Cooper says applications for refugees to bring family members to UK being halted until new, tighter rules in place
Cooper says the government wants to change the family reunion rules for asylum seekers.
The current rules for family reunion for refugees were designed many years ago to help families separated by war, conflict and persecution, but the way they are now being used has changed.
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 [so they would be] able to provide their family with some support.
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, 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.
Cooper says this is not sustainable. She says the family reunion rules for refugee sponsors are not as strict as they are for British sponsors. That is not fair, she says.
Finally, the proportion of migrants who have arrived on small boats and do then apply to bring family has also increased sharply in recent years, with signs that smuggler gangs are now able to use the promise of family reunion to promote dangerous journeys to the UK.
Cooper says the government still thinks family reunions are important. So family groups will be prioritised under the returns deal with France, she says.
But, she says, the asylum policy statement coming later this year will set out new family reunion rules, “including looking at contribution requirements, longer periods before newly granted refugees can apply and dedicated controlled arrangements for unaccompanied children and for those fleeing persecution who have family in the UK”.
Cooper says she wants some of these new rules in place by the spring.
But, in the meantime, she says she is bringing forward new immigration rules to temporarily suspend applications under the refugee family reunion route.
In the meantime, we do need to address the immediate pressures on local authorities and the risks from criminal gangs using family reunion as a pull factor to encourage more people onto dangerous boats.
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.
Key events
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Early evening summary
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Time given to single adults granted asylum to find new housing cut from 56 to 28 days from today, Home Office says
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Charities condemn crackdown on refugee family reunions as ‘cruel’ and ‘simply wrong’
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Home Office says first returns to France under ‘one in, one out’ deal to start later this month
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SNP’s Pete Wishart deplores ‘ugly’ national mood on asylum seekers, and urges Labour to be more positive about them
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Epping faces ‘tinderbox situation’ because of asylum hotel, MPs told
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Tighter refugee family reunion rules ‘counter-productive’, with more relatives trying small boats, Lib Dems claim
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Cooper says applications for refugees to bring family members to UK being halted until new, tighter rules in place
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Yvette Cooper tells MPs that ‘doing our bit’ to help those fleeing persecution is ‘the British way’
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Starmer confirms he wants to lead Labour into next election
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Starmer says extension of free childcare in England could make ‘life-changing’ difference for some children
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Starmer says he backs flying England flags, and has one in in his flat, but does not want them used in ‘divisive’ way
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Starmer says he ‘completely’ understands concerns of people worried about their daughters walking past asylum hotels
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Starmer says Reform UK don’t want to solve small boats problem because they need ‘politics of grievance’
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Starmer says government now moving into ‘delivery, delivery, delivery’ phase in BBC interview
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No 10 defends Angela Rayner over flat claims
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Anas Sarwar urges Scots to challenge ‘noisy minorities’ in Reform and SNP
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No 10 says mini Downing Street reshuffle shows government now has ‘relentless focus on delivery’
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Badenoch accuses Guardian of reporting ‘hearsay’ as she restates disputed claim about US medical school offer
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Richard Tice claims some parents of Send children ‘abusing’ system giving them free transport to special needs schools
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Tories claim No 10 mini reshuffle shows government ‘in crisis’
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Experts criticise Tory thinktank report claiming ECHR withdrawal would not undermine Good Friday agreement
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Home Office says small boats arrival numbers in August lower than in past three years
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Former Blair aide Tim Allan joins No 10 as executive director for government communications
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Darren Jones appointed ‘chief secretary to the PM’, and put in charge of policy delivery
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Starmer shakes up No 10 operation with mini-reshuffle
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Women and childen to lose out most from Home Office plan to tighten rules on refugee family reunions, experts say
Early evening summary
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Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, has been strongly criticised by refugee charities after announcing that she is suspending refugee family reunion applications – the system allowing people granted asylum to bring relatives to the UK – until new, tighter rules come into force next year. (See 5.33pm.) In a statement to MPs, Cooper said the current rules were designed for a different era and not sustainable. (See 4pm.) She made the announcement during a Commons statement lasting almost two and a half hours. Most Labour MPs welcomed her announcements, but Kim Johnson echoed the comments of opposition MPs like the SNP’s Pete Wishart (see 4.57pm) in urging the government to be more supportive of asylum seekers. Johnson said:
In the home secretary’s statement, she has stated that she will never seek to stir up chaos, hatred and division. Yet that’s what we’ve seen this summer, with the far-right emboldened because of racism and demonisation in the media and from politicians.
