Opposing Asylum Reforms
Our Submission to the Home Office
On 4 June 2026, we submitted our response to the Home Office consultation on reforming asylum support and enforcing family returns. We strongly oppose all the proposals and believe that conversations had on the asylum system should focus on expanding support and increasing the dignity of those seeking safety, not the opposite.
We view the number of questions and their wording as potential barriers to a meaningful response. The consultation uses specific, technical language that is mainly aimed at operationalising the system rather than scrutinising it. The online form itself limits respondents’ opportunities to make principled objections. Given this, we prepared a separate response and emailed it to the Home Office.
We also acknowledge that, as a Scottish organisation, the sections of the consultation that seek input on issues related to the ability of English local authorities to provide support to people “without immigration status” are not directly relevant to us. However, we consider that a withdrawal of support there may set a precedent in Scotland, and we have responded to this section of the consultation accordingly.
Below is a summary of our key points, along with a copy of our complete submission.
The government wants to cut off support to force individuals and families without immigration status to leave. They tried this before with the Section 9 pilot, and it failed. Withdrawing support did not increase returns. Here only 1% of families who lost support were removed, compared to 8% of those who kept it. Instead, absconding rates nearly doubled. Repeating this approach breaches Article 3 of the ECHR and pushes people into danger, not into departure.
There would be no independent appeal against a refusal of support, and no one would check whether the Home Office got it wrong. This matters so much because Home Office decision-making is poor. In the Home Office’s universe, a family wrongly denied support would have no money, no home, and no way to challenge the decision. We must also always highlight the failures of the market, which have led to us in the North East having no legal aid immigration solicitors.
Although unlikely to be their intention, the proposals tabled shift responsibilities for children and families in need onto councils with no extra funding, whilst Scottish councils are already at financial breaking point. NRPF spending in Scotland tripled in a single year from £500,000 to over £1.5 million. Legal and staff costs have risen more than 500%. COSLA says councils need over £750 million to protect existing social care arrangements, indicating that it can ill afford to absorb the extra costs likely to arise should some of these proposals become policy.
The proposal would allow immigration officers to handcuff, lift, or carry children to force them onto deportation flights. This breaks the UNCRC and GIRFEC. The best interests of the child cannot be a primary consideration if the state is allowed to handcuff a child to put them on a plane. Children who have fled trauma would be re-traumatised, with lifelong consequences.
The consultation was launched without an Equality Impact Assessment or a Children’s Rights Impact Assessment. You cannot properly scrutinise proposals to authorise force against children, shift costs onto councils, and remove appeal rights without this data. This is a procedural failure that should have delayed this consultation until these documents were produced.