Britain’s asylum system is in need of reform. At the end of last year, there were 166,261 asylum applications awaiting a decision – a 200 per cent increase from just three years ago. As a result of slow decision making, there’s a bottleneck in the system, meaning normal asylum accommodation is full and £5.6 million is being spent every day on hotel accommodation for asylum seekers. New plans announced in March also mean asylum-seekers currently in hotels will be moved to disused army barracks and barges.
The Prime Minister recognised the degree of public concern in his pledge to stop dangerous journeys being made across the Channel in small boats. But the crossings are just one symptom of an asylum system which is struggling to meet its obligations. And with the humanitarian crises of the past decade – Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine – the stakes are only getting higher.
Whatever the solution, there is undoubtably an urgency in the humanitarian situation
But is the political will there to find an effective solution? Will the public be willing to accept what the government is offering? In early February, The Spectator hosted a panel discussion, chaired by our editor Fraser Nelson, to answer a vital question: can Britain’s asylum system be fixed?
Held in association with the British Red Cross, the panel drew experts from the media, politics, and the charity sector. The British Red Cross is the largest independent provider of refugee support in the UK, supporting 30,000 refugees and people seeking asylum in the UK every year.
CEO Mike Adamson opened the discussion by highlighting the scale of the challenge: ‘Many of the problems you see today are not the fault of the men, women and children seeking sanctuary, but the fault of complex world affairs, and our asylum system’s shortcomings, inefficiencies and failures.’
Yet in the UK, the response is insufficient, he said: ‘I think we all agree the system isn’t working. It’s not working for the 51 people who died in the channel over the last year. It’s not working for the 160,000 people caught in the system. It’s not working for the taxpayer who’s paying £6 million a day for the tens of thousands of people who are being accommodated in hotels.’
How did we end up here? The panel identified several reasons behind the apparent failings of the system: the decline of legal routes for entry, administrative errors, and mismanagement of expectations by successive administrations. Lord Harrington, former minister of state for refugees, said that legal routes to entry for refugees and asylum seekers had been very successful in previous years: ‘We’ve settled, in less than a year, more than 160,000 people from Ukraine. The legal routes are working well. And I do think that the government deserves some credit for that when it’s the small boats that get the publicity.’
Yet the restriction of these legal routes was having an adverse impact. Matt Dathan, home affairs correspondent at the Times, saw the reluctance to build on these successful programmes as driven by the government’s desire to reduce immigration: ‘The reality is that the government don’t want to offer more people to come to the UK.’ This reluctance was incentivising illegal crossings, he said. ‘There aren’t any non-country-specific legal routes out there… so the only option is to come here illegally.’
Mike agreed that the decline in legal routes to entry was a significant factor. And for those able to reach the UK, administrative errors meant the system was incapable of processing applications efficiently, driving up the backlog: ‘We are not processing the kind of numbers of people that we actually processed in the early Noughties […] At the moment, 30 to 40 per cent of people who appeal after an unsuccessful claim are successful. That’s because we’re not good enough at making the decisions first time. We’ve got to run this whole system much better, in a fair, compassionate, and cost-effective way.’ In 2014, almost nine in ten applications (87 per cent) received an initial decision within six months. In the first quarter of last year, only one in ten did.
The political framing of the debate has also led to unnecessary public exasperation. Matt recounted the way unrealistic targets about immigration numbers had caused frustration to mount: ‘We saw what happened when David Cameron and Theresa May pledged these [immigration] caps that raised the expectation and made it such a politically charged issue, because obviously the Tories kept on missing the caps and missing the targets. And if you keep on missing your promises as politicians, the public is going to get angry.’
There was debate about the impact of the asylum system on public services. Emily Carver, presenter at GB News and columnist for ConservativeHome, felt that strain on local government was a major factor undermining support for the asylum system. In the context of increasing pressure on public finances and growing demand for services, this was eroding confidence in the UK government’s ability to meet its obligations. ‘You speak to local councillors, and they are so frustrated that they don’t even get a consultation with the Home Office,’ she noted. ‘The Home Office essentially unilaterally makes the decision to place a number of asylum seekers in their ward, and they’re just told to deal with it. No extra money really sent to the council. The options are you either raise the council tax or you reduce spending elsewhere.’
In spite of growing pressures, Lord Harrington felt that there remained strong support from the British public for the UK’s continuing participation in resettlement schemes: ‘The research I know on our Syrian programme and on our Ukrainian programme is that it’s very popular with people. People support it. People are not against refugees in this country.’
What options are available to get the system working? Administrative reform and expansion of legal routes were just two areas considered by the panel. Mike argued for several more steps for the UK to take: ‘We’d like to see an expansion of safe routes to previous levels and beyond of the resettlement programs from the countries that are causing people to flee. We’d like to see an increase in the use of family reunion to enable families to come back together. We’d like to explore the possibility of new approaches like humanitarian visas.’
Lord Harrington felt there were practical steps the government could take which would incentivise the use of legal routes instead of dangerous Channel crossings, recalling his experience on the Syria resettlement scheme: ‘Why can’t we assess people out of this country? When I set up the Syrian program, which David Cameron made as a legal route when the war happened, we assessed people in the countries around Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. We gave them proper interviews. We assessed them there and then so when they came over here, they came with a visa. And it seems to me that there must be much more scope for that.’
Whatever the solution, there is undoubtably an urgency in the humanitarian situation. As the backlog of asylum cases grows and applicants continue to make the treacherous Channel crossing in small boats, the UK is at a point where crucial steps are needed to avert a moral and political crisis.
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