Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules

Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts

Tuesday 14th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

It is daunting to follow two such experts on the subject. I cannot match their eloquence, but, like them, I feel strongly that these rule changes are wrong. Some of them, we have to admit, we were warned of in the White Paper, which we discussed on 17 November. Even so, there are some surprises.

Refusing to issue visas to enable Sudanese and Afghan students to come here is new and startlingly insensitive, given that Afghan women aged 12 and over are barred from any form of education back home and that in Sudan there is the world’s worst current humanitarian crisis. It is catastrophic and heartbreaking, as the Leader of the House correctly described it earlier this afternoon. Refusing even skilled worker visas to Afghans looks very like washing our hands of a mess that is partly of our making.

In November, the Home Secretary said,

“we will create a new … visa route, solely for refugees, with a quicker path to permanent settlement”.

Where is that new route? It is not there. It is not in today’s ragbag of changes. Instead, the door is slammed shut on students from Sudan, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Cameroon.

Undoubtably the most significant change—and it was foreshadowed—is the new requirement for reassessments of refugee status for all refugees every 30 months for up to 20 years. This will do huge damage. It will hurt the people concerned, making their integration much harder. It will make it harder for them to get accommodation, it will make their children’s education harder and it will be harder for them to look for a job, which we allow a refugee to do only if the asylum application has been outstanding for over 12 months through no fault of their own. It will make it harder for them to progress in work, because employers will not invest in training workers whose right to remain here is so temporary and transitory.

In another of today’s changes, we twist the knife by imposing a new ban on refugees taking low-paid jobs, precisely the jobs in construction, social care, farming and nursing where the real shortages are. Why do we have to be so cruel, and at such cost to ourselves? Apart from the Exchequer costs discussed by the noble Lord, Lord German, of putting refugees through up to eight or nine reassessments, think of the economic activity foregone and the taxes foregone. It is an own goal. It is bad for the country, as well as being bad for the refugees. I hope it is true that some in government are urging the Home Secretary to reconsider.

For me, the most striking feature of the Paisley debate among the Scottish party leaders the other night was the huge critical audience reaction to the anti-immigrant stance of the two right-wingers. The Scottish people clearly do not feel that immigrants are a threat. Of course, the population of Scotland would decline but for immigration. Immigrants seem to be welcomed in Scotland. I hope that the Labour Party will think very hard about whether the stance that has been taken by the Home Office now is a wise one. I do not think it is wise for the country and I suspect it may not be wise for the party—although that is not my business.

Finally, I will say a word about process. I am privileged to serve on the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which is skilfully chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie. The noble Lords, Lord German and Lord Dubs, both referred to our report on the rule changes, which drew attention, in fairly scathing terms, to the undesirability of piecemeal changes, to the absence of impact assessments for all but two of these many changes, to the lack of any consultation with outside expertise and, most surprisingly to me, to the baffling inability of Home Office officials to explain how the new rules will work and to answer our questions. Some of the questions were quite basic but we got no answers. It would be very good if the Minister, who I greatly admire, or one of his Home Office colleagues, would go through the report that the committee has produced and let it have answers to the questions that officials ducked when we raised them, and which remain open. Some sort of response to our report would be very much welcomed.

We concluded, as the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, noted, that

“the Home Office has not fully thought through the implications of the policy”,

and that

“the lack of an assessment of the effects of, in particular, the reduction in the duration of refugees’ permission to stay and the changes to the occupations in which they may be permitted to work makes full scrutiny of these changes impossible”.

That is our conclusion. We concluded that we could not do our job and advise the House properly on these changes. We could not do our job and so Parliament cannot do its job. Therefore, I support both regret Motions, for reasons both substantive and procedural.

We know that primary legislation is pending. It would have been so much better to wait for the primary legislation. If these changes have to happen, we must be allowed the chance to debate them properly in primary legislation, to think it through and let Parliament think it through, or, better still, to let the Home Office think again.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I too declare an interest as a RAMP associate.

The changes to asylum law, triggered by the statement of changes, was heralded by the Home Secretary as

“the most significant reform to our migration system in modern times”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/11/25; col. 509.]

This is echoed in the Explanatory Memorandum’s explanation that this

“marks the start of introducing a new regime”.

Yet without these regret Motions, which I very much welcome, we would not even be debating this fundamental change from what the EM describes as

“an assumption of offering permanent protection … towards a more basic, and temporary protection”.

