Gambling with lives: How a bad policy wrecked the UK asylum system

In this briefing, Amnesty International UK reviews the past three years, drawing attention to the human, financial and administrative costs. These are each of dire proportions.

For three years, the asylum policy pursued by the Government has done multiple harms. Yet, rather than ever face the reality of their error, successive Home Secretaries and Prime Ministers have doubled-down on this policy. The harms caused have escalated as a result, and spread ever wider too.

As the Government currently seeks to secure yet another miserable Act of Parliament in support of this failed and ruinous policy, much attention is inevitably diverted to what is put immediately at stake by the Safety of Rwanda Bill. But it is ever more urgent to see the bigger picture. That Bill and each of its two predecessors are consequences of an underlying policy, which is the true root of what is so wrong.