Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what impact provisions in the Nationality and Borders Bill will have on leave to stay in the UK on humanitarian protection grounds.

In February this year during the Committee Stage of the Nationality and Borders Bill in the House of Lords, Lord Wolfson of Tredegar QC confirmed the government’s intention to reform the humanitarian protection route in the UK as part of the Government’s New Plan for Immigration.

Clause 29 of the Nationality and Borders Bill revokes the Refugee or Person in Need of International Protection (Qualification) Regulations 2006. Those are the regulations through which we transposed our obligations under the EU Qualification Directive 2004. This has created an opportunity for us to consider the operation of the route.

The reformed humanitarian protection route will reflect our current international obligations under the European Convention of Human Rights, in particular Article 2 and Article 3, which the Government is committed to upholding. The entitlements afforded to recipients of humanitarian protection will also be amended to reflect changes being made elsewhere in the asylum system.

The reformed humanitarian protection route will also introduce a new form of permission to stay: temporary humanitarian permission to stay. The conditions attached to this grant of permission to stay will be aligned to temporary refugee permission to stay: the form of permission to stay which will be granted to Group 2 refugees.

The relevant Immigration Rules and policy guidance will be updated to reflect the changes later this year. These changes may be effected in different stages.