A new report from the Institute for Public Policy Research looks at what the state of the asylum system will be for the next government. This includes consideration of various scenarios, including whether the government wins the Rwanda litigation and whether more of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 is brought into force. Needless to say, the Act will make everything worse. I particularly recommend the charts on pages 3 to 5 which compare the current situation with how much worse it would be if the Act was implemented.

The overarching theme of the report is to highlight precisely how urgent this area is:

what this briefing makes clear is that there is no scope for asylum policy to be side-lined after the next election. While it may be tempting for the government to focus on other priorities, given the multiple challenges facing the UK, without urgent action the asylum system will be fall into a still deeper crisis. Whoever forms the next government, asylum will have to be a priority in the early days of the new
parliament.

This is a very important message and one that I hope is understood by those likely to form the next government. However urgency itself is not enough as we have seen with the current government, decisions will also need to be humane and practical.