All Articles: report

Following a request from the Chairs of the Public Accounts and Home Affairs Committees, the National Audit Office has published a report on the costs to date of setting up the Migration and Economic Development Partnership with Rwanda. The report also looks at the basis on which future costs would...

1st March 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

Reunite Families UK, a lived experience organisation, have published a timely new report looking at the negative mental health impact of family separation caused by the immigration rules, particularly the minimum income requirement. The research looks at the current position, which is shortly to become considerably worse when the increase...

20th December 2023
BY Sonia Lenegan

The Independent Monitoring Boards have published their National Annual Report for 2022 on the immigration detention estate and concerns have been raised in relation to several areas, many of which will be familiar to anyone working in this area. People are still being detained for too long, including one person...

19th December 2023
BY Sonia Lenegan

A new report comes with a stark warning: “As the number of sponsored migrant workers rises every quarter, the issue of migrant labour exploitation is only likely to increase”. Work Rights Centre, a charity that works to support migrants and disadvantaged British residents access employment justice, has today published their...

14th November 2023
BY Sonia Lenegan

Yesterday, the third annual inspection from the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI) of ‘Adults at risk in immigration detention’ was published. On the same day, the Home Secretary discontinued the standing commission for this annual review. The report focuses specifically on the efficiency and effectiveness of Rule...

13th January 2023
BY Josie Laidman

The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration has published a new report reviewing the Home Office’s processing of family visas, with a focus on indefinite leave to remain applications. It highlights that despite the findings of the Law Commission in its report, and the Home Office’s commitment to simplifying...

24th October 2022
BY Francesca Sella

The 11th-hour European Court of Human Rights intervention that prevented the first planned removal of asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda has provided only scant relief to those who may soon find themselves being flown 4,000 miles away to an unknown fate. A fresh attempt to begin removals could occur...

18th July 2022
BY Emily Wilbourn

How is the Home Office doing with implementing the lessons it is supposed to have learned from the Windrush scandal? In March 2020, the independent Wendy Williams review of the department called for root and branch reform; the Home Secretary said that she accepted all 30 recommendations in full. 18...

4th April 2022
BY Colin Yeo

Understandings of and responses to disability vary widely. In the field of international protection, the approach to disability tends to reflect policy and decision-making practices within host states, as well as the understandings and “unconscious biases” of decision-makers, legal representatives, and country of origin researchers. Asylos and ARC Foundation have...

16th December 2021
BY Maya Pritchard

Interviewer: What do you think it means to be British? Mary: It is a passport. To be British now, I’m sorry to say this, but it is a passport. That is it. That is what being British means to me. I have lost faith in the country which I used...

23rd June 2021
BY Melanie Griffiths

The government has committed to scrapping Cart judicial review and is consulting on other changes to JR as part of its response to the report of the Independent Review of Administrative Law, both of which were published today. The abolition of the Cart procedure, which effectively gives people a second...

18th March 2021
BY CJ McKinney

The hostile environment should be reformed by selective repeal of key provisions, addressing Home Office culture and improved routes to regularisation, an influential think tank has found. Beyond the hostile environment, a report released yesterday by the Institute for Public Policy Research, follows up on a previous look at the...

10th February 2021
BY Colin Yeo

Many eastern European migrant workers don’t know that the EU Settlement Scheme exists, new research suggests. A survey of EU citizens in Cambridgeshire by the Social Market Foundation think tank found that barely half were aware of the Settlement Scheme. Even among those intending to stay in the UK long...

21st September 2020
BY CJ McKinney

With one year left before the close of the EU Settlement Scheme, the headline numbers look positive for the Home Office. By the end of May 2020 more than 3.6 million applications had been made, although some people have applied more than once.  This headline number may be masking a...

6th July 2020
BY Marianne Lagrue

The government has no way of knowing whether its flagship “hostile environment” policy on unauthorised migrants is working, the National Audit Office has found. In a report published today, the NAO says that the Home Office is “currently unable to assess” whether hostile environment measures “have any meaningful impact on...

17th June 2020
BY CJ McKinney

The Windrush scandal first made headlines in 2018, but the Home Office is now facing intensified public scrutiny over its role in mistakes that caused profound suffering for so many members of the Windrush generation. Calls for accountability have gained renewed urgency in the context of the Black Lives Matter...

16th June 2020
BY Emily Wilbourn

Asylos and ARC Foundation recently released a new report, Vietnam: Returned victims of trafficking, about the risks of re-trafficking, state protection and internal relocation for Vietnamese victims of trafficking returned from the UK. The report provides key new evidence which needs to be considered by Home Office decision-makers and tribunal...

