ty-sharing, the UK must put in place safe routes for asylum seekers to reach our shores. The right to work and faster, better asylum decisions Most asylum seekers reaching the UK will be recognised as refugees with the right to stay, and will very likely live here for the long term. 18 The hostility that runs through the asy­lum system – intended as a failed deterrence measure – must therefore be scrapped and replaced with a system geared towards inclusion. It is sensible to support the inte­gration and independence of asylum seekers as quickly as possible. A prolonged ordeal in a hostile asylum system damages prospects for long-term wellbeing and refugees’ ability to support themselves, benefitting no-one. 19 The ban on asylum seekers working has a detrimental long-term impact on their wellbeing and creates a more costly system for taxpayers. It has been estimated that lift­ing the ban and allowing asylum seekers to work, as many other European countries do, could represent a net gain to government finances of around£280 million per year. 20 Other European countries, and particularly Spain, can be a model for a better British approach to managing the asy­lum system as regards the right to work. Under EU law, asylum seekers must be granted the right to work after a maximum of nine months if they are still awaiting a resolu­tion to their claim. 21 In practice, there are obstacles to this in many EU countries, but some countries also choose to integrate asylum seekers into the labour market faster than that. In France, asylum seekers may apply for a work per­mit after just six months in the system, which challenges the idea that it is the possibility of work that acts as a“pull factor” to the UK for migrants trying to cross the Channel. Meanwhile in Spain, not only are asylum seekers permitted to work after six months, but Spanish language and train­ing courses are held in asylum seeker accommodation cen­tres in order to support people into areas of work where there are shortages and a need for labour. 22 It was under Tony Blair’s Labour government that asylum seekers were denied access to the mainstream benefits sys­tem in 1999, 23 and had their right to work severely restrict­ed in 2002. 24 These measures, along with others, were in­tended to reduce supposed“pull factors” that drove asylum seekers to the UK and to reduce numbers of applicants. In­stead, it ensured asylum seekers are entirely dependent on the state, reliant on meagre Asylum Support payments that leave them living in poverty. 25 Given that the average time taken to decide an asylum claim is still well over a year, the asylum system has become an incredibly expensive and degrading ordeal. 26 The time taken on asylum decisions needs be reduced, but this must not come at the expense of the quality of deci­sion making. Since the Labour government has come to power, there has been a significant increase in deci­sion-making, but there has also been a deterioration in standards. In the year 2022/23 72% of Home Office deci ­sions on asylum claims were meeting its own minimum quality control standard. This dropped to just 52% in 2023/24, and the most recently published statistics omitted to include this measure at all, without explanation. 27 When asylum claims are rushed and wrongfully refused, the backlog builds up within the appeals process instead. As a result, claims take even longer to be determined, making the entire system costlier and more painstaking for the people involved. The problem with speeding up the processing of claims, as undertaken by successive governments, is that it is always asylum refusals that are targeted for fast-tracked proce­dures. This is risky, in that a hastily reached decision poten­tially puts a person in harm’s way if refused the necessary protection. It increases the backlog in the courts, and can end with people forced to make emergency last-minute le­gal interventions to buy the time to make their case for protection adequately before removal: a backstop that is then presented as a symptom of“abuse” of the system by lawyers, where in fact it is more often a feature produced by the inappropriate use of accelerated processes in com­plex cases. Instead, it is the clearly well-founded asylum claims that should be fast-tracked: people coming to us from countries with very high protection grant rates and obviously unsafe countries of origin should go through a light-touch system 18  Refugee Council(2024)‘Top facts from the latest statistics on refugees and people seeking asylum’, webpage, accessed on: 1 st August 2024. https://www.refugeecouncil. org.uk/information/refugee-asylum-facts/top-10-facts-about-refugees-and-people-seeking-asylum/ 19  Asylum Matters(2023)‘Surviving in Poverty: A report documenting life on asylum support’, webpage accessed on: 8 August 2024. https://asylummatters.org/app/ uploads/2023/12/Asylum-Matters-Surviving-in-Poverty-Report-A4-SINGLES-Dec-2023.pdf 20  Refugee Action(2020)‘Lift the Ban: Why giving people seeking asylum the right to work is common sense’, webpage accessed: 8 August 2024. https://www.refugee­action.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Lift-The-Ban-Common-Sense.pdf 21  https://ecre.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/ECRE-Policy-Paper-12_The-Right-to-Work-for-Asylum-Applicants-in-the-EU.pdf 22  Rethinking Migration: The Spanish Model, Racho& De Clerke, Forthcoming Autumn 2025 23  https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1999/33/contents 24  https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2002/41/contents 25  https://asylummatters.org/2023/12/06/new-report-surviving-in-poverty/ 26  https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-uks-asylum-backlog/ 27  https://freemovement.org.uk/latest-statistics-raise-questions-around-sustainability-of-home-office-asylum-decision-making/?utm_source=mailerlite& utm_medium=email&utm_term=Fri+29+Aug+2025&utm_campaign=Weekly+blog+updates Time for change 7