What does Starmer’s ‘new era’ on migration mean – and will it make the slightest difference? From limiting access to public service to allowing refugees to work
Crucial details are absent from Labour‘s new plan to drive down immigration and tighten up the asylum system.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer insisted yesterday that the long-awaited White Paper ‘signals a new era’.
But proposals on the knottiest aspects of the immigration system – including tackling abuse of asylum and human rights laws – contained only vague pledges.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the detail would only arrive ‘later this summer’, with much of it requiring law changes that will take many months to implement.
Other measures in the paper deal with parts of the immigration system that are much easier to reform – because the Home Office itself controls application rules and how many visas it hands out.
The full range of these reforms would cut the number of immigrants coming to Britain by 98,000 a year once they are fully in force, according to documents published by Ms Cooper.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer insisted yesterday that the long-awaited White Paper, designed to drive down immigration and tighten up the asylum system, ‘signals a new era’ (Pictured: Starmer announcing the new proposals at Downing Street)
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the detail on proposed changes to the immigration system would only arrive ‘later this summer’, with much of it requiring law changes that will take many months to implement
Labour’s main proposals are:
Reducing abuse of human rights laws
A ‘clear framework’ on the way human rights laws are applied in immigration cases will be published later this year.
It will seek to restrict the ‘exceptional circumstances’ in which judges can currently overrule the Home Office when foreign nationals – including criminals – lodge immigration appeals.
In particular it would aim to ‘limit successful claims’ from foreign nationals who lodge appeals under the ‘right to private and family life’ under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
It follows a backlash against cases such as that of an Albanian criminal whose deportation was halted partly due to his son’s aversion to the type of chicken nuggets served abroad.
The new framework would apply not just to foreign nationals who commit crimes, but also to those seeking to deploy human rights arguments in asylum and other immigration cases. It would be voted on by Parliament in a bid to send a firm message to judges.
However, the Prime Minister yesterday said he did not think it was ‘necessary’ for Britain to leave the ECHR, and Home Office officials confirmed there would not be a complete block on human rights appeals.
‘There will always be some cases that the judiciary want to look at, but that should be a much smaller proportion of cases,’ a spokesman said.
The paper also promised to ‘simplify the rules and processes for deporting foreign national offenders’ without further detail.
The Prime Minister yesterday said he did not think it was ‘necessary’ for Britain to leave the ECHR, and Home Office officials confirmed there would not be a complete block on human rights appeals
The Government will also aim to take action against a wider range of foreign nationals who commit crimes here (Pictured: a group of people believed to be migrants brought into Dungerness, Kent)
The Government will also aim to take action against a wider range of foreign nationals who commit crimes here.
For example, only those who are jailed for 12 months or more are currently subject to ‘automatic deportation’ measures – which are, in any case, often overruled by the courts.
The White Paper said ministers would extend powers to revoke visas and remove offenders from Britain if they received lesser punishments, including non-custodial sentences, for crimes such as serious assault, sexual offences or aggravated burglary.
Full details will not be published until later this year, meaning any changes are unlikely to be put into law until next year at the earliest.
Lowering the bar for removal may be an attempt to head off the impact of a separate sentencing review currently under way, which will mean jail sentences being handed to far fewer offenders.
Asylum claims by visa holders
The asylum system is being abused by a growing number of foreign nationals who come to Britain legally on a visa and then claim to be refugees, the paper said.
Last year, there were 40,000 asylum claims from individuals linked to a visa, it said.
And between 2022 and 2024, 25,000 had to be provided with accommodation at the taxpayers’ expense, including asylum hotels.
The Government said it will draw up new policies on how they will deal with individuals who make such claims – but did not go into detail.
Companies, universities or other institutions that sponsor a foreign national’s work or study visa who then make an asylum claim could be hit with ‘financial measures, penalties or sanctions’, it added.
The paper said that asylum system is being abused by a growing number of foreign nationals who come to Britain legally on a visa, with, last year, 40,000 asylum claims from individuals linked to a visa
Under the proposed changes, companies, universities or other institutions that sponsor a foreign national’s work or study visa who then make an asylum claim could be hit with ‘financial measures, penalties or sanctions’
Limit access to public services
The Home Office will gather more data on visa holders using its eVisas scheme – already rolled out to four million people – and share it across government.
This will help identify whether a foreign national has complied with their visa and whether they are still in the UK, the White Paper said.
Officials will be able to establish whether someone has ‘the right to work, to rent, to claim benefits or use public services’. Those not ‘legally entitled’ could then have access to public services withdrawn.
Require foreign staff to have a degree
The minimum requirement for a skilled worker visa – currently set at the equivalent of an A-level – will rise to a university degree.
The minimum salary required to obtain a work visa will also increase from the current £38,700, but the White Paper does not set out by how much.
The Home Office currently maintains a list of jobs in which the UK has worker shortages – and which allows lower than average salaries to be paid to foreign workers in those roles.
However, the White Paper said the system will be reformed so that roles can only be placed on the list temporarily.
At the same time, each sector looking to have a role placed on the list will have to show that employers are doing work to help train candidates from the domestic workforce. The paper warns that these proposals, too, are far from being launched.
Separately, Labour said it will stop issuing visas to care workers hired overseas.
The visa for health and care workers has led to more than 690,000 applications since its launch, with more than 380,000 in 2023 alone including nearly 225,000 by workers’ family members.
The White Paper said it will close – but did not set a date – and there will be a ‘transition period’ until 2028 for foreign care workers already in the UK.
The minimum requirement for a skilled worker visa – currently set at the equivalent of an A-level – will rise to a university degree. The minimum salary required to obtain a work visa will also increase from the current £38,700, but the White Paper does not set out by how much
It said the reliance on overseas care workers was down to ‘historic levels of poor pay and poor terms and conditions, leading to low domestic recruitment and retention rates’.
But the sector has described the move as a ‘crushing blow to an already fragile sector’.
Separately, a broad range of migrants coming to the UK will have to show a higher level of English language proficiency.
Increasing the costs for foreign students
Ministers will look at imposing a levy on tuition fees charged to foreign students by the higher education sector.
It would ‘represent an increase in the cost of coming to study in the UK if passed on by providers to students as increased tuition fees’, a Home Office paper said, and suggested the levy could be set at six per cent.
Foreign students are currently allowed to work in Britain for two years after completing their courses under the so-called ‘graduate route‘ – with 250,000 doing so last year.
But the maximum length of stay will now be cut to 18 months.
Currently, up to 70 per cent of foreign students who stay on under the scheme are working in jobs which require less than degree-level qualifications.
Foreign students are currently allowed to work in Britain for two years after completing their courses under the so-called ‘graduate route’ – with 250,000 doing so last year. But the maximum length of stay will now be cut to 18 months (Pictured: Yvette Cooper)
Allowing overseas refugees to work
Labour outlined how some overseas refugees will be allowed to come to work in Britain.
It said the Home Office will look at letting a ‘limited pool’ of ‘refugees and displaced people’ recognised by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to apply for roles ‘where they have the skills to do so’.
They would not currently hold refugee status in Britain.
Allowing asylum seekers the right to work here has long been resisted by the Home Office over fears it would act as a ‘pull factor’, encouraging more to come.
The proposal seemed to contradict the thrust of the rest of the White Paper but a lack of detail on its scope – including the numbers involved – makes its impact impossible to gauge.
