Jon Featonby
@jonfeatonby
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Refugee and asylum policy at @RefugeeCouncil , with a bit of #LFC and #DHFC . Ex- @redcrosspolicy .
Leicestershire
Joined April 2010
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🧵Tomorrow afternoon, MPs debate the bill that all but ends the ability for refugees to claim asylum in the UK. It will do nothing to reduce dangerous journeys, will be massively expensive, and will leave tens of thousands in a permanent limbo. Here are some of the reasons why.
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Today is a sad day. Many aspects of the Nationality and Borders Act come into force, including those that treat refugees differently depending on how they entered the UK, criminalisation of people entering the UK to seek asylum, and measures that increase barriers to protection
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It's taken most of the day to get my head around what I think the UK Government is doing regarding removing people to Rwanda who have claimed asylum in the UK, and the interaction (or not) with the Nationality and Borders Bill.
But I think it centres around inadmissibility...
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I think this is probably the most important think to understand about the UK’s deal with Rwanda - it’s a one way ticket. It’s not the UK sending people to Rwanda while their UK asylum claim is determined, with anyone found to be a refugee then returned back.
For anyone who is transferred, once they're in Rwanda they are then the responsibility of the Rwandan state. If a person then claims asylum, they claim asylum in Rwanda. If they are recognised as a refugee, they are recognised as a refugee by the Rwandan Government. Not the UK.
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500 people is less than 1% of those in hotels. It will barely make a difference.
By comparison, there were over 51,000 people from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iran, Sudan and Syria awaiting a decision at the end of 2022.
Making decisions is the quickest way to end the use of hotels.
About 500 adult male migrants to be housed on barge off Dorset coast in coming months, UK government confirms
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New out this morning from
@refugeecouncil
- our analysis of Home Office data shows that if people who have arrived in the UK by small boats so far this year had their asylum claims processed, three-quarters would be expected to be recognised as refugees.
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At the end of March 2021, there were 2,881 asylum applications by Afghan nationals waiting for an initial decision in the UK, and 236 waiting for further review. Should be possible to make pretty quick decisions on those now
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First list of Lords amendments for the asylum bill is out. Between a few of them, the Lib Dem peers have amendments down to individually delete each clause
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The quarterly asylum stats show that in the year to June 2023 the vast majority of asylum decisions continued to be granted - 71% of initial decisions were grants.
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The amendment has been passed 317 - 223 votes!
Members of the
@UKHouseofLords
are now voting on
@AlfDubs
' amendment to the Immigration Bill on safeguarding family reunion routes at the end of the transition period. Result in about 15 minutes
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all that is meant to show that this idea that somehow people are "jumping a queue" and instead should be accessing a safe route somewhere doesn't stack up.
There is no safe route for the majority of people.
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The latest Home Office figures show over 14,000 Afghans and Eritreans were being accommodated by the Home Office. Both those countries have grant rates of 98% on asylum claims. There is no need for this type of “accommodation” to be used.
The Bibby Stockholm accommodation barge leaving Falmouth this morning after refit work, destined for Portland in Dorset where it will house 500 men who are seeking asylum. Part of government effort to cut hotel bills and stop migrant boats. Thanks Darren Barker for the pictures
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Just because there's been some chat about comparisons with other European asylum systems, I've been digging around in Eurostat.
One thing that jumps out is that in Q3 this year France made over 31,000 initial decisions. That's the same total as the last 7 quarters in the UK.
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This is the extent of scrutiny that the asylum bill will get in
@HouseofCommons
. Two days, a total of 12 hours, for committee stage for a bill that pretty much ends the ability for people to seek asylum in the UK. Then one day for report stage/3rd reading.
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There is of course no immigration route to enter the UK in order to claim asylum, and it’s not possible to apply for asylum from outside the UK.
She will set out proposals for a bill on illegal immigration that goes further than existing legislation.
It is designed to create a blanket ban on anyone who enters the UK illegally from claiming asylum in the UK.
