‘Once you strip rights from one group, you hand licence to whoever comes next to strip them from others’ - Steve Valdez-Symonds 

Amnesty International UK has condemned the Government’s announcements on asylum reform, warning that the plans mark a dangerous drift toward treating fundamental human rights as optional depending on who you are. 

In response to the Home Secretary’s statement in the House of Commons, Amnesty said the package represents a historic weakening of refugee protection, including turning refugee status into a temporary and precarious system, removing the state’s duty to support people who would otherwise be destitute, and signalling a new willingness to remove families even where children have grown up and put down roots in the UK. 

The organisation warned that ministers are undermining the European Convention on Human Rights while claiming they want to remain within it. Amnesty said this erodes respect for the UK’s human rights obligations and opens the door for future governments to withdraw from them completely. 

Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty International UK’s Refugee and Migrant Rights Director, said: 

“The Home Secretary’s immigration and asylum plans are cruel, divisive and fundamentally out of step with basic decency.  

“Forcing refugees into endless short-term applications, denying visas to partners and children and stripping away support for people who would otherwise be destitute will only deepen chaos, increase costs and hand greater power to people smugglers.  

“This is headline chasing, not problem solving  - a Government bowing to anti-immigrant, anti-rights politics instead of standing up for the basic principles that protect us all. Ministers claim to defend the ECHR, yet they are seeking to exclude unfavoured people from protection against inhuman and degrading treatment, and from their right to family life. 

“The moment a Government decides that fundamental rights can be switched off for certain people, it crosses a dangerous line that should never be crossed. This is how universal protections begin to rot. Once you strip rights from one group, you hand licence to whoever comes next to strip them from others.  

“This headline-chasing cruelty will not fix the immigration system. It will only fuel fear, worsen instability and give legitimacy to the most divisive politics. Anyone who cares about universal human rights needs to act now, because if rights aren’t upheld for everyone - especially those who lack public sympathy - then they are not rights at all, but mere concessions that those in power may permit or withhold as they please.”   

Public strongly backs equal human rights protections 

Recent Amnesty International polling shows: 

• 87% of the public believe rights and laws must apply equally to everyone. 

• 78% say rights should be permanent and not something governments can reduce at will. 

• There is strong public support for Article 8 rights, including the right to family life. 

NOTES TO EDITORS 

Article 3 ECHR: Absolute protection 

Article 3  -the ban on torture and inhuman or degrading treatment - is absolute. It cannot be weakened, “rebalanced”, or reinterpreted to suit political convenience. If removal would expose someone to inhuman or degrading treatment, the UK is legally and morally barred from removing them. 

Article 8 ECHR: Right to family life 

Article 8 protects people from unjustified family separation and requires decisions to be lawful, proportionate, and consistent with the best interests of children. 

AI Age Assessment 

Facial analysis algorithms cannot reliably determine chronological age. They risk misclassifying children as adults, placing them in danger and creating new safeguarding failures. 

Polling conducted by Savanta who interviewed 2,099 UK adults aged 18+ online on 24^th-25^th October 2025. Data were weighted to be representative of the UK by age, gender, region and a battery of socio-economic variables.