Labour’s shameful immigration reforms must be scrutinised and voted on by Parliament

Over the past few weeks, the Home Secretary has embarked on one of the most significant overhauls of asylum and immigration policy in decades. Yet this has been done without a single Government sponsored debate on the floor of the House of Commons and without a single vote for MPs.

Surely changes of this scale should receive proper scrutiny by Parliament. Instead, they were set out in a written statement, leaving MPs unable to vote on them or even to debate them in the way the public would expect.

That is why I applied for a Westminster Hall debate on these reforms, and I was pleased that it was granted and held on Tuesday 17th March. It allowed Members from across the House to put on record their concerns and their opposition to these proposals. But this is clearly not sufficient. We need proper scrutiny and we need to be able to vote on reforms of this scale that will have serious consequences for our communities, our public services and our economy.

The Government has avoided bringing these proposals to the House because it knows what would happen if it did. More than 100 Labour MPs have already written to the Home Secretary to raise serious concerns. Even the former Deputy Prime Minister has come out against them, describing these reforms as “un British” and warning that changes to indefinite leave to remain would amount to a breach of trust for people already living in the UK.

Under these reforms, refugees will be granted 30 months of limited leave instead of the previous five-year grant. At the end of each 30-month period, they will need to demonstrate that protection is still required. If their country is considered safe, they may be expected to return. This will leave people who have come to the UK to rebuild their lives locked into years of uncertainty. Families who have already fled conflict and persecution will be forced to live with the constant risk that their status could be revisited if their countries of origin are later, and arbitrarily, deemed safe by the Home Secretary.

Leaving people in limbo does not make integration any easier. It makes it harder to find stable work, it disrupts decisions around children’s education, and it undermines any sense of belonging. For many, it will simply add further uncertainty to already extremely difficult circumstances.

At the same time, the Government is closing off some of the few safe and legal routes available. Citizens of Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan will no longer be eligible for student visas, and Afghan nationals will also be excluded from skilled worker visas. These are countries where conflict and human rights abuses continue to force people from their homes. The Government says it wants to expand safe and legal routes, but is doing the exact opposite.

The Home Secretary has also announced a consultation on family returns. And I was utterly horrified by the egregious language used in this consultation, particularly references to physically handling children as a last resort to overcome non-compliance. We cannot allow this kind of language, used to describe desperate, traumatised families and children, to become normalised.

The government has also announced that it will revoke the existing legal duty to provide asylum seekers with support and accommodation. It would be replaced with a “conditional approach, so support is reserved only for those who genuinely need it and follow the law”. This means that support will be removed from asylum seekers who “illegally work, have the ability to support themselves, have the right to work or have broken the law”. This may seem reasonable, but as a general rule, asylum seekers are not allowed to work in the UK. In practice, this policy risks leaving people without support and pushing more into destitution.

There are also wider consequences that cannot be ignored. Communities across the UK rely on the contribution of migrants and refugees, particularly in sectors such as care and public services. Policies that increase instability and force people out will not only affect those directly targeted, but will also have knock on effects for the wider economy and the communities the Government claims to support.

These reforms do nothing to support communities. Instead, they risk prolonging uncertainty, instability and insecurity across the UK.

These are serious issues that deserve proper scrutiny and debate. If the Government is confident in its reforms, it should bring them before Parliament and allow them to be properly examined.