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This is quite incredible really. The Home Office want to implement this bill within months, but still won’t publish an impact assessment.
Suella Braverman still unable to say when the Home Office will publish its economic impact assessment for the Illegal Migration Bill despite it being 3/4 through its parliamentary stages.
@CommonsHomeAffs
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Covid: France rewards frontline immigrant workers with citizenship
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The Home Office have published some statistics behind the claim that they've "cleared" the legacy backlog of asylum claims. Some initial thoughts:
1 - they haven't actually cleared the legacy backlog. 4,537 cases haven't received a decision yet.
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This kind of discretion for “exceptional cases” simply doesn’t exist in this bill. The only time the duty to remove doesn’t apply is for a separated child who is under 18 or where a survivor of modern slavery has to be in the UK to assist with a criminal investigation.
“If a pregnant woman comes over, she is not going to be removed”
Conservative MP Bob Seely tells
#Newsnight
there are “exceptional cases” to the Illegal Migration Bill
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Top 7 nationalities crossing the channel and asylum grant rate in 2021
Iranian - 7,800 - 87% grant rate
Iraqi - 5,400 - 45%
Eritrean - 2,800 - 97%
Syrian - 2,260 - 97%
Vietnamese - 1,400 - 57%
Afghan - 1,320 - 69%
Sudanese - 1,050 - 93%
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The amount of time, effort and money gone into trying to get 1% of the people accommodated in hotels into this unsuitable and unsafe barge surely would have been better used just making a few more decisions out of the 170k backlog?
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The best way of reducing the number of people taking dangerous journeys to reach the UK is to create more safe ways for people to do it.
Yet for the vast majority, it is becoming harder and harder.
#EveryRefugeeMatters
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As a result of the Illegal Migration Act, the government are about to significantly increase the UK's detention capacity and the number of people subjected to it, including children.
This is even more shocking in light of the Brook House inquiry report.
Brook House: Inquiry urges limit on immigration removal centre stays
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The
@UKHouseofLords
have again voted against plans to treat refugees differently based on how they arrived in the UK. Recent weeks show how hard it is to access safe routes - and that’s when they exist.
Important now that Ministers listen and rethink.
#EveryRefugeeMatters
#HouseofLords
votes to require all refugees arriving in UK receive same rights under Refugee Convention and ability to maintain family unity.
Members vote 191 for, 148 against motion D1 in
#NationalityBordersBill
, so the change is made
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@ZoeJardiniere
remember when you described this whole process as resettlement in reverse? Having spent five years resettling 20,000 Syrian refugees, the UK government now wants to send refugees from that same conflict halfway around the world an abdicate responsibility.
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It should be clear that all of this is a bad idea. It's bad for those individuals, and potentially families, who will be subject to this. It undermines the international solidarity that a good global protection system should be built on. And it won't stop channel crossings.
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Clause 4(2) means any asylum claim made by someone covered by the bill - pretty much anyone who arrives irregularly - must be deemed inadmissible. This means the Home Office refuse to consider it at all. There are no exemptions. It applies to men, women and children.
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Culture in Brook House created not just by G4S but also Home Office policy of indefinite detention & lack of judicial oversight
#bbcpanorama
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Worth remembering who would be impacted by this. Our
@refugeecouncil
analysis estimates 6 in 10 who cross the channel would get refugee status. This policy would stop their claim being heard, prevent them challenging that, and then be unable to challenge a removal decision.
Excl in
@thetimes
tomorrow:
Rishi Sunak is gearing up for a major battle with the courts over new plans to bar migrants who cross the Channel in small boats from appealing against their deportation:
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Good to get confirmation from the Home Office that, temporarily, people won't need to travel to Liverpool to submit further submissions on asylum applications and will be able to make them by email
#COVID19
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For anyone who is transferred, once they're in Rwanda they are then the responsibility of the Rwandan state. If a person then claims asylum, they claim asylum in Rwanda. If they are recognised as a refugee, they are recognised as a refugee by the Rwandan Government. Not the UK.
