Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of (a) undertaking an urgent review of all asylum claims approved in the last ten years and (b) removing protection status for all people who entered the UK illegally.

We are committed to our international obligations under the Refugee Convention when someone claims asylum in the UK, which provide that we must not penalise an individual on account of their illegal entry or presence, if they come directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened, present themselves without delay to authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence.

The Convention establishes the principle of ‘non-refoulement’, which means that refugees must not be removed to a place where “their life or freedom would be threatened on account of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”.

Any application for further leave to remain in the UK at the end of a grant of asylum leave is considered on its merits. A review of all asylum grants over the past decade would be disproportionate.