Immigration and Asylum Bill (Second sitting)

Siân Berry Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 15th September 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Blake Stephenson]

Q What changes would you like to see to clause 21? Just to make sure that I do not go off track, what changes does your organisation want to see to clause 21 and why? What would the implication be for the potential number of asylum seekers claiming in the UK compared with today?

Angela Afzal: Clause 21 seeks to introduce the core protection framework. Our concern is that the clause gives the Home Office very broad powers to introduce changes of entitlements for refugees.

The core protection framework, set out in the “Restoring Order and Control” statement last year, indicates that there is an intention to reduce entitlements for refugees. Our concern is that the core protection framework would have a detrimental impact on refugee integration, rather than deterring people from arriving.

I can explain in more detail why we feel that the temporary protection, removing the right to family reunion and having the work and study pathway would impact refugee integration from our experience of delivering integration in the UK.

[Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)]

Q I have some questions about family reunion. In your submission, you said that the measure will have a negative impact on integration. You also expressed concern that what you consider to be a right to family reunion is being made conditional, in clause 19, on socioeconomic factors—the ability of someone to support themselves. Can you tell us more about why you think family reunion should remain a right?

Angela Afzal: The core protection framework sets out that refugees would not be granted family reunion as a protection right. Our experience is that the family framework is the best basis for a refugee to integrate. It is the best support network that there can be. Our experience is that refugees have a much better integration outcome when they have their families with them.

For example, family reunion has been suspended since September last year. For a whole year, many clients have not been able to reunite with their families or apply for that, and that has really impacted their ability to focus on accessing language and employment. They are deeply concerned about their families—often a spouse and young children in places of danger. We are concerned that that could cause those families to resort to smugglers to reunite, when they do not see another option.

The proposal is that people would get family reunion on transitioning to a work and study pathway. We have questions about the eligibility criteria for that and the support that there will be for refugees so that they can access the pathway, given that it gives them those entitlements. To what extent will people be able to access family reunion through that pathway? Those are our main concerns.

[The Chair]

If there are no further questions, I thank the witness for her evidence and we will move on to the next panel.

Examination of witnesses

Jacqui McKenzie and Professor Sarah Singer gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Foster]

Q Would you both concede, though, that there is an issue, because the claims are not being dealt with quickly enough and there are a number of appeals, and that it is only right and proper that the Government try to do something about it, and so they have introduced the Bill?

Jacqui McKenzie: I do not know that the Bill does that. That is the point I am making. I think Professor Singer is making the same point, and others are also making it: the networks, the immigration organisations and associations, a lot of academics, immigration judges and a lot of people up and down the country in organisations representing children and representing refugees. There is no end of evidence of people saying it is not going to achieve that.

I accept that there is an issue: even if the Home Office was to get every application right—and that will never be possible, because nobody gets everything right—there are still large numbers of people in a system that is not designed well. It needs to be better designed. The Home Office probably needs more resources. When I sat on the Windrush lessons learned review independent advisory group, one thing that came out—you are hearing evidence from Daniel Hobbs later—was that the Home Office is a large organisation that is very unwieldy. It deals with the nice things, such as granting visas and so on, but also with law and order and so forth. Maybe it needs breaking up. Maybe it needs more resources.

Overall, my view, and you may not agree with me, is that the UK gets very few people coming here, and certainly very few people coming in small boats. It gets very few people coming as asylum seekers. One of the witnesses earlier talked about 118 million people being displaced, but we have the data—I do not need to keep repeating it, but we see that very poor countries have the burden of asylum seekers and refugees. There are 1 million Rohingyas in Bangladesh and 2 million Venezuelans in Colombia. A small Caribbean island next door to an island where my parents were from, which has a population of just over 1 million, has 200,000 refugees in it. We really do not get that many people coming here, either through legal routes or in small boats. Because those numbers are static—in fact, they are declining—we need to resource the Home Office properly with more skilled or highly skilled people. I am not having a go at the people who are there, but something is very wrong there. That is what is causing the major problems that we see at the higher levels, such as the appellate courts.

