Minister insists government committed to asylum reforms

Despite some Labour MPs' backlash, Communities Secretary Steve Reed has said that the government is fully committed to pushing through major asylum reforms. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has announced a string of reforms, including requiring refugees to wait 20 years for permanent residence and deporting more families who have been refused for asylum. Deporting children is controversial for a variety of Labour figures, including MP Stella Creasy who said it is not the British way and peer Lord Dubs who sluggishly described "using children as a weapon. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, said the plans were not appropriate, but that her party could help them get them through Parliament.

Following criticism from its own MPs, the government has been compelled to reconsider some of its programs, including cuts to welfare and the winter fuel payment. Reed said that the government was aiming to establish a fair, tolerant, and compassionate asylum system, according to BBC Radio 4's Today show. When asked about suspicions within his own party, the communities secretary replied:

We are completely committed to [the schemes]. We can't go on like this; in several respects, the country is ripping the country apart.

Reed referred to the perverse rewards in the new scheme, which he said were encouraging families to cross the Channel in small boats.

We know we must have to bring an end to this barbaric trade in human life,

he said.

When those boats capsized, 14 children who were put on those slippery dinghies and pushed out into the English Channel lost their lives over the last year.

The new program provides perverse incentives for people to put their children on a boat where their life is in risk, and we are unable to deal with it.

Mahmood told MPs on Monday that her proposals would restore order and influence the asylum system. Refugee status will be provisional and reviewed every 30 months under her administration, with refugees returning if their home country becomes secure. Refugees will need to be resident in the United Kingdom for 20 years before applying for permanent residence, up from the previous five years. After ten years for those who came in this way, new safe and legal routes will be developed. The government is also planning to remove families from their asylum cases that have been rejected, but they haven't left the country to warn them that if they refuse, they may face forced removal if the asylum seekers have refused. Around 20 Labour MPs have publicly condemned the plans, with others raising questions in private. After fleeing violence, war, and persecution, Olivia Blake, an MP for Sheffield Hallam, accused Mahmood of stoking division by saying refugees have won a golden ticket if they were to remain in the country. And Steve Witherden, MP for Montgomeryshire and Glyndwr, called on the government to

lead with coMPassion and fairness, not requiring some of our country's most endangered citizens to live in limbo for two decades. Stella Creasy, the Labour MP for Walthamstow, said she agreed the asylum system needs to be changed, but she was worried about the steps, particularly deporting asylum seekers' children who

think of this as home.

I think the British people want to contribute because they know that if you have been here 5-10 years and your children see this as home, they will arrest you and deport you is not the British way forward,

she said on the BBC's World Tonight programme. Lord Dubs, a Labour peer who migrated to the United Kingdom on the Kindertransport to escape the Nazi pogroms, said he was depressed by the government's decision to take such a hardline strategy, which would not deter people from coming here.To use children as a weapon as the home secretary is doing is a shabby thing,he told the Today show.We are a better country than that. Mahmood wrote in the Commons that it was uncomfortable news that the UK's generous asylum policy was attracting people to the UK shores relative to other European countries, and that the scheme feels out of control and unfair for British taxpayers. Mahmood said she was

not motivated by what other political groups are saying or doing

but it's a moral responsibility for me.If we do not win this case, we will lose public approval for having an asylum system at all, and, in the meanwhile, we'll lose something amazing about this country,she said.I'm not going to sit and watch this broken system cause more division in our world, and I'm certainly not able to cede this territory of safe borders to groups of the far right, the hard right, or some other groups.

She acknowledged that some Labour MPs were concerned, but that

the overwhelming majority of my coworkers support me. Max Wilkinson, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson, said he was moderately appreciating some of the changes, such as reforming rather than ripping up the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). However, he was concerned about the Home Office's workability in reviewing refugee statuses every two-and-a-half years. Badenoch said that the steps were insufficient, and that leaving the ECHR was crucial to solve the problem.

We've looked at this issue from every prospective direction,

the Conservative leader said, and the truth is that any proposal that does not include leaving the ECHR as a necessary step is wasting time we don't have. Irgently agreed with the majority of Mahmood's activities, according to party leader Nigel Farage, joking that she will be the next defector to his party.

I think a lot of what Shabana Mahmood said yesterday was motivated solely by fear that Labour are losing seats to reform,

he said, adding that her attention should be expanded to legal migration, which she said is doing serious harm to the British economy.Trying to out-Reform Reform,

Green Party MP Carla Denyer said. will only deepen divisions

.

It's not people seeking sanctuary that are ripping people apart,

she continued, "it's inflammatory, racial stories, and the scapegoating of migrants and asylum seekers for what has nothing to do with them.

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