And instead of scapegoating refugees and asylum seekers, maybe the home secretary needs to be thinking about more humane policies, including safe routes employment and right to remain.
The Conservatives and Reform UK said they wanted all asylum seekers arriving in the UK illegally on small boats to be removed.
It’s extraordinary, more than a year into this government, they’re only just working out that they might need some senior economic expertise within Number 10, both at a political level and at the advisor level.
It’s yet another example, I think, of how staggeringly unprepared this government was for government, despite the fact that they essentially knew they were going to win the election some considerable time out.
For a full list of all the stories covered on the blog today, do scroll through the list of key event headlines near the top of the blog.
Labour party sources are also (see 3.34pm) urging Kemi Badenoch to “come clean” about her contested claim to have been offered a place to study medicine at Stanford at the age of 16. One told PA Media:
Honesty and integrity aren’t optional qualities for those who serve as leader of His Majesty’s official opposition. The uncertainty surrounding Kemi Badenoch’s Stanford University claims raise important questions that the public deserve to know the answers to.
My colleague Pippa Crerar has news of another Labour communications chief who is leaving.
NEW: Joe Dancey, Labour’s director of policy & comms, has joined those heading out of the door today.
The senior party figure told staff he had struggled to be there for his elderly parents, who live at different ends of the country, in the role.
Dancey, who is Wes Streeting’s partner, says he’ll continue “pounding the streets as a foot soldier” as he first did for Labour in 1992.
Time given to single adults granted asylum to find new housing cut from 56 to 28 days from today, Home Office says
Here is the text of Yvette Cooper’s statement to MPs about the asylum system.
In a briefing note for journalists, the Home Office has confirmed that from today single adults who are granted asylum will be given 28 days to move out of the hotels, or the housing, where they have been living during the application process. Currently the so-called “move on period” is twice as long.
Danny Shaw, the home affairs commentator and former BBC journalist who briefly worked as a adviser to Cooper, says this is likely to increase homelessness.
Single adults in asylum hotels or housing will have to leave within 28 days of being granted asylum.
At present, it’s 56 days.
This will help cut numbers in hotels – but, as happened before, will lead to refugees sleeping on the streets or in tents
Charities condemn crackdown on refugee family reunions as ‘cruel’ and ‘simply wrong’
Safe Passage, a charity that supports child refugees, has condemned Yvette Cooper’s decision to suspend refugee family reunion applications. Gunes Kalkan, its head of campaigns, said in a statement:
This blanket suspension on refugee family reunion is simply wrong. This will have disastrous consequences for the unaccompanied children and refugee families we support.
Children, having already survived the horrors of war and persecution, belong with their parents. But this decision will leave them stuck alone and in camps, with no way to reach family or safety. We’re talking about children from conflict and high human rights abuse areas, such as Afghanistan, Sudan and Iran, who have been torn apart from family in the chaos.
Without safe options, like family reunion, more people will be pushed into taking dangerous journeys to reach safety and loved ones. Instead of closing down what few safe routes exist, this government should be opening new safe pathways and expanding family reunion for refugees.
The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants has also condemnd the move. It issued this statement on social media earlier today.
The government wants to make it harder for people who move here to bring their families. Cruelty can’t be the basis of policy.
Instead of pandering to the far right, the govt should help reunite families torn apart by war & torture, not make it harder.
Home Office says first returns to France under ‘one in, one out’ deal to start later this month
In a briefing note published alongside Yvette Cooper’s statement, the Home Office says the first people are expected to be returned to France under the “one in, one out” scheme later this month.
Coming back to the No 10 mini reshuffle, Hannah White and Alex Thomas from the Institute for Government have written an interesting blog on Keir Starmer’s decision to appoint Darren Jones as chief secretary to the PM. Given that this broadly follows a recommendation from an IfG report published last year, they are broadly quite positive. But Starmer needs to go further, they say.