Professor Singer: Even aside from questions surrounding the number of arrivals that we have, setting up an entirely new body would be a huge waste of public resources. The Home Office’s own impact assessment for the Bill states:

“The set up of the IIAA will require the recruitment and/or redeployment of an executive board, adjudicators, and supporting staff. This represents a significant operational undertaking and is expected to incur substantial recruitment and onboarding costs.”

It then states that the recruitment will be

“challenging and may not be achievable, increasing the likelihood of operational pressure and higher than expected costs.”

There is the additional factor of transitioning the first-tier tribunal judges over to the new board and/or the financial costs of the obligations that are owed to judges if they are retired. It is a huge waste of public resources to set up an entirely new board. Those resources would be much better spent on properly staffing and resourcing the Home Office and the first-tier tribunal system that we currently have. There is a lot that can be done within the structure of the existing system to make it better. That would be a much more effective use of public funds.

[Siân Berry]

Q Jacqueline, you mentioned the poor quality of decision making. The evidence from the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association offers multiple casework examples, and offers more such examples to the Committee if we wish to get them—and I think we should. Obviously, as an MP, I see many such decisions in person. What more can be done to improve that decision making? I know that the National Audit Office has looked at it. One thing I have noticed in my constituency is that some migrant groups have tried to get migrants themselves, successful asylum seekers, to give evidence on the process, but they are scared to do that, because they worry about their next visa decision. Is there more than we can do to bring people in to improving the process and the accessibility of it? As I understand it, the first decision is usually when people are without lawyer representation, so that is where these kinds of issues can arise. Can you say more about that? Sorry, that is a very long question.

Jacqui McKenzie: That first instance that you are talking about is asylum claims, where people go in themselves, claim asylum and they have a screening interview and a longer, more elaborate and substantive interview and then lawyers tend to get involved in putting together all the evidence that is available to support the claim— [Interruption.] Sorry—there is an awful fly. It has kind of made me lose my thoughts. The other day I was here it was a mouse; now it is a fly. What is going on in this building?

The issue is about training. Very rudimentary errors that you see—the wrong country, the wrong gender and the wrong names of people—are partly to do with what Professor Singer picked up on: very often, it is a cut-and-paste approach. I almost know the decisions off by heart, because you see the same paragraphs. When you have been doing it for as long as I have, you know what you are going to get.

I am not casting any aspersions on people who are probably working very hard in their jobs, probably not for the best of pay, but I suppose there are some perks—it is a career and there is a pension at the end of it and all that sort of thing. It is difficult. I understand that they have targets; somebody in the criminal casework department told me they even had a star sheet on the wall, and each time they got someone deported, they got a little star. I do not know what sort of place that is, but I think it needs more people—it needs expansion—and better training. I do not think the numbers of people who are coming through the system are going to increase exponentially—in fact, we are seeing a decrease.

[Siân Berry]

Q Sarah, you talked about the initial review process that should happen when an appeal is lodged. What more do you think could be done to improve that process?

Professor Singer: I will defer to my colleague on that front, if that is okay.

Jacqui McKenzie: What more could be done to improve—

[Siân Berry]

Q The initial review. According to Sarah, it simply does not happen.

Jacqui McKenzie: It does not. I do not know whether that is a target in the Home Office—I do not know how the internal operations work—but it seems to me that the Home Office want everything to go through the tribunal. They refuse almost everything that they can, and then it goes through the tribunal, and there is the review mechanism, which they ignore. Even when they are directed to do things like reviewing the evidence or reviewing the decision, they do not do it. This is mainly in deport cases, which I suppose are difficult in terms of how they play out in the public and so forth, but even when you win a case in the tribunal that has been allowed on very strong grounds and very strong evidence, they appeal again to the upper tribunal. Sometimes, these things are in the system for three or four years, so it does need a root-and-branch change in how it all works.

[Siân Berry]

Can I ask one final question, Ms Jardine? Are there more Members waiting?

[The Chair]

It is okay.

[Siân Berry]

Q Jacqui, you also raised something that I like, because it is Green party policy—though I should not be bringing that up here—which is breaking up the Home Office. In the discussions and the evidence we have heard, other people have said that it is a huge amount of work to set up the new tribunal service. Would it be easier to just start again with the Home Office and create a new branch of it that does immigration versus and police and enforcement, or is that for the future?