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Action is needed to prevent what should be for everyone unacceptable numbers of people putting their lives at risk crossing the channel.
But this isn't it.
@EnverSol
set out the types of things that should be happening far more eloquently than I can
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A month ago, the Home Office quietly made changes to their "move-on" policy. It's already leaving newly recognised refugees facing homelessness and destitution.
Along with 147 organisations,
@refugeecouncil
are calling for those changes to be reversed.
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Quite ridiculous that rather than give an extra day of debate, or maybe even start before 3pm on a Wednesday, the government keep debate going until 4.25am. Fair play and thank you to all those who kept going to provide scrutiny to this horrible bill.
No doubt they thought that forcing (largely elderly) opposition peers to sit till 04.25 would bully us out of raising objections to their law-breaking, authoritarian
#IllegalMigrationBill
and break our spirit.
It didn’t and it won’t.
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"This bill basically creates a situation in which the asylum system is replaced by pure backlog."
@IanDunt
on the Illegal Migration Bill
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In the last 5 years, more people have arrived in the UK via refugee family reunion than resettlement. 9 in 10 who benefit are women and children.
It's a vital safe and legal route.
But the two-tier system will limit this option for many of those families
#EveryRefugeeMatters
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The Lords are now voting on Lord German's amendment to the Illegal Migration Bill that anyone not removed from the UK after six months should have their asylum claim processed here rather than being left in permanent limbo.
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Catching up on proceedings in the
@UKHouseofLords
on the
#NationalityAndBordersBill
as haven't been able to watch live tonight. Looks like another six government defeats so far.
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New asylum stats are out. At the end of September this year, there were 117,400 asylum claims waiting for an initial decision - a 74% increase over the last year.
Those claims apply to 143,377 men, women and children. 97,717 of them have been waiting for more than 6 months.
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Despite the cost of living crisis, the Home Office have decided that people seeking asylum who are being housed in hotels were actually getting too much money for food and anything else they might need. From 8 January, the weekly payments will reduce from £9.58 to £8.86.
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In response to
@thetimes
leader that claimed the UK was the “destination of choice” in Northern Europe for people seeking asylum,
@BritishRedCross
CEO
@MichaelAdamson5
writes to say why asylum policy should be based on fact
#EveryRefugeeMatters
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Next month I'll be moving on from
@RedCrossPolicy
after five years as the Policy and Advocacy Manager for Refugees and Asylum. It's a great role at an brilliant organisation, and it deserves someone amazing as we continue to push for much needed change
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But ultimately, the Home Office aren't going to be able to remove many people under this bill. Instead, tens of thousands of people will be left in limbo. They won't be able to be removed, but they also won't have their claims heard. They won't be able to work. So what happens?
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Some chat this morning about the deterrence effect of the Rwanda plan and the drop in channel crossings in 2023 compared to 2022. The Home Office published some statistics that give a bit more insight into this. Excluding Albanians, channel crossings are UP 11% to the end of Sep.
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Cl.4(3) states that a claim that has been deemed inadmissible can never be considered in the UK. So even if someone can't be removed, their claim still cannot be processed here. This is a significant change from the existing inadmissibility process that's been in place since 2021
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This broadly leaves 2 possible outcomes:
1) tens of thousands of people are accommodated indefinitely by the Home Office, unable to work and support themselves
2) tens of thousands of people are left homeless and destitute, unable to work and support themselves
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Interesting headline for a scheme announced last August and a large proportion of which will be filled by people already in the UK..
New government scheme will help 20,000 Afghans fleeing their country resettle in UK
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The immigration & asylum stats for the first three months of this year come out at 9.30am today. Some important things to look out for, including backlogs of asylum decisions, resettlement numbers (should include the Afghan scheme for the first time) and inadmissibility stats.
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Prorogation means that the Refugee Family Reunion Private Members' Bill falls. Thanks to
@AngusMacNeilSNP
for leading the efforts, and to many, many others for their support
#familiestogether
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The Home Office published some ad hoc stats yesterday (the Q3 stats are out next week - today's tell us a bit more). A few things to pick out.
