An act of parliament changing the UK’s immigration and asylum system has been passed every year since 2022. This activity has not increased public confidence that the nation’s borders are well managed, nor has it stopped the rise of radical rightwing parties running anti-immigrant campaigns, according to a Guardian editorial published on Wednesday.
The Home Office is giving it another try. Measures contained in a bill published this week include a new body to handle asylum decision appeals outside the existing court system; a means-tested scheme to charge asylum seekers for state-provided support they receive; and narrowing the terms under which claims can be made under article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which guarantees the right to private and family life.
“Guardian editorial and columnist criticise Home Office immigration bill and argue for defence spending cuts, citing lack of evidence of Russian threat”
The editorial argues that there is “more performance than remedy in this package”. It warns that the new appeals body could be a costly distraction, that billing claimants will raise negligible sums, and that narrowing the ECHR’s purview gives political succour to those who see human rights law as a liberal scam. The last Conservative government tested this method to destruction, the piece says, pointing to the 2024 Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act.
Sir Keir Starmer repealed that act and scrapped the scheme, dismissing it as a “gimmick”. Two years on, the editorial argues, Labour is caught in the same trap, hoping another law will prove the government’s toughness credentials. “Each turn of the dial in a draconian direction reinforces voters’ conviction that the system is out of control,” it says.
Separately, Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins has argued that Britain should spend less on defence. “It is a waste of money and should be reduced so more could be spent on supporting employment, welfare and growth,” he writes. Jenkins questions why defence is awarded an “almost religious invulnerability” in debate, noting that parliament, broadcasters, print and social media, thinktanks and pundits admit to only two points of view: that Britain should spend more, or far more.
While Russia is fighting in Ukraine, Jenkins says “there is no evidence that Russia has evil designs on British territory that require a massive deterrent force”. He points to army chiefs in Europe claiming Russia is ready to march to war across Europe by 2029 – an “absurd date” that seems intended to get Europe’s taxpayers facing up to the US’s reluctance to act as Nato’s military backbone.
Starmer’s defence investment plan commits 2.7% of GDP for defence by 2030, an amount Jenkins says is “believed to be a come-on to Vladimir Putin”, while Nato’s target of 3.5% by 2035 would apparently have him “quaking in his boots”. But Jenkins insists even 2.7% is too much. “That one nation may have the capacity to ‘threaten’ another far from its borders is not evidence that it intends to do so,” he writes, citing realists such as George Kennan and Henry Kissinger who questioned treating Moscow as a power with evil intent beyond its immediate neighbours.