'Current system unfair', UK toughens asylum plan

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has announced a sweeping reform of the UK’s asylum system. The home secretary on Monday unveiled her reforms to the asylum system, which she claimed was attracting too many applicants due to the "comparative generosity" of the UK's laws compared to Europe, amid growing backlash from Labour MPs. Billed as the largest change to the UK’s system in the modern era, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said it was necessary to stop people "aslyum shopping" around Europe.Shabana Mahmood’s reforms tabled in Parliament on Monday.

Speaking in the Commons soon after the full reform package was published, Mahmood said: "It starts by accepting an uncomfortable truth, while asylum claims fall across Europe, they are rising here, and that is because of the comparative generosity of our asylum offer, when compared to so many of our European neighbours."This generosity is a factor that draws people to these shores on a path that runs through other safe countries."

She noted the current asylum system “feels out of control and unfair” saying "the pace and scale of change has destabilised communities, it is making our country a more divided place." She added: "This system is broken, and it is incumbent on all Members of Parliament to acknowledge how badly broken the system is and to make it a moral mission to fix this system." The plans will see Mahmood bring forward a Bill to change how article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the right to family life, is applied in migration court cases.

Responding to Mahmood's speech in the Commons, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch branded the reforms "baby steps, but positive." She said the problems would not be solved until the UK left the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), something Mahmood has rejected.