Labour warned it’s ‘out of its depth’ on Home Office asylum crisis

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper aim to sort out the Tories' Rwanda asylum 'mess'. But experts think they may be 'out of their depth'.

Labour is being warned that it is “out of its depth” on asylum and that its plan to address what it sees as a “Rwanda mess” won’t be enough to prevent the crisis from escalating.

The cost of housing asylum seekers in hotels could rocket from £5m to £7m a day by the end of this year unless a new government radically changes the asylum system to slow rocketing backlogs, figures show.

Labour will bring its new small boats bill forward in the first King’s Speech after the general election if it forms the next government, i understands.

But immigration experts are concerned about the consequences of the inevitable delays involved in implementing new legislation, with a backlog of 120,000 asylum seekers already waiting.

A Home Office insider told i that “even if Labour have the perfect immigration bill ready to go on day one”, it could take two years for new laws to come into force because of the internal processes required.

“A new law, no matter how well written, takes 18 to 24 months to be implemented,” the civil servant warned.

“Keeping applicants on the [Conservatives’] Illegal Migration Act regime for so long would just skyrocket accommodation bills, whereas implementing a new law too fast would – inevitably – mean major mistakes, litigation costs and further reputational loss.

“It looks like Labour is out of their depth, albeit in a very different way from the Tories.”

The current system, introduced last year as part of the Conservative scheme to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, has created a “perma-backlog” that already stands at 52,000 asylum cases.

It is rising by an average of 5,200 a month, because migrants in the Illegal Migration Act’s scope can neither be deported nor granted leave to remain in the UK.

In its manifesto, Labour vowed to “restore order to the asylum system so that it operates swiftly, firmly, and fairly”, to clear the backlog and “end asylum hotels”, but has not fully detailed how changes will be implemented.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper have also not announced any reforms to asylum processing for an interim period, before new legislation comes into force. Home Office insiders say that even if there were such procedural changes they could take months to bring in while the backlog continues to grow.

More than 13,000 migrants have crossed the English Channel so far in 2024, an all-time record for the first six months of the year, and the Refugee Council charity has predicted that the figure will pass 40,000 by Christmas.

The new arrivals are adding to a backlog of around 120,000 asylum seekers already waiting for decisions, and the cost of housing and financially supporting those in limbo is set to rocket after the election.

Calculations by i show that hotel costs could rise to almost £7m a night by the end of this year, up from around £5m when the last official figures were released in March, if asylum processing is not sped up and alternative accommodation cannot be found.

The next government will have to choose whether to increase that amount further by moving hundreds of asylum seekers out of the controversial Bibby Stockholm barge, and a military base. They were measures that the Conservatives claimed would be cheaper than hotels but have proven even more expensive.

A Labour Party source said: “It will take us a bit of time to unpick the whole big mess of legislation in this area and we will need to bring forward our own legislation to put in place our plan. We’re going to have to deal with the perma-backlog and whatever mess we inherit. These people are here and under the government’s legislation they literally can’t be returned home.”

The Home Office is already facing having to reconsider thousands of asylum claims that Mr Sunak claimed were “cleared” as part of his legacy backlog pledge, with record numbers of appeals sparked by alleged errors and short-cuts in last year’s drive (see box).

Backlog clearance leads to new backlog

A new backlog is building in a specialist court that considers appeals against asylum decisions, with record figures blamed on poor-decision making and shortcuts after Rishi Sunak pledged to clear more than 90,000 asylum claims in 2023.

More than 29,000 new asylum cases flooded into the First-Tier Tribunal in the year to March, but it can currently only process up to 1,000 a month, and a backlog of 27,000 cases is rising fast.

Even if no new appeals were lodged, it would take more than two-and-a-half years to clear that figure at the current rate.

Decisions quashed by judges must currently be re-made by a specialist “secondary casework” team, who may have to conduct new interviews and request further documents in a laborious process taking many more months.

An official report released by the Ministry of Justice said a 330 per cent year-on-year rise in asylum appeals in the most recent quarter “stemmed from the Home Office tackling its legacy asylum decision backlog”.

The need to radically speed up processing sparked the introduction of controversial asylum questionnaires, shortened interviews and “concise” letters explaining decisions.

The changes have formed the basis of some appeals, with lawyers arguing the Home Office did not properly consider asylum seekers’ cases, while the backlog clearance also saw a rise in reported errors where interview invites and other important documents were sent to the wrong addresses.

More than half of asylum seekers fighting refused and withdrawn claims in the past year were successful, meaning more than 14,000 cases could be sent back to the Home Office.

Several court cases are underway against the government, including a High Court battle over the Safety of Rwanda Act and individual claims by asylum seekers who say they were unlawfully detained for flights.

The Home Office insider called for the new government to immediately repeal the Illegal Migration Act and “roll back to the most recent stable version” of asylum processing.

“It’s tried and tested and requires no training, just some staff shuffling,” they added, saying a new government could also reduce hotel costs by giving asylum seekers permission to work. But Labour doesn’t currently intend to repeal the IMA.

With the vast majority of asylum seekers banned from working, 80 per cent of those currently awaiting a decision are destitute and reliant on government housing and support.

The Refugee Council estimates that there could be more than 115,000 people in indefinite limbo by the end of this year, because the Illegal Migration Act currently bans the government from giving small boat migrants who arrived after 7 March 2023 leave to remain in the UK.

It called for the new government to issue guidance instructing the Home Office to start processing the claims, under a so far unused clause of the law stating that leave to remain can be granted if the “duty to remove” is not in force.

Asylum expert and solicitor Sonia Lenegan said that while such guidance could restart asylum processing, it would take time to be drawn up and the “clean and tidy thing to do to get rid of the whole Illegal Migration Act”.

“I don’t know if another bill can fix it,” she added. “Repeal is the obvious, most sensible way forward.”

Ms Lenegan cautioned against drawing up a new suite of laws too quickly, following three significant asylum bills by the Conservatives in the past two years.

“It’s a very bad idea,” she added. “Are we going to be back where we were with the Conservative government where bills are published with no input from anyone else?

“It needs to be done in a more transparent way where people with experience in the sector can contribute. The idea of something being rushed out makes me extremely nervous, the potential for disaster is there.”

Labour has also pledged to tackle Channel crossings with a new Border Security Command using money from scrapping the Rwanda scheme, and said it would seek a new intelligence-sharing agreement with the EU as well as additional returns agreements for failed asylum seekers.

The party has not laid out any plans for creating new safe and legal routes for asylum seekers to reach the UK, which experts and charities say is necessary to address small boat crossings.

Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, warned that “there is no magic bullet” to tackling small boats, adding: “The approach that Labour has articulated about smashing the gangs is an important part, but it needs to be part of a broader strategy that also looks at why people flee – that addresses the so-called push factors and also looks at the importance of safe routes, so that people don’t have to take dangerous journeys.

“It needs sensible policymaking and it needs a recognition that it’s the hard yards of policy-making and delivery over time that can have an impact.”

The Home Office source warned that conflict and repression would continue driving refugees into the hands of smugglers who “offer an illegal ‘service’ to those in need”, adding: “The gangs are very adaptive and they keep outsmarting most enforcement provisions.”