Plans to fast-track the deportation of illegal migrants and a major overhaul of human rights law are to be announced by Shabana Mahmood as part of sweeping reforms of the UK’s asylum policy.
Those granted asylum will be returned home if their country is at any time deemed safe, and they will have to wait 20 years to apply to settle permanently.
Mahmood will also say the UK will stop granting visas to people from three African countries if their governments do not improve co-operation on removals.
The home secretary hopes this bolder approach will reduce the number of people arriving and remaining in the UK, although the plans have already come in for criticism.
The changes aim to speed up deportations of failed asylum seekers and foreign criminals, as well as make it more difficult for successful asylum seekers to remain.
Mahmood told the BBC on Sunday: “This is a moral mission for me, because I can see illegal migration is tearing our country apart, it is dividing communities.”
She said the “pace and scale” had been destabilising and that to “maintain the generosity that allows us to provide sanctuary, we must restore order and control”.
Asylum claims in Britain are at a record high, with around 111,000 applications in the year to June 2025, according to official figures.
The appeals system currently has a backlog of more than 50,000 and a waiting time of at least a year. The government sees overhauling the system as crucial in order to rebuild public confidence that it can stem the numbers coming to the UK.
Under the plans, which have been criticised by some Labour MPs as well as opposition parties, people will be restricted to arguing their grounds for appeal within a single appeal and if a case fails, they will be deported.
The government will argue that these restrictions would give room to create new safe and legal routes for refugees through work and study routes.
The government will follow the Danish model of creating an independent body to fast-track the deportation of foreign criminals and cases with little prospect of success through the appeals system.
Tighter restrictions would be placed on successful asylum seekers, who will have their case reviewed every two and a half years – and if their home country is considered safe they will be returned.
A refugee will have to have been resident in the UK for 20 years, up from the current five years, in order to apply for permanent residence or indefinite leave to remain.
Housing and weekly allowances – either £9.95 a week for those whose food is provided or £49.18 a week for those in self-catered accommodation – will also no longer be guaranteed for asylum seekers.
The home secretary is also expected to announce another Danish-inspired move, which is to take possessions and savings to pay for accommodation, including cars and e-bikes – although unlike in Denmark this will not include jewellery and sentimental items like wedding rings.
The Home Office says this is because some asylum seekers are getting gifts of money from relatives at the same time as living in free accommodation and receiving a small financial allowance from the UK government.
Mahmood also wants to overhaul how human rights legislation, including Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) which covers the right to family life, is applied – only those with immediate family in the UK, such as a parent or child, will be able to use Article 8 as grounds to stay.
And the UK will join other countries in reforming Article 3 of the ECHR, which is designed to give people protection against inhuman or degrading treatment.
The government believes this has been used to support unreasonable claims, including serious criminals having their deportation blocked because their healthcare needs cannot be met.
As first reported in the Times, the threat of visa bans for Angola, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of Congo comes after thousands of illegal migrants and criminals from the three nations were said to be in the UK.
A Home Office source said the countries were being targeted “for their unacceptably low cooperation and obstructive returns processes”.
Ahead of Mahmood’s statement to MPs, the prime minister’s official spokesman denied that the government was “chasing hard-right voters”.
Asked whether the government was “talking the language of Reform”, he added: “No, we are talking the language of dealing with an asylum system that is in chaos.”
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the plans were “a small step in the right direction” and her party would work with the government to get them through Parliament.
However, she added that the proposals were “nowhere near enough” and called on the government to go further, including by leaving the ECHR and removing everyone who arrives in the country illegally.
The plans have prompted criticism from some Labour MPs, including the MP for Folkestone Tony Vaughn, who said he agreed action needed to be taken “to regain public trust” in the asylum system but opposed the idea of temporary asylum “on principle”.
“A particular problem that I have is around the idea we should be trying to kick refugees out despite having granted them protection,” Vaughn, who is an immigration barrister, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“I think the idea is we review their status after two-and-a-half years on a rolling basis and then hopefully at some point their country will be safe and we can deport them – I think that’s completely the wrong position in principle.”
Vaughn said the proposals risked creating “limbo and alienation” and called on the government to instead clear the asylum appeals backlog, make decisions on claims more quickly, and ramp up the France-UK returns deal pilot.
Speaking on the same programme, Asylum and Border Security Minister Alex Norris said the 20-year rule would only apply to new arrivals, but he said he did want to tackle the 50% of refugees who “end up on benefits”.
Norris said: “If your intention is to come to this country illegally… sit at home, not contribute, not learn English, integrate into the community, not to build a life… then that’s going to come with much greater checks.”
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said the home secretary “sounds like a Reform supporter”.
“It’s a shame that the Human Rights Act, ECHR and her own backbenchers mean that this will never happen,” he added.
Liberal Democrats home affairs spokesperson Max Wilkinson said the government should “focus on processing claims quickly, getting them right first time, and swiftly deporting people with no right to be here”.
Enver Solomon, chief executive at the Refugee Council, said rather than deter migrants, the 20-year time frame would “leave people in limbo and in tense anxiety for many, many years”.
