The asylum system in the UK is broken. The Next Century Foundation argues that streamlining the process and granting asylum seekers the right to work would go a long way in fixing the system. This is necessary to ensure that meeting the needs of the existing UK population and meeting the needs of asylum seekers is not a zero sum game.

Nationalities and Borders Act 2022

The UK’s asylum system was overhauled when the Nationality and Borders Bill passed in April this year. It introduced the UK-Rwanda migration and economic development partnership where asylum seekers whose claims are not granted are relocated to Rwanda, even if they have no connection there. It also increased the threshold of proof for establishing someone as a refugee and introduced a two-tier asylum system meaning those who enter the UK from irregular means might have less protection and support.

Substantial reform is needed in the asylum system, but this Act is far from the answer. To fully implement the Act, the UK would have to leave the European Commission for Human Rights – an option becoming increasingly likely under Suella Braverman’s Home Office leadership. There need to be incremental reforms to restore dignity and respect to asylum seekers in the UK, while minimising pressures on the public purse. In large part, this lies in significantly reducing the backlog of asylum claims to be processed. To do so, parts of the process need to stop being outsourced, lawyers considering asylum applications need to be better informed, and asylum seekers should be given a right to work.

Asylum Processing Centres

In the current system, when asylum seekers arrive in the UK and following their initial screening, they are placed in asylum processing centres. Initially, these centres were meant to be used only to register asylum seekers. They were only meant to stay there for a few week at most. However, as backlogs grew, so did the length of asylum seekers’ stays in these centres. Today, asylum seekers stay in these processing centres for months, and in some occasions a year or more. After this initial accommodation, asylum seekers may be moved to dispersal accommodation elsewhere in the country. The housing for asylum seekers, like the claim processing, is managed and carried out at a national level by the Home Office.

Accommodation provided to these asylum seekers are often hotels which are subcontracted out to companies such as Serco. These companies are for profit – this leads to shoe-string budgets which prioritise profits.

In these processing centres, asylum seekers have limited freedoms. While in theory, they have liberty to leave and return to the centres at will, they are often in remote locations at the edge of cities. Residents who live in centres which provide food receive only £8 per week, so in reality, they are near unable to pay for a bus ticket to exercise their theoretical liberties. These limited freedoms, paired with residents being largely constituted of young men of working age, lead to them often turning to the informal economy, being exploited, and turning to gangs. This frames them negatively in the public eye, and does not allow them to be treated with basic dignity and respect. Reforms to allow them to earn income in the formal economy and exercise their liberties without turning to dangerous activities would prevent this.

While asylum processing centres are typically in urban, labour controlled councils, the asylum seekers can often be redistributed without say on when or where. This has negative consequences on asylum seekers, particularly children. They can spend months trying to get a school place somewhere close to their accommodation, in an education system where finding places is already difficult. It is possible that councils find them a place, but within a matter of weeks, they may be moved by the Home Office across the country, and must begin their hunt for a school place from scratch.  This is frustrating not only for the asylum seekers, but also for the councils who try and make lived experiences of asylum seekers as comfortable as possible in elements beyond housing, and spend parts of their budgets on finding them places in schools only for it to be reversed entirely if or when they are moved to a different accommodation.

Necessary Changes

At a non-political level

Streamlining the asylum process and reducing the backlog is key to solving issues in the asylum system including lack of liberty, dignity, and respect; and participation in the informal economy. It will also reduce the burden on taxpayers and the public purse, thereby allowing existing UK residents and citizens to have better access to public resources and reduce the divide between migrant and native communities in the UK by tackling the grievances commonly felt by the British public towards asylum seekers.

Streamlining and reducing backlog in the asylum system relies on increasing funding to train workers in the system and lawyers processing the claims, to stop outsourcing parts of the process such as asylum processing centres, and giving refugees the right to work, even if limited.

The asylum system needs to be given the funding it deserves in order to make sure that staff in the system have the proper training to deal with people who are sometimes traumatised and victims of torture to make sure they’re given the dignity and respect they deserve. Properly training and informing lawyers will reduce the rate of appeals and make for a less bureaucratic appeals process. Under the current system, asylum seekers who receive a negative asylum assessment can appeal multiple times before they get deported or need to start a new application.

Parts of the process such as accommodation should not be outsourced. Privatising these parts of the process means that the suppliers prioritise profit over people, and so the money spent by the government on the asylum system lines the pockets of these companies rather than going directly to the migrants in need. Public funds spent on outsourcing could therefore be reduced, and injected into other parts of the process such as adequate training for lawyers to streamline the process.

Calls have been made by think tanks across the political spectrum to grant asylum seekers the right to work. From the Adam Smith Institute on the right to the Institute for Public Policy Research on the left, all say that asylum seekers working is a good idea. In the Adam Smith Institute’s view, it would mean that asylum seekers would provide for themselves, causing less strain on the public purse. Greater funding would therefore be able to go into application processing and training lawyers to make correct decisions to minimise appeals, thereby streamlining and lessening the backlogs in the system. In the IPPR’s view, granting this right will give the asylum seekers greater dignity, gives them ways to fill their time without entering the informal economy, and will allow them to contribute to society. This will also serve as a way to reduce public greivances towards asylum seekers as they will have the opportunity to rely less on the British public funds and will be able to pay taxes to contribute towards funding their asylum processing costs.

The system is long, complicated, and designed to catch people out. Tidying it up would save the taxpayer money and reduce grievances of it in wider society. Asylum seekers should be given the right to work, lawyers and extended staff in the asylum system should receive adequate training, and contracts for asylum processing centres should not be subcontracted out to private sector contractors who have failed time and time again to provide a good service – this people-oriented service must not be run for profit.

At the political level

Although these changes are necessary to save the current asylum system, reduce the backlog, and lessen the strain on public funds, the decision to do so ultimately rests on the shoulders of the elected government.

Under Liz Truss’ new Cabinet, Suella Braverman will instigate major changes. She has promised to force through the Nationalities and Borders Act’s controversial Rwanda offshoring policy by leaving the European Commission for Human Rights. Furthermore, given the current administration’s approach to lessening pressures on the asylum system is to deter them, it is unlikely to improve the functioning of the current system, especially not by granting asylum seekers the right to work. This will be framed as inviting more asylum seekers to the UK. Making the suggested reforms and granting asylum seekers the right to work is economically sound, but the changes in policy to grant this are ultimately political decisions. There is little likelihood for the asylum system and policies surrounding asylum seekers to change until the next general election. Even at the next general election, party manifestos will only reflect reforms that the electorate will support and vote for.

Public sentiment regarding asylum seekers and migrants more broadly happens on a pendulum. It swings from hospitality and humanitarianism to hostility. Relying on public sentiment to instigate radical change in the asylum system is not realistic. Instead, pragmatism is needed at a governmental level to achieve realistic, sustainable change. This and any future government need to recognise that in this system, they need to make sure that they will reduce backlogs, create a more streamlined process, and frame these reforms as increased economic efficiency for it to be popular among the electorate. Once the process has begun, there will be scope to incrementally improve and reform the system until it functions once more, or until a new one is eventually implemented.

Above all, asylum seekers need to be given dignity and respect. Those are the very basics of human rights and international refugee law which are currently being ignored. The suggestions laid out in this blog must be implemented in order to achieve this basic goal.

Thank you

Thank you to Rattan Singh for his valuable insights on the asylum system and process in the UK. Rattan in his role at Coventry City Council has worked extensively with refugees from Afghanistan, Syria, and Ukraine, and with asylum seekers from a broad variety of nationalities, including from Iraq, the Tigray region, and Iran in asylum processing centres.