Home Office Suspends Family Reunion Applications For Asylum Seekers
Cooper told the Commons "substantial reforms are needed now" (Alamy)
3 min read
The government is temporarily suspending all applications to bring family members to the UK under the asylum system, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has announced.
Cooper announced the step as part of changes to the asylum system in the House of Commons, including "a new system for family migration".
Parliament returned on Monday after a recess dominated by immigration, with a series of protests taking place nationwide outside hotels housing asylum seekers in recent weeks.
Cooper said the UK has a "long and proud history" of "doing our bit to help those fleeing persecution or conflict".
However, she said that the system "has to be controlled and managed based on fair and properly enforced rules, not chaos and exploitation driven by criminal smuggler gangs", adding "substantial reforms are needed now".
The Home Secretary said the current rules for family reunion for refugees "were designed many years ago to help families separated by war, conflict and persecution", but the way those are being used has changed, with refugees applying to bring family to the UK around a month after protection is granted.
This is compared with the pre-pandemic trend of one or two years after they had been granted protection, Cooper said.
Cooper said the government would this week take steps to temporarily suspend new applications under the existing dedicated refugee family reunion route.
Cooper said that immediate changes were needed to alleviate the "immediate pressures on local authorities" and to stop "criminal gangs" from using family reunion as a "pull factor" to tempt refugees into boat crossings.
The Home Secretary said the government continues to believe that "families staying together is important" and said family groups will be prioritised among the applicants to come to Britain under the returns deal with France.
She added that later this year, the government will set out a new system for family migration, including looking at contribution requirements, longer periods before newly granted refugees can apply, and dedicated controlled arrangements for unaccompanied children and for those fleeing persecution who have family in the UK.
The Home Secretary also announced the creation of a new independent body to deal with immigration and asylum appeals.
She said the body would be "fully independent of government, staffed by professionally trained adjudicators with safeguards to ensure high standards".
She also said that the first returns under the UK-France 'one-in, one out' returns deal would begin later this month.
Immigration dominated the Parliament's summer recess after Epping Forest District Council successfully applied for an injunction to temporarily stop asylum seekers from being housed at the Bell Hotel in Epping.
Last week, the Home Office and the hotel's owners won an appeal against the injunction, meaning the asylum seekers will remain at the property.
Labour has pledged to close all asylum hotels by 2029, and Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in an interview with BBC Radio 5 Live on Monday that he would like to bring that deadline forward.
Reform UK's leader Nigel Farage has pledged to withdraw the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights, repeal the Human Rights Act and disapply a series of international treaties to make deporting failed asylum seekers easier.
Starmer called Reform's proposal "fanciful" and "unworkable".
The government is opposed to leaving the ECHR, partly due to the impact it could have on Northern Ireland's Good Friday Agreement, but says that the treaty needs reform.
Cooper is overseeing a review of Article 8 of the ECHR, which sets out the right to respect for private and family life.
