Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts

Tuesday 14th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Teather (LD)]

It is always a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett. I am hugely grateful to the noble Lords, Lord German and Lord Dubs, for providing an opportunity for the House to discuss the Government’s changes to the asylum, refugee and settlement system.

I should begin with some context. After I left the other place, I spent nearly a decade working for the Jesuit Refugee Service, first internationally, supporting projects in the Middle East and South Sudan, and then running the UK office for nine years until early last year. JRS UK supports asylum seekers and refugees facing destitution or detention, providing legal advice, accommodation and much more besides. It is this perspective that I bring to this debate.

There is much to regret in the raft of changes announced by the Government to the asylum system, as many other noble Lords have already pointed out in this debate, and of course—as the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee pointed out—a huge amount that remains profoundly unclear. In the interests of brevity, I will focus my remarks tonight on the one change that I fear will create the most human misery for refugees and will be deeply counterproductive to integration and social cohesion. That is the reduction in the duration of leave to remain for refugees to 30 months and the requirement to reapply repeatedly for up to 20 years before achieving permanent settlement.

My experience of working alongside asylum seekers and refugees suggests that offering only temporary protection, coupled with the requirement to endure regular cycles of jeopardy to apply for renewal, will leave refugees in a near-permanent state of precarity and vulnerability. It is very likely to undermine refugees’ ability to settle, to integrate, to get work, to keep work—as the noble Lord, Lord German, remarked in relation to the Ukrainian scheme—to engage in education and to lay down roots. It is likely to affect their ability to rent housing, to leave them more vulnerable to exploitation and to damage personal relationships.

Children and young people in refugee households will grow up in this instability, which could potentially last the whole of their lives. How will that affect their schooling and educational choices? Concern about the impact of reducing the duration of leave is shared by every refugee charity that has spoken publicly about the changes. It is laid out in detail in submissions to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee by, for example, the Helen Bamber Foundation, Freedom from Torture, ILPA and the Refugee Council. All are also asking why this change has been introduced before making clear other elements of the core protection system and work and study route.

The Jesuit Refugee Service works closely with people with insecure immigration status over many years, giving a window into the likely impacts of temporary forms of protection for refugees. That experience suggests that uncertainty and insecurity over immigration status has a profound and lasting impact on people’s mental health. Indeed, the agony of enduring enforced limbo was an issue that came up repeatedly in JRS research documenting asylum seekers’ experiences of waiting for decisions, with many describing it as wasting their life. The Government are now proposing to extend this misery even beyond the point of grant of status.

Refugees have often experienced significant trauma, including torture and trafficking. Uncertainty and prolonged limbo are not conditions that facilitate healing and recovery. I recall vividly refugees who had attended the JRS UK drop-in for years but felt able to begin trauma counselling and to grieve for what they had lost only once they had papers and knew that they would be safe. This is a point echoed in the evidence submitted by the Helen Bamber Foundation and Freedom from Torture to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee.

The Government’s stated aim for this policy change is

“to change perceptions of what the refugee offer is in the UK”.

The pull factors argument is often employed by Ministers as an explanation for making the process more unpleasant, but it has never been shown in practice to make much difference. Furthermore, these rules will be applied to people who are already here, as it is applied retrospectively to anyone who made an asylum application or submitted further submissions to an asylum claim on or after 2 March 2026.

Lastly, I heard the Minister’s answer to my question and to other noble Lords in the Chamber earlier today that renewing leave would be a straightforward process, with reviews supported by AI. I gently suggest that, from all my dealings with the Home Office over a 23-year period, first as a constituency MP responding to immigration casework in my advice surgery in Brent, and then as director of JRS UK, the idea that the Home Office is likely to manage a huge additional volume of decision-making without delays, muddle and error does not bear any contact with reality.

What happens to people’s lives when renewal decisions start to take months to resolve? What will be the ramifications of delay for individuals’ personal decisions on whether to marry or take work or study, invest in volunteering or build relationships in their local community? If people lose work when the bureaucracy slows or because the anxiety makes sustaining that work difficult, will that be held against them in the new work and study route? It is an intolerable burden to place on the shoulders of people who have already suffered enough at the hands of their own country, in the journey to get here and in our byzantine asylum process. We risk crushing often highly gifted individuals, denying them the chance to begin their life again and contribute to Britain, as they are desperate to do. I urge the Minister to think again.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, I recognise that the Government wish to reduce migration and that this requires public support. However, like all others who have spoken this evening, I am very concerned about some of the changes to the Immigration Rules, including the reduction in time for refugee status from five years to 30 months, for all the reasons that have been given this evening.

I will focus on the visa ban for students from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan. I am utterly dismayed that brilliant students who were hoping to come to our universities, following rigorous selection procedures and on fully funded scholarships, have had their hopes, dreams and futures shattered. This has a profound effect on the individuals but also on their countries, on our universities and on our reputation.

The Written Ministerial Statement said of the ban:

“Its key aim is to reduce the strain on the asylum system. It will also strengthen public confidence in the immigration system”.


I believe that the ban poorly serves both purposes. The Home Secretary has spoken of a “surge” of people from the four countries claiming asylum in the UK. There has been a large percentage increase in recent asylum claims from these countries, but the actual numbers of students who have claimed asylum from those four countries is minuscule in the context of overall immigration. This ban is a monumental sledgehammer to crack a nut, which has a disproportionate impact on hugely talented individuals from the most difficult and dangerous parts of the world—young people whose talents are desperately needed to bring about change in our world. As the noble Lord, Lord German, said, all four of these countries are on the International Rescue Committee’s emergency watch list. This means that they are among the 20 most fragile and conflict-affected places on earth, with humanitarian emergencies that are likely to worsen in the next 12 months.

The visa brake will have a specific impact, as has been said, on women and girls from Afghanistan, who suffer such severe restrictions on access to education. I firmly believe that we have a duty to give opportunities to outstanding students from these countries. They would in future make outstanding contributions to democratic renewal, peace, institution building and economic and social reform in their own countries. Importantly, they would also make a fantastic contribution to our own universities. I know this to be the case because at Oxford I have worked with many students from the four countries—courageous young people and leaders of tomorrow, who have come through so much to come to our country. They have had to study so much in their own countries. They are quite extraordinary young people. They are sanctuary students. The concept of sanctuary is one that I firmly espouse. It is a principle that defines our humanity. I believe that the visa ban undermines that principle.

There are countless examples of exceptional young people from the four countries who come to this country on student visas. They excel in their studies, and some of them are now doing stellar research that will literally change the world in, for example, medicine, climate change and environmental policies.