Jacqui McKenzie: Maybe for the future, because I totally accept Professor Singer’s point: one of the issues about the new authority—I keep getting its name wrong, because it has changed its name three times—is that it is going to be expensive and unwieldy. For much less money, we could probably make the current system work. I know that these are difficult times for the country with budgets and so forth, so I do not necessarily want to propose something that is going to be very expensive. However, in the long term, the bit of the Home Office that makes these sorts of decisions probably needs to be a separate entity.

[Dr Ahmed]

Q Good afternoon. I just wanted to pick up on the point about those invocating article 8 of the European convention on human rights. You said that the number was small, but I understand that around 77,000 people end up caught in those crosshairs. From your experience and perspective, what guidance do judges need, if you do not believe that a change in the law on article 8 is necessary? More widely, where do you believe the country is? The prerequisite of a functional asylum system is that it needs to command the confidence of the vast majority of the public, but in relation to article 8, do you think that criterion is met currently?

Jacqui McKenzie: Sorry, can you just repeat the first part of the question?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Brash]

Q Minister, you are a neighbouring MP of mine, so you understand only too well the anger about illegal migrants in your constituency and my Hartlepool constituency, particularly given that the previous Government’s decision to outsource asylum accommodation led to our communities being unfairly targeted. The test for many of my constituents will come down to whether the Bill will result in a reduction in the number of illegal migrants in our communities. What modelling has been carried out to look at the effect of the Bill on reducing the number of illegal immigrants?

Anna Turley: As I said, it is part of our armoury. I recognise very deeply, as you do, the sense of fairness that people feel in communities such as ours, which are struggling on all kinds of levels, whether access to public services, employment opportunities, levels of poverty or the broader social fabric and community cohesion challenges that we face in this country—those are important issues. As a Labour Government, we always want fairness to be at the heart of everything we do.

Although it is part of a broader armoury, the priority for the Bill is to move to a system in which British people do not feel that their sanctuary is being exploited or that others have the opportunity to access what they might not be able to access. Where we do extend a hand and help people to find a life of safety and sanctuary in this country, and they are able to integrate and become part of our communities, they will be responsible for repaying that support. Fairness, responsibility and contribution are at the heart of everything we should do in this country, as we uphold our international obligations, of which we are rightly proud.

[Siân Berry]

Q I have a couple of questions that seek more information, so I will fire through those two to begin with. Madeleine Sumption and the Refugee Council told us that there is not full data on which human rights claims grounds are currently accepted, refused, appealed and then accepted, or refused on appeal. Is there any way the Department could get more of that information to us before our line-by-line consideration of the Bill?

The Refugee Council said there was no information on the proportion of people claiming asylum support as opposed to living off their own means while they are here, or not living off any means and being exploited. That is important information to know about in the context of the repayments clauses. Could you try to get that information for us before our line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill? The Government need a baseline for the outcome that they are seeking.

Anna Turley: I appreciate that. We may have that information, but I do not have it to hand today—apologies. I am more than happy to have a look internally, have discussions and see if we can get that information to the Committee, if we have access to it.

[Siân Berry]

Q A few witnesses asked—as does some of the written evidence—for more information on the regulations that will follow the legislation to be published before we consider the relevant clauses of the Bill. I think that relates mainly to the definitions and criteria of protection status under clause 21, and to how destitution will be defined under clause 23 and where the threshold for making contributions will be set in order to avoid hardship. Will those regulations be published in draft form for the Committee before we consider those clauses?

Anna Turley: I take your point on the core protection point and on destitution. Our intention was always to set out that detail in due course. On any legislative changes, we want to ensure that we lay that out properly for proper scrutiny, so I will endeavour to do that for the Committee.

[Siân Berry]

Q I have a quick question on engagement. One thing that has come out of my own constituency work is that people making asylum applications are mainly successful in the end—sometimes when they get my help—but there are a lot of criticisms of the process, particularly in relation to access and the way that the forms are presented, and in understanding what they need to do, being able to provide the right information and being asked for it in a clear way. All those different things might cause discrimination in the process or cause claims not to be approved when they should be.