3rd June 2020
BY David Neale

While the UK government boasts of its trailblazing work to tackle the scourge of modern slavery, it is also rightly criticised for its systemic failures to prevent exploitation and protect victims once identified. A number of hostile immigration policies are directly at odds with the UK’s commitment to protect victims...

6th November 2019
BY Avril Sharp

Three years after the referendum, the more than three million EU citizens living in the UK still have no clarity on what their legal status will be after Brexit. It is uncertain whether the Brexit deal negotiated by Theresa May’s government (formally known as the Withdrawal Agreement) will ever be...

9th August 2019
BY Stijn Smismans

A cross-party group of MPs has published a highly critical report on the Home Office’s treatment of visit visa applicants from Africa. It forms part of an ongoing inquiry into the high level of visa refusals for Africans seeking to visit the UK for professional or business reasons. The report,...

16th July 2019
BY Iain Halliday

In the fraught context of Brexit, the need to register EU citizens already resident in the UK presents a major conundrum of policy, law, and administration. The government’s answer is the EU Settlement Scheme. It is expected that millions of people, from a wide variety of different backgrounds, will apply...

16th July 2019
BY Joe Tomlinson

The National Audit Office, a government watchdog, has released an authoritative report on the long-running English language testing scandal. The discovery in 2014 that there was widespread cheating on the English tests required for UK visas led to a Home Office crackdown affecting tens of thousands of people, many of...

24th May 2019
BY CJ McKinney

The Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into immigration detention has released its report which strongly censures “every part of the immigration detention system”. The inquiry was initially triggered in response to the BBC’s ‘Panorama’ programme which uncovered shocking abuse in Brook House immigration removal centre. Preceded by two reports from...

25th March 2019
BY Rudy Schulkind

A major government review of legal aid proposes no significant changes in the immigration and asylum field. Despite evidence of the impact of cuts over the past five years, and the role that legal aid would have played in preventing the Windrush scandal, the Ministry of Justice has refused to...

7th February 2019
BY CJ McKinney

The recently published UK Lesbian & Gay Immigration Group report Still Falling Short examines the Home Office’s decision-making in  asylum applications from LGBTQI+ people. The report is a qualitative study of mainly lesbian, gay and bisexual cases. It analyses Home Office interview records and reasons for refusal letters to assess...

22nd August 2018
BY Gabriella Bettiga

Almost half the recommendations made by the independent immigration inspector over the last three years have not been followed by the Home Office, the inspector’s annual report shows. David Bolt’s survey of the 2017/18 financial year says that while only a small minority (4%) of his recommendations since May 2015...

14th June 2018
BY CJ McKinney

Government measures aimed at stopping irregular migrants from renting a home are not being properly evaluated, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration has found. The controversial Right to Rent scheme is “yet to demonstrate its worth as a tool to encourage immigration compliance, with the Home Office failing...

28th March 2018
BY CJ McKinney

The Home Affairs Committee of MPs today published its report on whether or not the Home Office has the capacity to deliver effective immigration services once the UK leaves the European Union next March. No, is the short answer. Not a lot of love from @CommonsHomeAffs Valentine's Day report on...

14th February 2018
BY Nick Nason

The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration has urged the Home Office to fundamentally overhaul the country of origin information it gives to officials making asylum decisions. David Bolt’s latest report, published today, says that the department “needs to examine whether the current format and contents of [Country Policy...

30th January 2018
BY CJ McKinney

New research shows that the immigration insecurity of one family member now affects whole families, including children and citizens who are not themselves subject to immigration control, writes Dr Melanie Griffiths of the University of Bristol. This week, the University of Bristol published three policy briefings arising from new research examining...

12th January 2018
BY Melanie Griffiths

The review by Stephen Shaw into the welfare in immigration detention of vulnerable persons has been published today. The Government has responded stating that it “accepts the broad thrust of his recommendations” and that the Home Office expects its reforms to reduce the number of those detained and the duration of detention before...

14th January 2016
BY Colin Yeo

Last week the Children’s Commissioner for England released a study into the impact of the Coalition Government’s new family immigration rules, introduced in 2012. The report is an emotionally difficult read with some heart breaking quotes but unfortunately I’m not sure that those who should read it will read it; it is...

16th September 2015
BY Colin Yeo

The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture (shortly to become Freedom From Torture, is launching a very interesting sounding new report entitled Body of evidence: treatment of medico-legal reports for survivors of torture in the UK asylum system. The launch event is on 24 May 2011 at...

12th May 2011
BY Free Movement
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