Shabana Mahmood vs the asylum system

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

News, Politics, Government, Daily News

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 17 November 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

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Summary

This afternoon, the Home Secretary will set out in the House of Commons her proposed reforms to the asylum system. The headline changes proposed by Shabana Mahmood have been well briefed in the weekend press: refugees will have temporary status and be required to reapply to remain in Britain every two-and-a-half years; those arriving would have to wait 20 years before they can apply for permanent settlement; and countries that refuse to take back migrants will be threatened with visa bans – Angola, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of Congo are among those likely to be initially punished. Is she the one to finally take on the migration crisis?

Lucy Dunn speaks to Tim Shipman and James Heale.

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Transcript

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0:35.5	Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots. I'm Lucy Dunn and today I'm joined by James Heel and Tim Shitman.
0:41.5	Today the focus is on Labour's asylum reforms. Home Secretary Shibana Mahmood will later this afternoon
0:47.4	announced to MPs her plans to announce tougher measures on migration. James, what has been trailed so far?
0:53.6	We know quite a lot of what we expect to have
0:55.3	this afternoon when Shabana Mahmood stands up in the house. So there's going to be a variety of different
0:59.6	changes in terms of the right of people who come here and apply for asylum status, namely they
1:05.0	will take 20 years to apply for permanent refugee status. There's going to continually be
1:09.5	reviews of people's claims to stay here every
1:12.1	two and a half years or so with much more of a focus of getting people who come here back to
1:16.4	countries once they become so-called safe countries again. So there's been lots of briefing in the
1:19.9	papers today about different countries that could affect, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo
1:23.9	and Angola, among others. What we also know is that she's going to be looking at these
1:28.5	two controversial articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 3 and Article 8,
1:33.0	which refer to the freedom from torture and the right to a family life. And so there's going to
1:37.5	be a predicted tightening of both of these requirements. The one to family life will be much more
1:42.6	direct family rather than a sort of second cousin or some such. And protection from torture will make clear that there's exemption for
1:48.4	those who are sort of criminals who committed and broken the law here in this country.
1:52.4	It's also going to be different changes in terms of benefit rights. So it'll be much harder
1:56.3	to claim benefits if you are someone who's a asylum seeker, that kind of financial support
	...

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