54% of people who have crossed the channel up to end of Oct were from Afghanistan, Iran, Eritrea, Syria or Sudan. 1 in 5 were Afghan.
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This is very welcome news. Next up should be ending the use of MoD barracks and getting back to a more sustainable, humane way of accommodating people within a fair and person-centred asylum system.
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Of course no new act of parliament is needed to tackle the issues currently facing the UK’s asylum system. Improving existing & introducing new safe routes to protection and asylum in the UK could be done overnight. No one gets into a small boat unless they have no other options.
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About 7 hours or so until committee stage of the asylum bill starts in
@HouseofCommons
. Still no government impact assessment published. This is what Leader of the House
@PennyMordaunt
said to
@ThangamMP
last Thursday.
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Also worth flagging the cost as a lot of media briefings have mentioned the £120m the UK is giving to Rwanda. The Home Office's fact sheet makes clear this is development spending, not the financial support for processing cases.
More money (an unspecified amount) will be needed.
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It will be a very odd position for people to hold being concerned about right to work for those seeking asylum while not opposing the main elements of the bill. The bill all but shuts down situations where someone can apply for asylum, so who would benefit from right to work?
Right-wing Tory MPs plotting an amendment this weekend:
— want derogations from HRA/ECHR
— unhappy with huge cash for Macron
— unhappy at no France returns agreement
Centrists also unhappy:
— ethical concerns
— modern slavery
— right to work
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Great to see today's editorial in
@guardian
supporting the call to extend the move-on period for newly recognised refugees to 56 days to give people a bit more time to find housing and financial support after getting a positive asylum decision
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Baroness Lister has just introduced a Bill in the
@UKHouseofLords
that would increase the time newly recognised refugees are given before their Home Office support ends form 28 to 56 days
#EveryRefugeeMatters
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Anyone who meets these four conditions will have any asylum claim deemed inadmissible under clause 4. They are pretty broad and will capture most refugees who would apply for asylum. It’s much wider than people who arrive in the UK by small boat.
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There are now 145 government amendments to the asylum bill (many consequential on others). They include issues that weren't originally in the bill - one needs a change to the long title. There are only 2 sitting days before report stage, which will be max. about 5 hours debate.
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Most refugees can’t get a visa to travel to the UK and are already displaced from their own country before they come, so will travel irregularly and come indirectly under this bill. Even the definition of not travelling directly is stricter compared to previous legislation.
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the compare the number of people who were resettled from those countries last year:
Iran - 4 people
Iraq - 120
Eritrea - 10
Syria - 1,204
Vietnam - 0
Sudan - 45
Afghanistan obviously slightly different due to the evacuation.
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@UKHouseofLords
Contents: 209
Not contents: 173
Peers vote to remove clause 9 from the bill.
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A reminder that when talking about sending people who have crossed the channel in small boats to Rwanda, the chances are these are people who would be recognised as refugees in the UK's asylum system.
Last week's Home Office asylum stats show that.
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The Home Secretary currently has a power, but not a duty, to deem an asylum claim inadmissible if the applicant has a connection to a safe third country. But the inadmissibility decision can only happen once there is an agreement for that person to be removed from the UK
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This is what happens the vast majority of the time because there aren't removal agreements in place. Since Jan 2021, of 18,494 potentially inadmissible applications only 83 inadmissibility decisions have been served. Nearly 10,000 have been admitted into the UK’s asylum system.
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The new bill removes any requirement to have any agreed removal in place – instead the Home Secretary must declare the application inadmissible. Anyone who is covered by the bill will never have their asylum claim heard in the UK, no matter how strong it might be.
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The Home Office have issued a new "factsheet" on the asylum bill. The answer to "Is the bill going to work?" is really informative. It implies the Government don't think they're going to ever have to implement their unworkable legislation.
