Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has announced that refugees will no longer be able to claim permanent refugee status and instead will face status reviews every 30 months. The move has been described as the most significant change to the UK’s refugee laws since the Second World War. 

Following the 30-month review, refugees who face a risk on return to their home country will have their protection renewed for a further 30-month period, while those whose countries of origin the Home Office deems safe will be deported. Mahmood is reported as saying there is a need to reduce ‘pull’ factors and stated that the country must ‘reduce the incentives that draw people here at such scale’. 

Shabana Mahmood’s announcement has not been without criticism. Imran Hussain of the Refugee Council, warned that such reviews would be ‘damaging to integration in the long term’. He went on to state that the Council had calculated the costs of the change to amount to £725m. 

The change to the Immigration Rules follows the Home Secretary’s visit to a Danish migration centre last week. Denmark already implements the use of reviews regarding the right to remain. It is reported that Denmark has faced accusations of human rights violations in its treatment of refugees. 

Peter Walsh, of the Oxford University’s Migration Observatory said that despite the apparent success of the policy in Denmark, due to operational and diplomatic barriers many refugees are not returned to their home countries. Instead, they remain in Denmark with ‘no legal status for long periods’. 

Labour MP Andy McDonald has criticised the Government’s policy direction on refugees, stating that the party’s aggressive focus on migration is a sing of ‘political weakness and a capitulation to Reform’s poisonous agenda’.