LAST week Home Office officials started telling their friends in the press that we were about to see ‘the most sweeping reforms to tackle illegal migration in modern times’.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood released her policy paper on Monday. The plans are rife with vagaries and contradictions, despite explicitly studying Denmark’s radical reforms (since 2016) and the failures of the Conservative governments (since 2010).

Here are the ten justifiable promises and their unjustifiable contradictions.

1.      Reduce asylum hotels, but increase asylum homes

Accommodating asylum claimants in hotels is clearly unpopular, as this summer’s protests illustrate. Previously the Starmer administration has said it wants to expand the use of privately rented apartments and houses. This policy hardly ameliorates public outrage at the privilege of free housing. Nor does private accommodation protect the public from crime by asylum claimants, or prevent claimants from absconding if their claims are denied.

Mahmood’s policy paper promises ‘the use of large sites, including military sites’ in place of hotels. This language is meant to suggest to Britons that claimants will be detained, but does not commit to do so. The language suggests to me increased use of the family homes that were built for military personnel.

Denmark created ‘departure centres’ to incentivise voluntary return of those refused asylum. The British government does not support those either.

2.      Send illegals to a third country, but not where Britain has already funded a processing centre.

As long as the government refuses to detain illegal migrants in Britain, the only safe and lawful alternative for processing their claims is a third country.

Both Denmark and Britain proposed but failed to process them in Rwanda. Denmark’s plan was scuppered by legal challenges and was suspended January 2023 without sending anyone to Rwanda.

Rishi Sunak’s administration tried the same thing, without protecting itself from the legal challenges (i.e., without repudiating the European Court of Human Rights). The first planned flight in June 2022 was halted by an injunction from the EHCR. In November 2023, the Supreme Court found that Rwanda is unsafe, and thus the plan is unlawful. Parliament passed the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act in April 2024, declaring Rwanda a safe country. But legal challenges were immediate.

Sunak lost the election in July, and Keir Starmer’s administration campaigned against the plan. Mahmood’s policy paper condemns the plan for costing £700 million for the return of only four volunteers.

Yet the policy paper contains this intriguing but inadequate paragraph: ‘We will continue to explore the use of “return hubs” which are safe third countries that failed asylum seekers can be sent to instead of their country of origin. Negotiations with a number of countries are ongoing.’

Presumably Rwanda is not one of those countries, lest Starmer’s administration should be accused of a U-turn.

3.      The government will allow and benefit migrants who work, but wants to stop economic migrants

The policy paper states that ‘the government expects those who are arriving or returning to the UK to seek work.’ The government currently prohibits asylum claimants from working, but tolerates asylum claimants who work (while paying them an income and accommodating them in hotels, from which they work), and wants to stop economic migration. You would think that the policy paper clarifies a way out of the triple hypocrisy, but no. It promises that in 2026 the government will research and consult on ways to ‘change…taxpayer-funded benefits to prioritise access for those who are making an economic contribution to the UK.’

To add confusion, in a subsequent paragraph, Mahmood says ‘we will deny support to those who have the right to work and could therefore support themselves’.

Here, she appears to be denying ‘support’ for asylum seekers who don’t work when they can, but allowing ‘benefits’ for working migrants.

Meanwhile, the same paper promises more enforcement of the prohibition against work by asylum-claimants. The government claims it has cracked down on illegal work, and counts 1,000 foreigners deported after being ‘encountered’ in this crack down. Big deal! That’s 62 removals per month of Labour rule, when more than 3,100 illegals are arriving every month (50 times more).

This triple-contradictory policy paper seems to be the outcome of attempts to appear to be cracking down on illegal immigration and work, while still accommodating radical leftists.

4.      Deny ‘support’ to workers and the self-destitute, but give them ‘benefits’

The paper promises to ‘deny support to’ migrants ‘with permission to work before claiming asylum, or those granted permission to work where their claim has been outstanding for more than 12 months,’ and ‘those who have deliberately made themselves destitute.’

But as noted above, working claimants will get access to the same benefits as British citizens, which will compensate for the loss of ‘support’.

And how on earth is the government going to prove that any claimant ‘made themselves destitute,’ when it doesn’t enforce this rule for British welfare-dependants?

Read More – Ten reasons to be sceptical about Mahmood’s migrant measures