Explainers

The central contradiction of Britain’s asylum system today can be summarised simply: the more restrictive the policy becomes, the harder the problem is to manage.

The story begins in 2002. Under political pressure, the government of Tony Blair removed the right of asylum seekers to work while their claims were pending. Previously, if an application had not been decided within six months, asylum seekers could enter the labour market. After the change, they were effectively required to rely on government accommodation and a small weekly allowance.

The intention was political damage control. The government wanted to avoid accusations that the system was attracting migrants or allowing them to “take British jobs”. Yet the long-term consequences were very different. Once asylum seekers were banned from working, they became dependent on the state throughout the entire decision process. Whenever decisions slowed, the demand for accommodation inevitably increased.

In the early years the system still functioned. Asylum seekers were placed in what was known as the “dispersal accommodation” system. This meant that government contractors rented ordinary housing across different towns and cities and distributed asylum seekers across communities instead of concentrating them in large refugee camps. But as global conflicts increased, applications rose and decisions slowed, the system’s weaknesses began to appear. When dispersal housing ran out, the government had to turn to temporary solutions. Hotels gradually became the default form of accommodation.

Restrictive policies also produced another side effect. When asylum seekers are banned from working and housed by the government for long periods, it becomes easy for the public to perceive them as a burden. This design itself fuels resentment and hostility. As public anger grows, politicians respond with even tougher policies. A cycle emerges: the stricter the rules, the greater the hostility; the greater the hostility, the stricter the rules become.

Brexit took place in this political climate. After leaving the European Union, the United Kingdom also withdrew from the Dublin Regulation. Under this system, asylum claims were generally the responsibility of the first European country a migrant entered. That allowed Britain to transfer some applicants back to mainland Europe. The system also relied on a shared fingerprint database that allowed countries to check whether someone had already applied for asylum elsewhere. After Brexit, the UK lost these mechanisms. It became harder both to return migrants to EU countries and to verify their previous asylum claims.

Another change followed. Today the small-boat crossings of the English Channel dominate political debate, but before Brexit this route was almost non-existent. When Britain still participated in European asylum cooperation, some migrants could be returned to other EU states. Once those mechanisms disappeared, Channel crossings gradually increased and quickly became a powerful political symbol.

Pressure on the system worsened further in recent years. Toward the end of its time in office, the Conservative government deliberately slowed asylum processing in the belief that long delays would reduce the system’s “pull factor”. The theory was that if asylum seekers expected a difficult and prolonged process, fewer would attempt to come to Britain. In practice the opposite occurred. Applications piled up, waiting times lengthened and accommodation demand expanded rapidly. A policy intended to deter migration ended up making the system far more expensive and harder to manage.

In this environment the Conservative government introduced another deterrence policy: the Rwanda scheme. Its central idea was to transfer some asylum seekers to Rwanda for their claims to be processed there. The hope was that this would discourage migrants from attempting the journey to Britain. The government paid hundreds of millions of pounds to Rwanda, yet the scheme was designed to process only a few hundred people — insignificant compared with the tens of thousands of asylum applications each year. Rwanda is also an authoritarian state. Outsourcing asylum responsibilities to such a regime carries obvious moral risks and practical dangers. Once such an arrangement begins, the host country could easily gain leverage over Britain. If the regime were to face political instability or eventual collapse — a common fate of authoritarian systems — the question of what would happen to those transferred there would become even more complicated. Ultimately the policy ran into major legal and political obstacles and never truly took effect.

The current Labour government has now introduced another measure: offering cash payments to some rejected asylum seekers to encourage voluntary departure. The logic is financial. Paying a lump sum may be cheaper than housing people for years. Yet in an already polarised political climate, such policies are easily framed as paying migrants with taxpayers’ money, which may only deepen public hostility.

Meanwhile, most European countries have moved in a different direction. Many allow asylum seekers to work after three to six months, enabling at least some of them to support themselves. Accommodation systems are also structured differently, with purpose-built reception centres rather than emergency hotel use. The European Union has gradually harmonised these policies, including reducing the maximum waiting time for labour market access to six months.

Looking back over this policy trajectory reveals a common pattern. Governments of different parties have repeatedly responded to anti-immigration pressure with stricter policies. Each step appeared politically safer in the short term. Yet over time these decisions pushed the system toward the most expensive and least efficient outcomes.

The work ban prevented self-sufficiency. Brexit weakened international cooperation. Slower processing created enormous backlogs. The Rwanda scheme consumed public funds without solving the problem. These policies may appear unrelated, but they follow the same political logic. When a system is designed primarily around deterrence, it can end up reinforcing the very problem it seeks to control. The result is a self-fulfilling policy trap.

Restoring order to the system may not require complicated innovations. Many European countries recognise a basic reality: asylum seekers waiting for decisions need the opportunity to work, and cross-border cooperation is essential for managing migration. If Britain wishes to escape its current predicament, the answer may not lie in ever tougher policies but in learning from the approaches already used across Europe. In the long run, rebuilding institutional cooperation with Europe may be the most straightforward path back to a functioning system.