Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is to announce a tightening of rules for migrants granted asylum, bringing their families to the UK.
As MPs return to Westminster on Monday, she is expected to set out criteria for family members, including tougher English Language standards and access to sufficient funds, and outline reforms to the asylum appeals system.
After a summer dominated by criticism over the use of hotels for migrants arriving on small boats, Cooper will say an overhaul of a “broken” asylum system seeks to end their use.
The Conservatives said that the proposed rule change was a “tiny tweak” and that the government was in “complete denial” about the scale of the “border crisis”.
When a person is granted asylum in the UK, they can apply to bring their family too – but Cooper believes changes to policies across Europe mean the UK is now out of kilter with its neighbours and restrictions are needed.
Cooper will also highlight the National Crime Agency’s efforts in tackling people smugglers, saying it led 347 disruptions of immigration crime networks in 2024-25, the highest level on record and a 40 percent increase on the previous 12 months.
Cooper will also talk about the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), an international human rights treaty that has been used by lawyers attempting to halt deportations of failed asylum seekers.
There have been growing calls in recent weeks – not only from those on the right, but also from some former Labour ministers – to either withdraw from the convention, or suspend elements of it.
The government is adamant it will not do that, but is reviewing how the treaty’s rights to family life apply to immigration cases.
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Cooper is likely to give more detail on government plans to change domestic law in order to make it clearer to judges how that part of the treaty should be interpreted.
The Conservatives are reviewing whether the UK should quit the ECHR, while Reform UK leader Nigel Farage supports leaving the treaty.
More than 28,000 migrants have reached the UK in small boats so far in 2025, and more than 50,000 have crossed since Labour came into power in July 2024.
In August, 55 small boats crossed the Channel. It was the lowest figure for the month since 2019.
Yet the smuggling gangs seem to be putting more people on each boat; last month, there was an average of 65 individuals per vessel.
It comes with the government under increasing pressure to end its reliance on asylum hotels.
On Friday, the Appeal Court overturned a temporary injunction that would have prevented the Home Office from housing asylum seekers at the Bell Hotel in Epping, and it was seen as a possible precedent for legal challenges elsewhere.
Epping Forest District Council will meet later on Monday to decide its next course of action, including whether to take its attempt to prevent the hotel from being used for asylum seekers to the Supreme Court.
In the Commons, the home secretary is expected to say the NCA efforts have led to “a significant and long-term impact” on people smugglers.
The government’s planned reforms to the asylum system, announced in the last few weeks, include a new independent body prioritising cases involving asylum accommodation and foreign national offenders within 24 weeks, and a new fast-track appeal process.
