The home secretary has announced a shakeup of family reunion rules for refugees in a bid to deter small boat crossings.
Yvette Cooper said people smugglers were using the promise of family reunion to promote dangerous journeys across the Channel.
Addressing the House of Commons, Ms Cooper said the government would now suspend new applications under the existing family reunion route for refugees until a new framework had been introduced.
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She highlighted how refugee families arriving in the UK were seeking homelessness assistance, putting pressure on local authorities that was “not sustainable”.
Ms Cooper told MPs the government would deliver an asylum policy statement later this year, which would set out a new system for family migration, with the aim of having “some of those changes in place for the spring”.
She said it would look at contribution requirements and whether there should be longer periods before newly granted refugees can apply for family reunion.
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“Even just before the pandemic, refugees who applied to bring family to the UK did so on average more than one or two years after they had been granted protection, long enough for them to be able to get jobs or find housing, or be able to provide their family with some support,” she explained.
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“In Denmark and Switzerland, currently, those granted humanitarian protection are not able to apply to bring family for at least two years after protection has been granted. But here in the UK now, however, those applications come in on average in around a month after protection has been granted, often even before a newly granted refugee has left asylum accommodation.
“As a consequence, refugee families who arrive are far more likely to be seeking homelessness assistance.
“And some councils are finding that more than a quarter of their family homelessness applications are linked to refugee family reunion. That is not sustainable.”
The home secretary continued: “Therefore, we are bringing forward new immigration rules this week to temporarily suspend new applications under the existing dedicated refugee family reunion route.
“Until the new framework is introduced, refugees will be covered by the same family migration rules and conditions as everyone else.”
The move comes as the government struggles to cope with the continued arrival of small boats in the Channel, which have reached 29,003 – the highest on record for this point in a year.
There is palpable anger in certain communities at the use of hotels to house asylum seekers, most notably in Epping, Essex, where there were protests at the weekend after the government successfully overturned a temporary injunction which would have blocked asylum seekers from staying at the Bell Hotel.
The protests prompted Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, to warn there was a “genuine threat to public order”.
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He has promised to deport up to 600,000 asylum seekers in the first parliament of a Reform UK government if he wins the next election – a plan opponents have criticised as unworkable.
The home secretary said the government was working “at pace” to end the use of all asylum hotels, and said they would be closed “for good” under a “controlled, managed and orderly programme – driving down inflow into the asylum system, clearing the appeals backlog… and continuing to increase returns”.
She added: “I understand and agree with local councils and communities who want the asylum hotels in their communities closed because we need to close all asylum hotels, and we need to do so for good, but that must be done in a controlled and orderly manner, and not through a return to the previous government’s chaos that led to the opening of hotels in the first place.”
‘Things are getting worse’
In response, shadow home secretary Chris Philp said Channel crossings were up 38% on the previous year, adding: “Things are not getting any better, they are getting worse.”
He said “tweaking the family reunion rules is not enough” and referred again to the Tories’ Rwanda scheme, which Labour scrapped on winning office.