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Some urgent steps are needed to tackle the asylum backlog - current delays leave people languishing for years at considerable expense. A shorter process for claims almost certainly going to be granted makes sense.
But there are some serious problems with the Home Office plans.
Around 12,000 asylum seekers are to be sent 10-page questionnaires to decide their claims, as the Home Office struggles to achieve Rishi Sunak’s pledge to clear a record backlog
Figures released tomorrow will show there are 150,000 outstanding claims
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This policy makes no sense. Where are people going to be removed to? 4 in 10 of arrivals in the first 9 months of last year were from Eritrea, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan or Iran. All have asylum grant rates of 82% or above. Is the Government going to return Afghans to Afghanistan?
Stopping small boats is a top priority, and we're already delivering on our plan to tackle this issue.
If you come to this country illegally, you will be detained, and swiftly removed.
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Seems quite clear now that the Illegal Migration Act will follow the Nationality and Borders Act in being unworkable and only ever counterproductive. Rather than waste even more time and money, maybe it’s time to listen to those with an alternative?
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Good to see 15 Conservative MPs vote against the Government's alternative amendments to maintaining a time limit for detaining separated children. Hopefully gives the Lords heart to carry-on pushing tomorrow
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Those 5 countries have grant rates of at least 80%. For Afghanistan, Eritrea and Syria it's 98%. For all the 45,000 people who crossed the channel last year, two thirds would be expected to get refugee status. This is who is being excluded from the asylum system under this bill.
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So despite media reports today suggesting it will "only" be adult men, that's not my reading of it. The Home Office's factsheet on the deal bears this out.
"Every person who comes to the UK illegally ... will be considered for relocation to Rwanda."
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none of these things will do anything to address the serious issues facing the asylum system right now - the lack of safe routes, huge delays in decision making, and people being stuck in unsuitable and overly expensive accommodation
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Until that point the asylum claim is still live. Guidance gives Home Office case workers 6 months to get an agreement, with some extensions possible. If they don't, then the claim is processed in the UK. This adds a costly and unnecessary delay, but eventually the case is heard.
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Refugee resettlement is down 75% from pre-covid levels, refugee family reunion down 36%. Meanwhile, the asylum backlog is up 203%.
More safe routes and quicker decisions should be the focus for the asylum system, not unworkable plans preventing access to protection.
The way to stop small boat crossings is to provide safe routes so that the families risking their lives to reach the UK have an alternative. Not easy but - unlike the Prime Minister’s plan - workable, as the help for Ukrainian refugees has shown.
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A few hundred people might get sent to Rwanda. Under the deal & the Illegal Migration Act tens of thousands of people will be left in permanent limbo in the UK, with their asylum claims never processed. The cost of that will be billions and dwarf what’s currently spent on hotels.
Handing Rwanda an extra £150million is worth it to slash migrant hotel bills, immigration minister claims
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With less than a week to go before Report Stage of the Nationality and Borders Bill, by my early morning reckoning the Government tabled 80 amendments yesterday
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This bill captures a lot of people. For all the focus on small boats, fewer than half of those who claimed asylum in the UK in 2022 entered the country in that way (40,302 out of 89,398). As well as those coming across the channel, the bill captures many of the remaining 50,000
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A total of nine Government defeats in the Lords last night, including on time limits for detaining children and protecting against permanent inadmissibility of asylum applications. MPs will consider the latest amendments on Monday.
Rishi Sunak suffers string of further defeats in Lords over small boats bill
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Despite what has been at times reported, there is no exemption for children under this bill, whether they are in the UK with family or not. If they meet the four conditions in clause 2 their asylum claims will be inadmissible – they will never get protection in the UK.
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The new asylum bill will make it almost impossible for any child to apply for asylum in the UK, making their claims inadmissible, while undoing a decade of safeguards against indefinite and unnecessary detention
Revealed: child refugees will be detained or deported under small boats plan
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Two-thirds of those who crossed the channel last year would get recognised as refugees if their cases were processed. So this is a plan to indefinitely detain tens of thousands of refugees. At huge human and financial cost.
