Keir Starmer has announced automatic and settlement and family reunion rights will be scrapped for people granted asylum after attacking Nigel Farage over ‘Farage boats’
Keir Starmer has announced an end to “golden tickets” to setting in the UK with a string of measures stripping back the rights of asylum seekers.
The Prime Minister said automatic settlement and family reunion will end in a move he claims will deter small boat crossings. On Thursday Mr Starmer will meet European leaders in Copenhagen, Denmark, where he will also discuss changes to long-term settlement rules in a bid to win back voters from Reform.
The PM went on the attack, branding small boats as “Farage boats” and saying Nigel Farage was wrong to claim Brexit would have no impact on migration. Unveiling the new measures he said: “I believe that if you want to come to the UK, you should contribute to our society.
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“That is the tolerant and fair approach to migration that our communities are built on, but the current system is not fit for purpose. That is why we’re making fundamental changes to what those granted asylum are afforded in the UK.
“Settlement must be earned by contributing to our country, not by paying a people smuggler to cross the channel in a boat. The UK will continue to play its role in welcoming genuine refugees fleeing persecution.
“But we must also address the pull factors driving dangerous and illegal small boats crossings. There will be no golden ticket to settling in the UK, people will have to earn it.”
It comes after Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced it would be harder to get granted indefinite leave to remain (ILR) in the UK.
She said people who migrate to the UK will have to learn English to a high standard, have clean criminal records and contribute to society – for example by volunteering – in order to get ILR. At the moment people qualify for ILR – which means they can live, study and work in the UK permanently – after five years.
Labour is already consulting on plans to extend this to 10 years.
Mr Starmer is under mounting pressure to tackle small boat crossings and drive down net migration. In recent days ministers have stepped up attacks on Mr Farage, who wants to scrap ILR altogether and remove people who already have it.
It would place hundreds of thousands of people legally in the UK of risk, and experts warn the draconian plan could collapse the NHS.
Mr Starmer has branded the policy racist – although he said yesterday(WED) he does not think Mr Farage or his supporters are.
But he lashed out at Mr Farage over small boats, dubbing them “Farage boats”. He said the Reform leader had been “wrong” to claim during the Brexit referendum campaign in 2016 that leaving the EU would make no difference to migration policy.
The PM told GB News: “We’ve now done that, but now we need to ramp that up. I would gently point out to Nigel Farage and others that before we left the EU, we had a returns agreement with every country in the EU and he told the country it would make no difference if we left. He was wrong about that.
“These are Farage boats, in many senses, that are coming across the Channel.” It comes after a similar call for small boats to be referred to as Brexit boats was made at the Lib Dem conference last week.
Critics argue that losing a returns agreement with Europe played into the hands of smuggling gangs. French President Emmanuel Macron said in the summer that Brexit had impacted Britain’s ability to remove people and was encouraging crossings.
Under the Dublin Convention – which applies in the EU – there is a provision to return asylum seekers to the first member state they arrived in. No alternative arrangement was reached when the UK left the bloc.
The Government claims the measures, announced ahead of the European Political Community Summit – where Mr Starmer will co-chair a roundtable on illegal migration – will show the UK is no “soft touch”.
Reform’s head of policy Zia Yusuf accused Labour of “incitement to violence” – while claiming Mr Farage has had his security detail slashed by the Parliamentary Security Department.
Mr Yusuf told Times Radio: “Two weeks ago, the authorities cut Nigel’s security detail by 75%, and then we have seen the most extraordinary 48 hours of demonisation, and I’m going to say it again, incitement to violence against the man who is the bookmakers’ favourite to be the next prime minister.”
A spokesperson for the House of Commons said: “Any assessment of an individual MP’s security arrangements or advice is subject to a rigorous risk-based assessment, conducted by security professionals and with input from a range of professional authorities.
“Whilst these are naturally kept under continuous review, we do not comment on specific details so as not to compromise the safety of MPs, parliamentary staff or members of the public.”
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