Surely, as has already been said, in the name of democratic accountability, such a significant change merits primary legislation subject to full parliamentary scrutiny in both Houses.

It is the change to the basic asylum protection that will be my main focus, but I echo my noble friend’s welcome to the extension of the Ukraine scheme and his Motion’s concern about the visa brake’s prevention of educational opportunities, including for Chevening scholars. I will leave it to colleagues to say more about this, but I simply wish to raise the question of the lack of a published equality impact assessment.

The response to my Written Question about vulnerable women from Sudan and Afghanistan who had already been selected for scholarships completely ignored the gender dimension mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. The cursory treatment of equalities in the general impact assessment displayed total ignorance of the position of women and our responsibilities under the UN’s women, peace and security agenda, for which we are penholders.

This raises a more general question about the lack of impact assessments for key measures, which, as we have heard, the Secondary Legislation and Scrutiny Committee advises makes full scrutiny impossible. The committee is somewhat dismissive of Minister Tapp’s assurance that the Home Office takes the provision of IAs “extremely seriously” and concludes that the Home Office may not have

“fully thought through the implications”

of the change in asylum protection.

I add my disappointment that we have not yet seen a child rights impact assessment. In response to an Oral Question, my noble friend the Minister assured me that such assessments

“will be conducted throughout the policy development process”.—[Official Report, 27/1/26; col. 763.]

But, in answer to a more recent Written Question, he emphasised:

“There is no legal requirement to publish Child Impact Assessments and to commit to do so would be premature given that for many of the measures, policy development is ongoing”.


So this new regime starts without parliamentarians and others having the necessary information to assess its effect on children and other asylum seekers. This is among the wider process concerns raised by the SLSC, including the total lack of consultation.

When asked about this, the Home Office responded:

“Given the pace of change”—


which surely the Home Office itself has set—

“it is not always possible to consult ahead of all policy reform”.

While the significance of some of the changes was accepted, the Home Office later stated that

“it is important to put that meaning into context for the change in question as those factors on their own do not always result in a justification for a public consultation”.

What on earth does that mean? I am not surprised that the SLSC was not convinced by the Home Office responses, and I sympathise with my noble friend the Minister, who has to defend the very poor case made by his department.

I turn to the substantive impact of the move towards temporary protection for refugees. The SLSC is similarly sceptical about the Home Office’s responses to its questions on employment and suggested that we might want to press further on this. Can my noble friend tell us what the evidential basis is for assuming that temporary protection status will improve refugees’ employment prospects, when organisations such as the Refugee Council, Freedom from Torture and the Helen Bamber Foundation argue the opposite in their submissions to the SLSC? Please could the Minister not respond that the expectation is that refugees will be able to switch to the new bespoke work and study route, which offers a speedier route to indefinite leave to remain, given that the Government still cannot say what the criteria for joining it will be or even when it will be introduced?

The mention of a fee and the possession of skills, together with changes to the occupations in which asylum seekers can seek work after 12 months, suggests that the work lane of this route might be open only to those who are able to access more skilled and better-paid jobs. That should be irrelevant to refugee status and would create a two-class system of refugees. If my noble friend cannot give us any details now about the work and study route, can he at least say when the Home Office hopes to make those details available?

On the related question of the permitted occupations open to asylum seekers after 12 months, while it is welcome that the number of available occupations will be increased, it is not clear why this cannot be in addition to the current rules rather than instead of them. As it is, and as the SLSC warns, it could mean that fewer asylum seekers are able to find work and, as we have heard, it also closes off the social care sector to them, which could have significant effects. Its report says that the Home Office has not engaged with this point, so I hope my noble friend will do so now and will also commit to monitoring the effects of the change, as called for by the SLSC.

Employment is an important element of integration, which we have heard about, which the EM, echoing Ministers, states is a key aim of this and related reforms, in line with the recently published, and welcome, social cohesion action plan. But I have not yet seen an explanation of how making refugees’ data so insecure is conducive to integration, from the point of view either of refugees themselves or of employers and landlords who might think twice, as we have heard, before taking them on. This is certainly not the view of organisations that work with refugees, including the International Rescue Committee and the UNHCR. The latter warns:

“Providing refugees with only 30 months of leave at a time is likely to be detrimental to refugees’ sense of security, belonging and stability, factors critical to positive engagement and participation in society. Status of such a temporary nature may impact on a person’s ability to find housing, seek employment, learn English and develop skills, and risks undermining the Government’s intention to enhance refugees’ ability to contribute to their new communities”.