On refugee protection, the Labour government gives with one hand and takes with the other

Labour must not succumb to divisive us-versus-them politics and stand firm in defending refugee rights, not grow numb to their suffering, says our CEO Sonya Sceats.

It’s a great tragedy of Britain’s Labour Government that it believes that its survival into a second term will hinge largely on neutralising Reform by marching to its beat on immigration.

Starmer is said to be personally opposed to “punching down” on refugees and made a strong and promising start by scrapping the immoral ‘cash-for-humans' Rwanda deal, closing the Bibby Stockholm ‘hulk’ and restarting asylum decision-making.

But the more he echoes the language of the far right and allows Reform to skew his policy agenda on migration, the more harm he will inevitably cause to people seeking safety here from torture and persecution elsewhere.

In short, when it comes to refugees, Labour is giving with one hand while taking with the other.

Freedom from Torture is one of the largest torture rehabilitation centres in the world. In our therapy rooms, we saw at close range the immeasurable damage caused to traumatised survivors by the threat of forcible expulsion to Rwanda. So long as this unconscionable scheme remained on the table, survivors lived in constant terror of being sent to an unknown and unsafe country with a risk of being sent back into the hands of their torturers. 

That is why we mobilised more than a hundred thousand caring people to pressure so many airlines to back out of the scheme and contributed to the successful litigation against it. To his credit, Starmer has delivered his “Day One” promise to scrap the scheme. But his policy announcement made last week to explore opening ‘return hubs’ in other countries will trigger similar fears amongst men, women and children currently seeking asylum in the UK.

If they do stoke division, it is our communities that will suffer. Last summer, anti-refugee politics fomented by the last government spilled over into violence against refugees and other migrants.

The safe and dignified return of people whose claim for asylum has been refused can only be considered fair and humane when vital safeguards are in place – safeguards that are sorely lacking currently. The Home Office’s own data shows that the quality of decision-making declined dramatically in 2024 and over half of all decisions sampled did not met the Department’s own quality standards.

After Starmer rightly lifted the Conservative Government’s cruel asylum ban, the Home Office sped up decision-making in a bid to clear the backlog, but the grant rate dropped to 47% in 2024 (down 20% on the preceding year).

Almost half of the asylum appeals to the First-tier Tribunal are successful, but this has placed an enormous burden on the justice system to correct bad decisions, with over 40,000 appeals still waiting to be heard.

Stoking fear

Meanwhile, the legal aid system is threadbare. It has never been harder for my colleagues at Freedom from Torture to source quality legal representation for survivors in treatment with us who are trapped in poverty while coping with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Investing in the legal aid system would help survivors to secure protection more quickly, enabling them to focus on their recovery, while also avoiding the cost to the public of unnecessary appeals.

It is vital for ministers to focus on improving the quality of asylum decision-making, including to address mishandling of forensic torture reports by expert doctors. They also need to heed the lessons of failed and highly dangerous past schemes that locked up asylum seekers so that they could be refused protection quickly and bundled onto planes.

However, despite ongoing systemic failures to get these “life or death” decisions right, there are indications that Labour is looking to revive unsafe accelerated processes and expand immigration detention.

Speaking from our clinical experience, the re-traumatising effect of imprisoning people who have suffered torture and abuse in detention elsewhere is difficult to overstate.

The primary political purpose of plans like ‘return hubs’ and legislation like the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill is to project the image of a government devoted not to restoring compassion to Britain’s asylum system, but to doubling down on border securitisation, surveillance and state interference in the human rights of migrants.

To break the spell of Nigel Farage over both the Labour and Conservative parties, it is vital that caring people across the country unite to “show our strength” in support of refugees.

We urge the Government to turn its attention back to the vital work of rebuilding an asylum process that is effective and fair, so that we can be confident that we are providing sanctuary to those who need it most. This is also what 80% of the British public wants.

Over the last few decades, we have seen successive governments commit the grave moral error of stoking fear of migrants, and last week this Labour Government showed it may be no different. At a time when the rights of marginalised groups are under attack by authoritarians around the world, Labour ministers would be wise to avoid fuelling ‘us-and-them' divisions.

If they do stoke division, it is our communities that will suffer. Last summer, anti-refugee politics fomented by the last government spilled over into violence against refugees and other migrants.

Some survivors in therapy with Freedom from Torture were subjected to racist attacks. Many others were too frightened to attend vital therapy appointments and even to go food shopping or take their kids to the playground. These fears endured for months. Starmer took a lead in condemning the violence and earned respect from across the political spectrum for it.

Does Labour care about refugees?

But last week our Prime Minister put all of this at risk. Elements of his rhetoric drew from the far right's playbook: exploiting very real concerns that people have about under-investment by the state in our public services and the impact of the cost-of-living crisis and blaming this on migrants. All of us from migrant backgrounds are feeling less welcome and less safe now, with the greatest impact felt by people of colour including refugees.

Many of the proposals in the White Paper are apparently designed to appease the far right but instead they will only embolden it. People like the survivors we support – men, women and children who have endured almost unimaginable horrors – will pay the heaviest price. But so will the rest of us if we allow rights that keep us all safe to be eroded.

If the Government wants to strengthen our communities, it needs to deliver visible improvements to services, infrastructure and institutions across the UK. This includes building an effective and humane immigration system that we all have a stake in: as migrants, as refugees, as British citizens.

We need a fair and effective asylum process that gets decisions “right first time”, so that survivors of torture can recover in safety and rebuild their lives in strong and united communities.

To do anything otherwise would also undermine Labour’s stated commitment to restoring the UK’s role as a defender of the rules-based international system in a moment when key allies like the US and Israel look set on abandoning it.

To break the spell of Nigel Farage over both the Labour and Conservative parties, it is vital that caring people across the country unite to “show our strength” in support of refugees. Freedom from Torture is a proud member of Together With Refugees, the largest pro-refugee coalition in British history with over 600 organisations joined up.

Now we are creating opportunities for people to start taking action in their communities to put pressure on politicians in a way that is “felt” across Westminster.

Summoning the spirit of communities that came together to resist racist violence last summer, we can show mainstream parties, including Labour, that they have more to lose than gain from tearing up our values. We need to stand up and speak truth to power. Because never forget, we are the majority.

Article first published in The New Arab.
Banner image: PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo