Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s plan to crack down on illegal migrants using family to stay in the UK is facing a new major obstacle.
A watchdog that independently assesses the quality of evidence behind new rules gave the Home Office’s impact assessment of the changes a red rating, meaning it considered it “not fit for purpose”.
It means that Labour MPs already angry at the plans will have a greater incentive to rebel, while migrants appealing against deportation orders in the courts will be able to argue that the new rules are flawed.
At the moment, Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) protects the right to family life, allowing migrants who arrived in the UK illegally to avoid deportation by claiming family connections.
The Government says it granted 77,000 applications under Article 8 last year.
The Home Secretary’s new rules in her Immigration and Asylum Bill would tighten this up by narrowing the definition of family to a spouse, parents, or a child under 18.
“A domestic abuser from Poland with a string of convictions for violence was allowed to stay on the basis he was a ‘father figure’ to his nephew,” the Government says.
But the Regulatory Policy Committee (RPC) said the Home Office had failed to demonstrate that it had properly considered alternatives to the proposed restrictions.
It added that its verdict was based on its scrutiny of the “evidence and analysis supporting the case for why regulation is necessary”.
Home Office analysis suggests around 55 per cent of applicants refused under the Article 8 reforms may remain in the UK without legal status.
Its impact assessment also forecasts thousands more appeals as a result of the changes, along with significant additional costs.
But the RPC said the department had not provided a sufficiently robust explanation of the assumptions behind its analysis or adequately assessed the wider consequences.
The watchdog says its rating is advisory and “does not reflect the merits of the policy itself”.
The criticism is all the more striking given how rarely the RPC issues a red rating.
Reforms face opposition from Labour MPs
Fourteen Labour MPs voted against the legislation at second reading, when it passed the Commons by 264 votes to 90 in July.
But the potential scale of the unrest within Labour is considerably larger than that vote suggests.
As The i Paper revealed last month, almost 80 Labour MPs signed a letter challenging the Government’s separate plans to overhaul indefinite leave to remain (ILR), which would raise the standard qualifying period for settlement from five years to 10.
The MPs warned in particular against applying the changes retrospectively to people already in the UK, arguing that targeting migrants who had followed the rules in place when they arrived did not pass the “fairness test”.
Those proposals are not contained in the Bill and are instead expected to be introduced through changes to the immigration rules.
The letter also raised wider concerns about the Government’s approach to immigration, including its “hostile rhetoric” on asylum and migration, and called for ministers to “refresh the policy and unite our coalition”.
The wider row has exposed the difficult political balancing act facing ministers: trying to show they are taking a tougher approach to immigration while keeping the support of Labour MPs.
Veteran Labour peer Alf Dubs has been particularly outspoken, accusing ministers of “performative cruelty” and warning that the reforms risk putting basic human rights and compassion to one side.
The Government insists the measures are necessary to restore confidence in the asylum system, prevent abuse of legal protections and make it easier to remove people who have no right to remain.
But the RPC’s intervention raises fresh questions over whether ministers have made a sufficiently strong evidence-based case for some of the most controversial elements of their immigration crackdown.
A Home Office spokesman said: “The rating does not impact the Immigration and Asylum Bill’s progression through Parliament.
“The opinion does not apply to the entire impact assessment.
“We welcome the RPC’s feedback. We are working with the RPC in actioning their recommendations and will resubmit the relevant sections to them in September.”
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