Breaking:
Suella Braverman appears to announce open-ended powers of detention for migrants, so long as there is a 'reasonable prospect' of removal
They will be detained in first 28 days of arrival
'We can maintain detention so long as we have reasonable prospect of removal'
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This really highlights the human consequences of trying to tweak immigration pathways in response to humanitarian crises. No matter how the scheme is designed, it will always result in stories like this.
Eligibility for safety just doesn’t work.
I spoke to a desperate Ukrainian family, including disabled elderly women, who travelled 1,000 miles to Calais but are being denied access to the UK to be with their only family. At least 130 refugees are there - with numbers rising fast
@Care4Calais
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the expansion of existing, and creation of new, safe routes that give people are an alternative must be key.
A quick glance at last years Home Office stats show the lack of safe routes available to those people who are crossing the channel.
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As the number of refugees in the world goes above 35 million,
@Refugees
’s global trends report shows 7 in 10 refugees are hosted by neighbouring countries, and 3 in 4 by some of the world’s least wealthy countries
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While the Home Secretary may be under a duty to remove people, one of the big unanswered questions is where to? Because the Home Office hasn't actually considered their asylum claims, the vast majority of people won't be able to be returned to their own country.
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The Home Office have finally publish an economic impact assessment of the Illegal Migration Bill. Yet it makes no assessment of the overall cost of the bill, including significant costs such as expanding the detention estate.
Is an economic impact assessment an economic impact assessment if it makes no estimate of the cost of implementing the thing it's assessing? Or if it provides no numbers estimating the people impacted and the impact on future numbers?
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At this point you start trying to work out what kind of situations won't be covered. Maybe someone who was in the UK on a visa who then claimed asylum after the situation in their own country changed, or an application from a person from a visa-exempt country. There's not many.
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Both of these have a horrific human cost. They're also both very expensive for the taxpayer. And both could be avoided if the Home Office just processed peoples' applications.
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Not sure everyone will agree with this in the explanatory notes to the article 50 bill
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Cl.2 sets out who is covered. It creates a duty on the Home Secretary to arrange the removal of anyone who meets 4 criteria:
1) they arrived in breach of immigration rules
2) they arrived on or after 7 March 2023
3) they didn't travel directly
4) they don't have leave to remain
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such as system would, presumably, result in people who are then recognised as refugees being able to move to the state running that asylum system.
That's not what is happening with the deal announced today.
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Half of the 50,000 people living in hotels at the end of June came from just 5 countries - Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iran, Syria and Sudan. All have very high grant rates. A more efficient system is the quickest way of reducing the use of hotels.
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This is the letter that
@refugeecouncil
,
@ECPATUK
and over 100 other charities sent to the PM today calling for an end to housing children seeking asylum in hotels and for an immediate inquiry, as discussed by
@BBCMarkEaston
&
@bbcnickrobinson
on
#r4today
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The Home Office is often restrictive on family reunion, but the situation for Afghans is particularly awful. On top of cases like this, at
@refugeecouncil
we're in touch with Afghan children in the UK whose parents haven't been able to join them. In no world does that make sense.
In today's
@thetimes
, the Home Office has blocked a three-year old Afghan toddler from joining his parents in the UK even though his father worked as a British army interpreter. His story is told in The Gardener of Lashkar Gah, out today
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The Home Office’s own research showed that people have very little understanding of asylum policies in various countries. Instead the reasons for trying to get to the UK are often to do with family and other considerations. The bill ignores this completely
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Contents: 112
Not Contents: 89
The
@UKHouseofLords
votes to allow people asylum to work if they've been waiting for 6 months for a decision on their asylum application.
#LiftTheBan
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After
@refugeecouncil
published our own impact assessment of the asylum bill and
@ThangamMP
raised the lack of a Government one,
@PennyMordaunt
replied that she understands the Home Office will now publish their own assessment before committee stage of the bill starts on Monday.
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