years. Those numbers are not coincidental. At all points, the goal is to dissuade people from making dangerous irregular journeys and instead ensure that doing the right thing—whether that is contributing in-country or coming via regular means—is always in their best interests.

[Carla Denyer]

Will the Minister give way?

[Alex Norris]

I am happy to give way, but I remind the hon. Lady that we are very short on time.

[Carla Denyer]

I just want to inquire exactly what the Minister meant when he spoke about those who “choose” not to contribute. How does that relate to disabled people, for example, who the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) raised in her opening speech?

[Alex Norris]

That is a really important point, which I was coming to. There will be cases in which, whether because of the nature of the trauma that people have suffered on their journey or because of other issues such as disability, they are not able to work in those ways. There are other ways to contribute, and that is reflected in our earned settlement consultation, which is ongoing. That will look at how to do that right, but of course there will be protection for people in those cases.

What I cannot agree with in the opening speech by the hon. Member for Aberdeen North is that because some people will struggle to make that contribution and will need a different type of support within the system, nobody should therefore have to contribute. Under the system we have at the moment, no matter what someone does, they can come to this country and get protection. No matter whether they break the law or sit at home instead of going to work or learning the language, they are treated exactly the same as someone who goes to work, learns the language and integrates into their community. I do not think that is right. I accept that that may well be a point of difference, but I do not believe that it is right.

I hope that what hon. Members have heard from me today, and from the Home Secretary when she introduced this package, is that individual policies will come forward, with all the equality impact data that colleagues would expect, but that there is time and space to shape it. If we had published our final policy position some four weeks ago when the Home Secretary stood up, colleagues would rightly have said, “Who did you talk to? Why did you not have people helping to craft it who are experts by experience, or organisations that work with them?” It is slightly challenging to have people say, “There’s not enough detail here.” That is the whole point of developing policy and seeking to work with people in doing so. It is right that we have set our framing for what we are seeking to achieve, but we will have those conversations in this place and I will be very happy to engage with any and all colleagues who are interested in telling us how they feel about the issue.

I hope that I have given a degree of comfort to colleagues on some points. There is a lot more to do, and I have no doubt that we will have many more opportunities to discuss it. I will always do so with the fullest candour.