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Summary

The British Home Office has drafted a new bill to regulate immigration in the country, proposing new pathways to receive refugees while tightening restrictions on protection claims based on human rights considerations and modern slavery laws.

When Yvette Cooper took over the Home Office in Keir Starmer's Labour government in 2024, she inherited a system she herself described as 'not fit for purpose', with asylum waiting lists peaking at over 175,000 applications in June 2023, and four out of five asylum seekers waiting more than six months for an initial decision. By March 2025, the list had fallen to around 10,000 after clearing the 'inherited' backlog from the Conservative era.

Cooper is seeking to build support for the new immigration and asylum bill among the progressive wing of the Labour Party, revealing plans to accelerate the opening of new safe and legal pathways allowing thousands of migrants to come to Britain, in exchange for tightening restrictions on asylum claims based on human rights considerations and modern slavery laws.

The Home Secretary is considered the leading candidate to remain in her post if Andy Burnham becomes Prime Minister, but the latter is under increasing pressure to clarify his stance on Cooper's immigration policies, amid discontent from a number of Labour MPs and charities who view the restrictions on asylum claims as excessively harsh.

Labour Lord Alf Dubs urged Burnham to reconsider Cooper's appointment as Home Secretary, calling for the abolition of her asylum policies which he described as 'performative cruelty'. This Labour politician, who arrived in the UK at the age of six in 1939 fleeing Nazi persecution of Jews in Czechoslovakia, said that the minister's talents 'would be better employed in another cabinet post'. He said: 'This is a moment for Labour to recalculate, where we can turn the page on the shameful language used by politicians to describe refugees, such as "invaders", "island of strangers", and "those who tear our country apart".'

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As Burnham awaits taking office next month, Cooper has softened some of her hardline positions, including reconsidering a separate proposal requiring migrants to wait 10 years instead of five to obtain permanent residence, along with her participation in talks aimed at exempting care sector workers from the scope of the proposed changes. Additionally, a dispute erupted last Friday between her and Prime Minister Keir Starmer over the future of Immigration Minister Mike Tapp, accused of leaking information about the plans to The Times and presenting them as his own ideas. Cooper demanded Tapp's dismissal, but the Prime Minister's office refused.

Sources from Burnham's camp said that Cooper is likely to retain the Home Office portfolio, although the cabinet lineup has not yet been decided. Burnham supports the broad outlines of the minister's immigration policies, although he has previously expressed reservations about applying the changes regarding permanent residence to migrants already residing in the country.

According to a Guardian report, Burnham agreed to keep the date of next Tuesday for presenting the new immigration bill, despite not officially assuming the premiership until July 20 next, according to the timetable set by Starmer.

Safe Pathways

The bill includes opening safe and legal pathways for refugees starting from autumn. The first is a community sponsorship scheme allowing local groups to choose the refugees they wish to support, a mechanism inspired by the Canadian model that has allowed the reception of 400,000 refugees since 1979.

The second new regular migration pathway is a scheme to receive university students, and the third enables employers to directly sponsor refugees. While Cooper announced that the new pathways would enable hundreds of refugees to reach the UK each year, specialist reports estimated several thousand per year, with registration applications starting within months and refugee cohorts arriving early next year.

The latest immigration statistics reveal a 50% decline in the number of refugees arriving through legal pathways in the first quarter of 2026 compared to the same period last year, with those granted protection through resettlement and family reunion not exceeding 3,600 people. It is noteworthy that the family reunion program, suspended in September 2025, was expected to resume in the spring of this year, but still has no specific date for opening applications.

The new bill includes stripping the protection afforded under modern slavery laws from any foreign national who commits a crime and receives a prison sentence, regardless of the length of the sentence, abolishing the current 12-month threshold.

The bill also rejects late claims for modern slavery protection in cases that could have been raised earlier or where fraud is suspected, and restricts the right to appeal removal decisions based on the right to family life to spouses, parents, and children under 18, except in exceptional circumstances.

On the other hand, the new law adopts an explicit legal standard stating that the deportation of foreign offenders serves the public interest and cannot be obstructed except in the most exceptional circumstances. It also requires that a family reunion claim based on the right to family life be submitted by the party residing in the UK, not the one abroad, and mandates the appointment of an independent guardian for every child who is a victim of human trafficking or exploitation, to protect their rights and support their recovery.

The White Paper

The new bill is based on the White Paper released by the government in May 2025, titled 'Restoring Control of the Immigration System', which is the most comprehensive document on this issue in decades. It classifies immigration as a 'graduated journey' rather than a guaranteed deal, and its content covers several axes from permanent residence to work and student visas.

The biggest earthquake in Cooper's plan is 'doubling the waiting period for permanent residence'. After most work and family pathways allowed applying for permanent residence after five years, the new standard becomes a decade. The proposal replaces the automatic grant of permanent residence after five years with a 'earned entitlement' system based on four criteria: character, economic contribution, community integration, and continuous residence. Migrants must prove continued employment, tax payments, community volunteering, and achieve a higher level of English.