Shabana Mahmood should ignore Labour backbenchers’ views on illegal immigration and “press ahead” with policies to make it harder for migrants to permanently settle in the UK, a former Labour home secretary has said.
Alan Johnson said the Home Secretary would “always get a kickback” from Labour MPs on efforts to clamp down on illegal migration, but “the more she listens to her backbenchers, the worse it’ll be”.
Mahmood is trying to push through a raft of measures aimed at tightening up the immigration system, including making most immigrants wait at least 10, rather than five, years for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) and applying it retrospectively to people already in the UK. For refugees, it could take 20 years.
The Home Secretary wants to follow Denmark in making refugee status temporary, with asylum seekers’ cases reviewed every 30 months and individuals returned to their country of origin if it is deemed to have become safe for them.
The Immigration and Asylum Bill, which is currently moving through Parliament, would also change how human rights and modern slavery laws are applied to asylum applications to combat what the Home Office describes as “vexatious” claims.
The measures are aimed at reducing “pull” factors which encourage people to cross the Channel in small boats.
However, they have sparked a backlash in the Parliamentary Labour Party, with The i Paper revealing last month that nearly 80 Labour MPs had signed a private letter to Andy Burnham urging him to “pause” Mahmood’s reforms.
Johnson served in the Cabinets of both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and from 2009 to 2010 was home secretary.
In an interview with the Policy Exchange think-tank as part of a series of interviews with 14 former home secretaries, Johnson urged Mahmood to stay the course with her reforms.
Asked for his advice for Mahmood, Johnson said: “Don’t listen too much to your Labour colleagues – press ahead. When you’re doing something that really needs to be done, particularly on illegal immigration, you always get a kickback, and she’s got to carry on.”
Johnson said that “there are always things which could be amended” as the Immigration and Asylum Bill progresses through Parliament, but added: “The basic point is that you’ve got to stop this pull factor.
“We have a system where there are a number of reasons why people want to come here – predominantly the English language, but coming here illegally and knowing you can disappear into the workforce much more successfully than any other country is one of the reasons.”
Johnson said Mahmood was also right to follow Denmark in making refugee status temporary.
“There’s a case for reviewing whether granting someone asylum from a country five years ago is still relevant now”, he said.
“The issue there is about families settling down, and I understand the concerns about that. That is why there could be some amendments as it goes through. But she’s right to take the Danish route.”
Suggesting the Labour backbenchers are out of step with public opinion on immigration, he added: “The more she listens to her backbenchers, the worse it’ll be, because it’s a very big issue for the public.”
Johnson indicated that if Labour is unable to fix the small boats crisis, voters could end up opting for much more hardline measures under a Reform UK government instead.
Asked whether politicians should spend more or less time talking about immigration, he said: “Illegal immigration is, of course, a tiny proportion of overall immigration. But pictures of people coming illegally into this country, people feel really, really strongly about it, and it’s no good suddenly thinking that, “We’ve done this to death; let’s move on”. We need to have the right policies to address it, or someone else will.
“This is Shabana’s main argument: ‘If we don’t do it, there’s a very, very different approach from a very different party, and they’ll end up in Government’.”
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