We have established that claims that should have been approved in the first place are a burden on the courts. There is also human error in the Home Office. Have you managed to engage with any asylum seekers on solving their problems, or about their views on the Bill? We have heard from witnesses representing asylum seekers, but engagement with the people who are affected would be useful, so I wonder what the Department has done.

Anna Turley: I am always a believer in service user feedback, including from people who have been through the process and have lived experience, to help us develop better policymaking. This Bill process notwithstanding, I would be keen to look at that more broadly. In terms of the Bill process, there was a consultation after the Home Secretary’s statement—before my time, I believe—which everybody would have had the opportunity to feed into.

I reflect on the point about perhaps looking at specific users’ experience that they might not have been able to share during the process for fear of compromising their situation. On whether there is another means by which we can talk to people who have been through the process, we are always trying to improve our processes.

Dan Hobbs: Most of our consultation is done through the advocacy group. There is a national framework of stakeholder engagement with various different aspects—children, accommodation and elements like that—that the asylum group runs. Much of that lived experience is expressed through those groups. That is done in partnership with organisations such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Refugee Council. Bas also has a community engagement team that gets a lot of information from people who use our services.

Bas Javid: We have two very distinct elements of engagement. I have a national community engagement team, which links with local authorities, charity groups, churches and other places of worship, and communities more generally—just on immigration, not necessarily on enforcement. Only this week, I have set up a new command, called the returns assistance and engagement operations. The primary focus of that command is people who are failed asylum seekers, still in the UK, and would need some returns assistance. Part of that is engagement and communication, as there are often language barriers and other communication challenges, and part is building up a level of trust. The focus of the command is entirely on trying to increase the voluntary returns, which is my primary focus. I would much rather do a voluntary return than an enforced one—it is safer, cheaper and quicker, and it is more dignified.

[Siân Berry]

Q Do you have routes through to the people affected so that you could ask about the Bill’s provisions?

Bas Javid: Yes. On when we pick up feedback from people, particularly around the system, for example, one of the things that we recently rolled out is different apps and communication systems that we did not have before. We are much more on the front foot about contacting people at an early stage of a removals process, rather than later. When we do that, we feed back to our asylum colleagues any information or feedback relevant to assisting them to improve the process.

[Ben Goldsborough]

Q One piece of evidence that we were given earlier was that, as much as modern slavery legislation is a good thing for the United Kingdom, we have not necessarily been pulling our weight as we go forward. I am interested to hear from the panel, perhaps starting with the Minister, what progress you believe will be made by this Bill becoming law.

Anna Turley: It is good to have the opportunity to talk about the modern slavery aspect because it is something we are obviously proud of in this country. It is important to us and we are committed to ending modern slavery. As a Government, it is really important to us, but we want to ensure that we support and protect the processes that support and identify modern slavery victims. The number of modern slavery referrals has increased by more than 900% since 2014, which shows us not only the growing scale of identification, but its growing application in immigration processes.

We are very concerned about the number of late claims—it feels deliberately used to thwart returns. As we heard, a third of the failed removals involved modern slavery referral. Three quarters of those were raised between 3 pm on the day before removal and 6 am. We are keen that we give people the opportunity all the way through their experience to raise such concerns with us. Sometimes trauma and experience lead to a delay in reporting, but individuals going through this process have multiple opportunities to disclose exploitation from the moment they arrive, such as through contact with first responders—we have heard about them, and they are highly trained in identifying modern slavery—immigration enforcement, police, local authorities and NGOs. Those people come into contact with a vast range of individuals. We always encourage people to identify; we want people to identify the issue earlier in the process, as soon as possible, so that we can deal with it and not have it thrown in at the last minute as a means to thwart removal.

As I said, just to conclude, I am very proud of our record on modern slavery, but something definitely does not quite stack up for me when I read that the UK refers more victims than the whole of the rest of Europe combined. In 2023, the UK referred 17,000 victims of modern slavery, compared with 10,907 for the rest of Europe. That says to me that we care very passionately about this—we want to get it right—but that we must also ensure that we protect the integrity of the process as well.