Labour to deport more families under Mahmood’s new asylum crackdown despite growing backlash – latest

There were 90,812 people waiting for an initial decision on an asylum application in the UK at the end of June 2025.

This is down 17 per cent from 109,536 at the end of March and down 24% from 118,882 a year earlier at the end of June 2024.

The total peaked at 175,457 at the end of June 2023, which was the highest figure since current records began in 2010.

The number of people waiting more than 12 months for an initial decision stood at 27,998 at the end of June, down from 40,773 at the end of March and well below the recent peak of 91,741 in June 2023.

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A total of 111,084 people applied for asylum in the UK in the year to June 2025, the highest number for any 12-month period since current records began in 2001.

The number is up 14 per cent from 97,107 in the year to June 2024, according to the latest available figures from the Home Office.

Migrants who arrived in the UK after crossing the English Channel in small boats accounted for 39 per cent of the total number of people claiming asylum in the year to June.

The Danish government drastically changed its migration system in response to a major influx of people throughout the 2010s. As a result, asylum seekers can only get temporary residence permits for one to two years.

– Residency is subject to regular review, and can be revoked once a refugee’s home country is deemed safe.

– Refugees are usually eligible for permanent status after eight years, and in order to get it they must speak fluent Danish and are required to have had a job for several years. There are also supplementary requirements, including “active citizenship”.

– People refused asylum must live in “departure centres”, a basic standard of accommodation designed to incentivise a voluntary return home.

– Family reunification is also subject to strict tests, including that both a sponsor and their partner must be over 24 years old, in a bid to prevent forced marriages.

– A controversial policy known as the “jewellery law” allows the Danish authorities to confiscate asylum seekers’ assets, including jewellery, to help fund the costs of their stay in Denmark. Assets of “special personal significance” should not be taken.

– The authorities are also able to demolish and sell social housing in areas where more than 50 per cent of residents are from a “non-western” background, under a so-called “ghetto law” designed to prevent the formation of “parallel societies”.

– The effect of Denmark’s policies has been to reduce the number of asylum applications to the lowest number in 40 years, and remove 95 per cent of rejected asylum seekers. It has however been criticised by some opponents as racist, and elements of it were previously found to have breached human rights law.

Here, we look at what is in the policy document outlining the government’s plans, and what is in the Danish system said to have inspired it.

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There is a delicious irony that one of the principal midwives of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, was profoundly conservative, and later one of the most reactionary post-war Home Secretaries, leading opposition to the Wolfenden Inquiry’s proposal to decriminalise gay sex between consenting adults.

Yet he played a central role in the fledgling Council of Europe, serving as rapporteur of the committee that drafted what became the ECHR, which came into force in 1953. The apparent contradiction in Fyfe’s positions is less striking than it seems.

The Convention was designed as a restatement of core liberties the British believed they already enjoyed, albeit uncodified and inchoate. Few on the left or right would quarrel with the Convention’s actual text.

For many continental states, emerging from tyranny and occupation, its articles became a template for modern statements of rights. But the UK resisted incorporation for decades on a bipartisan basis. The argument was simple: we already had these rights, incorporation would be an unnecessary, continental import.

Read the full analysis from former home secretary Jack Straw here:

Sir Keir Starmer and his home secretary are facing an angry backlash over their plans to toughen up Britain’s asylum system, with Labour MPs describing the new rules as “repugnant” and “performatively cruel”.

Shabana Mahmood unveiled a raft of hardline measures on Monday aimed at discouraging asylum seekers and making it easier to remove those who have no right to remain in the country.

The prime minister said the current system was not designed to cope with a “more volatile and insecure” world – but Ms Mahmood’s announcement went much further than many in Labour had feared and is already facing resistance from backbenchers.

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Shabana Mahmood has rejected comparisons between the policies she has outlined today and Reform UK’s stance on immigration, stating that they are like “night and day”.

She told Sky News: “I just do not accept that these are similar in any way. And that is because I think it is right that we move at the moment.

“Refugee status unlocks almost immediately automatic settlement. It is right that we move away from that process. It is right that we say to people, that if you arrive illegally in this country through a small boat, for example, that will be a difficult and long path to settlement in this country, and it will be regularly reviewed because we want to privilege people who come on a safe and legal route.

“It is the direct opposite of the ‘oh, you know, draw up the drawbridge approach’ that the Reform Party and others are taking.

“They’re not interested in our international obligations of offering sanctuary to those most in need. I want to fulfil them.”

A damning new poll has indicated that almost half of all Labour voters want Sir Keir Starmer out of Downing Street by the next election.

The YouGov survey of 2,100 people found that 23 per cent of Labour voters think the prime minister should quit now and allow the party to elect a new leader while a further 22 per cent think he should stand down at some point before the next election.

Only a third, or 34 per cent, think he should continue to lead the Labour Party into the contest.

The results come after a difficult week for No10 after they insisted that the prime minister would fight any plans to oust him, with anonymous briefings suggesting health secretary Wes Streeting planned to do so.

In an interview with the Daily Mirror, Starmer vowed that he would lead Labour into the next election and attacked the speculation around his future.

The home secretary has said that Nigel Farage can “sod off” because she’s “not interested in anything he’s got to say” when questioned about his response to her asylum policy.

While the Reform UK leader has said he is “undecided” on whether to support Shabana Mahmood’s plans, he remarked that it seemed as if she was “auditioning” for a place in his party.

Speaking to Sky News, Ms Mahmood said: “I’m not going to let him live forever in my head.

“Just because he said something doesn’t mean to say that I have to respond to it just because he’s making mischief.

“The Reform Party currently has a policy to rip up indefinite leave to remain of those who have been long term settled in our country. That is immoral. It’s deeply shameful, and it is the wrong policy.”

Challenged about far-right activist Tommy Robinson’s support for her reforms, the she responded: “He’s a vile racist. He doesn’t believe I’m English, and he hates Muslims. And I’m a very proud British and English Muslim.

“I honestly find it incredibly offensive that people quote me, a man who doesn’t even think I belong in my own country.

“Frankly, he can sod off too.”