Respond to The New Plan for Immigration
The UK Government's 'New Plan For Immigration' is controversial in bringing some of the biggest changes in 20 years. We need your voice to stand against this.
You may have already heard that on the 24th March, the UK Government published its proposed approach to a new asylum system in a document called the New Plan For Immigration.
The proposals represent the biggest changes to the immigration and asylum system for more than 20 years and it would be hard to exaggerate how damaging they would be to the people we serve at ODNE and to our communities as a whole. We’re therefore asking all of our supporters to please consider filling out the consultation to show that such a divisive and intolerant agenda is not acceptable for the society we all live in.
Our partners at Freedom From Torture have developed an excellent accessible overview of the proposed changes which describes extensive barriers and mistreatment our client communities would experience if the proposed changes become law.
The consultation is being run on behalf of the Government by ‘Britain Thinks’ and closes on Thursday 6th May 2021. The consultation is available here. Every respondent will need to create an account before the survey can be taken.
There has been significant criticism across the asylum and refugee sector over how this consultation has been designed, communicated, and implemented. Crucially, there is considerable concern that the Home Office has structured the multiple choice questions in such a way as to validate the plan in itself. This pervasive approach should not be tolerated and as such most advocacy groups are advising respondents to simply skip many of these questions altogether.
Even so, the consultation is potentially complex and time consuming. Whilst you are free to answer the questions however you wish, we would strongly recommend using Amnesty International’s step by step guide. It gives suggested responses to the multiple choice questions (including the recommendations of where to skip) and guidance around how to answer the open ended questions.
The added advantage of the Amnesty guidance is that it has also highlighted the priority questions, meaning you can focus on those only and still submit a meaningful response. This approach would only take around 20 minutes and would still be so valuable! A widespread and resounding rejection of the intended policy is what we’re aiming for here, so the number of responses is essential. Please don't feel you need to spend hours in order to have an impact - all responses will help give a voice to some of the most marginalised people in our communities.
