UN agency blasts UK’S immigration overhaul plan

Britain’s proposed law to implement what it calls the biggest overhaul of asylum rules in decades “undermines established international refugee protection rules”, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said on Thursday.

Interior Minister Priti Patel — a prominent supporter of Brexit, where “taking back control” of immigration was a key campaign issue — said the current system was “overwhelmed”.

Instead, she said the proposed new law would be based “on genuine need of refuge, not on the ability to pay people smugglers”.

But the UNHCR said the bill “would penalise most refugees seeking asylum in the country via damaging and unjustified penalties, creating an asylum model that undermines established international refugee protection rules and practices”.

Whether people enter Britain legally or illegally will affect how their asylum claim progresses under the proposals.

“If people arrive illegally, they will no longer have the same entitlements as those who arrive legally, and it will be harder for them to stay,” said Patel, when unveiling the plan in March.

“If, like over 60 per cent of illegal arrivals, they have travelled through a safe country like France to get here, they will not have immediate entry into the asylum system — which is what happens today,” she added.

More than 15,000 people have now crossed the Channel from France to the UK on small boats this year — some 7,000 more than for the whole of 2020.