Labour must fix the asylum system - but I have two very real concerns with Mahmood's plans, writes Labour's Tony Vaughan

And she is right to say that it falls to this Labour Government to introduce meaningful, practical change to fix the system.

The critical question is not whether the asylum system is fine as it. The question is what change and how.

There are very clear positives in the asylum policy paper: expansion of safe and legal routes to claim asylum – avoiding the need to make a dangerous crossing; community sponsorship of refugees; commitment to cutting decision and appeal backlogs.

But I want to talk about just two very real concerns I have about these proposals.

First, the idea that we should make refugee status temporary, with rolling reviews for up to 20 years until the Government decides their home country is “safe” will create a cloud of chronic uncertainty plaguing refugees’ lives.

They can never become one of us, at least not for a decade or two in many cases.

This plan, through requiring constant reassessments of refugees’ status, creates a perverse misallocation of precious Home Office resources at a time when our public finances are stretched.

The Refugee Council estimates that if this policy were in place now, the Home Office would need to review the status of potentially 1.4 million refugees between now and 2035, costing the Home Office hundreds of millions of pounds.

Why is that a better use of money than deciding initial claims, and handling appeals and removals – the bread and butter of the asylum system?

Second, I am concerned that the Government is tying itself up with doing things that will not have any effect on irregular arrivals of small boats – the politically hot potato.

In addition to the laborious recurring reviews of refugee status, the Article 8 family life reforms won’t apply to asylum seekers who in general have no family life here.

Knocking down the specialist immigration judiciary just to build a new “adjudicator” system is barking up the wrong tree – especially as Parliament is already enacting time limits for some appeals.

And what will be the costs of policing asylum seekers’ earnings and ceasing support where they aren’t earning enough? Why not just decide the asylum claim quickly, so they can be integrated or removed?

We should scale up the UK-France agreement and strike similar returns’ agreements with Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium.

We should quickly roll out safe and legal routes to dis-incentivise irregular crossings.

We should cut the claims and appeals backlogs and sort out asylum accommodation.

The Home Secretary is right that we need to fix the asylum system.

But the solution requires moderation of rhetoric and boldness of action.

We must not raise the temperature of the debate, but raise our dedication to forging effective, practical policy solutions which address the issue of most political concern – irregular migration.

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Tony Vaughan is the Labour MP for Folkestone and Hythe.

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