To move a chief secretary from the Treasury to No10 is a big call for the prime minister, and he will need to show that this novel arrangement can work. But even if it does, it will not be enough. As the IfG Commission on the Centre also recommended, structural changes to the civil service and to departments will be needed.
The Commission concluded that neither No 10 nor the Cabinet Office are fit to serve a modern prime minister. The Cabinet Office has lost its way, and No10 does not have the strategic clarity to support a prime minister who must more than ever be the chief executive of government. The logical next step is to create a new department of the prime minister and cabinet and a separate department for the civil service. Darren Jones could lead the former and Pat McFadden the latter.
That would also create an opportunity to rationalise the top of the civil service by separating the role of cabinet secretary from the head of the civil service. The cabinet secretary would then work hand-in-glove with Darren Jones to advise on and implement the government’s programme and lead the prime minister’s department, while the head of the civil service would be accountable for the reforms to that institution that are so badly needed.
Robert Shrimsley from the Financial Times has a more pithy take.
There’s a lot that looks sensible in the No 10 reshuffle but I can’t help thinking that Starmer getting rid of aides because of dleivery issues is a bit like blaming the Ocado man because you forgot to order the chicken
Only about a third of voters support people granted asylum by the UK being allowed to bring relatives to the country, a YouGov poll suggests. Half the public are opposed, the poll suggests.
SNP’s Pete Wishart deplores ‘ugly’ national mood on asylum seekers, and urges Labour to be more positive about them
The SNP’s Pete Wishart told MPs that he thought the government was encouraging Reform UK by refusing to speak up for asylum seekers. He told MPs:
What a country the UK is becoming And rarely has the national mood become so ugly and intimidating. People congregating at hotels, screaming at asylum seekers to go home, the right wing so emboldened they feel the streets belong to them.
Doesn’t [Yvette Cooper] realise that every time she moves on to the ground of Reform, all she is doing is further encouraging and emboldening them?
Wishart said Cooper should try “something different”, and he urged her to say something positive about immigration, and to talk about asylum seekers with “decency and humanity”.
Cooper said she had spoken positively about asylum seekers. But she said the public wanted the asylum system to be “properly controlled and managed”.
Epping faces ‘tinderbox situation’ because of asylum hotel, MPs told
Neil Hudson, the Conservative MP for Epping Forest, told Cooper that there was a “tinderbox situation” in Epping because of the asylum seekers being housed in the Bell hotel. He said there had been alleged sexual and physical assaults and protests were now taking place twice a week, sometimes becoming violent.
Our community is in distress. The situation is untenable. This week the schools are back. The hotel is in the wrong place, right near a school, and many concerned parents have contacted me. When will the home secretary and the government listen to us address this issue and do the right and safe thing and close the Bell hotel immediately.
Cooper said asylum hotels had to be closed “as swiftly as possible”, but in “an orderly and sustainable manner”.
Tighter refugee family reunion rules ‘counter-productive’, with more relatives trying small boats, Lib Dems claim
Lisa Smart, the Lib Dem home affairs spokesperson, told Cooper that she was worried that tightening the refugee family reunion rules could be “counter-productive” because it could lead to more relatives making small boat crossings to join family members in the UK.
She also said constituents had been in touch to say they were concerned about the number of flags going up on lampposts. People were worried the flags had been put up “by those who seek to divide our community, not bring it together”, Smart said.
In response, Cooper said she “strongly” supported people flying the St George’s flag. The union jack was on Labour’s membership card, she said.
I have beefed up the post at 4pm to include the quote from Yvette Cooper where she said that applications for refugees wanting to bring relatives to the UK under the family reunion scheme are being halted until new, stricter rules are in force. You may need to refresh the page to get the update to appear.
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, told MPs that “tweaking” family reunion rules was not enough. He said that all asylum seekers arriving in the UK illegally should be removed. He called for the Human Rights Act to be disapplied for asylum cases.
In response, Cooper said small boat arrivals went up tenfold when Philp was a Home Office minister.
