The Immigration and Asylum Bill 2026: Five Key Changes for Immigration Advisers
The Immigration and Asylum Bill 2026 is the Government’s attempt to turn the promises set out in its November 2025 policy statement, Restoring Order and Control, into law. Introduced in the House of Commons on 30 June 2026 by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, the Bill runs to fifty-three clauses across six Parts and, despite its title, is concerned as much with modern slavery as it is with immigration and asylum. It builds directly on the changes that already took effect in March 2026 and represents the most substantial reworking of the appeals and protection systems in several years.The Immigration and Asylum Bill 2026 proposes five major changes: a new Independent Immigration Appeals Authority (IIAA), a stricter reading of Article 8, a single ‘core protection’ status for refugees, a power to recover asylum support costs, and reforms to modern slavery law.
Why the Immigration and Asylum Bill 2026 was introduced
The reasons behind its introduction are not difficult to identify. The asylum appeals backlog has grown to a point the Government regards as unsustainable, with around 87,000 appeals outstanding at the end of March 2026, a figure more than three times higher than two years earlier. People now wait an average of sixty-seven weeks, or roughly a year and a quarter, for a hearing. At the same time, spending on asylum support has become the largest single cost in the asylum system, reaching around £4 billion in a single year, and the Government has committed to reducing that cost and ending the use of hotels by 2029.
The Bill is the legislative vehicle through which ministers hope to speed up decision-making, reduce expenditure and, in their words, restore public confidence. Five proposed changes stand out as the ones most likely to affect advisers and their clients.
A new Independent Immigration Appeals Authority (IIAA)
The first and most far-reaching change is the creation of a new body called the Independent Immigration Appeals Authority, or IIAA, which would in time replace the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber). It is worth noting at the outset that this is not the same as the Immigration Advice Authority, the regulator of immigration advice, despite the similarity in name. The IIAA would be a non-departmental public body rather than a court, and its appeals would be decided not by legally qualified judges but by adjudicators who would not need legal qualifications or legal experience at all. The Government argues that a broader recruitment pool would allow it to appoint decision-makers more quickly, increase capacity and bring the backlog under control.
The Bill also introduces mechanisms to move certain cases through the system more quickly. The Home Secretary would be able to set statutory time periods for decisions, ask the IIAA to expedite individual cases in the public interest, and apply accelerated processes to people who raise late claims to remain when they are already facing removal. A decision made by the IIAA could be challenged in the Upper Tribunal only on a point of law, and, controversially, judicial review of IIAA decisions would be removed altogether.
These proposals have met strong opposition from the legal professions and refugee organisations, with the Law Society calling on the Government to drop the plans entirely. Critics question whether adjudicators without legal training can safely handle the complexity of asylum and human rights work, particularly where appellants are unrepresented and initial Home Office decisions are poorly reasoned. Concerns about the body’s independence are equally prominent, given that the Home Office would sponsor and fund the IIAA while also being a party to every appeal it hears. The earliest the new body might begin hearing cases is late 2027, with both systems running side by side during a transition expected to last several years.
Changes to Article 8 and human rights claims
The second change concerns Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to respect for private and family life. The immigration Bill does not attempt to remove the ability to rely on Article 8, but it seeks to tighten how appeal decision-makers interpret it, with the Government’s own impact assessment suggesting that around 11,700 more Article 8 cases could be refused as a result.
Several adjustments work towards that aim. The immigration Bill would define family life for appeal purposes as normally limited to the core cohabiting family, meaning a partner and any child under eighteen, and would set a higher bar for relationships between adults. It would strengthen the public interest considerations that count against an applicant, so that a lack of financial independence, any criminal offending or a failure to co-operate with immigration authorities would weigh more heavily against them. It would also move from giving “little weight” to giving “no weight” to family and private life built up while a person was in the UK unlawfully.
The change most likely to affect advisers’ caseloads relates to parents of British or long-resident children. At present, a parent with a genuine relationship with a qualifying child can succeed where it would not be reasonable to expect the child to leave the UK. Under the Bill, it would only be unreasonable to expect a child to leave if the child would receive no education abroad, would face very significant obstacles to integrating there, or would suffer a “very significant and long-lasting adverse effect”.
Immigration practitioners have identified this as a significant narrowing that would make it considerably harder for children and their families to remain. Separately, the deportation rules for people with criminal convictions would be recast around a general test of “exceptional circumstances”, intended to place greater emphasis on the public interest in removal.
A new ‘core protection’ model for refugees
The third change replaces the two existing forms of protection, refugee status and humanitarian protection, with a single new category called protection status. The qualifying criteria for asylum would stay the same, and the Government’s argument is one of efficiency: caseworkers would no longer need to decide between two forms of status, which should shorten the time taken to determine claims and appeals.
The single status sits alongside the broader ‘core protection’ policy first announced in November 2025. Under that approach, refugees would be placed on a core protection route and granted permission to stay for thirty months at a time, with their need for protection reviewed at each renewal. They would not automatically be able to sponsor family members to join them and would not be able to apply for permanent residence until they had lived in the UK for twenty years. Those who take up work or study could move onto a more generous ‘protection work and study’ route, which would carry the right to sponsor family, no repeated protection reviews and a shorter path to settlement. A first step towards this model is already in place, as people granted asylum since March 2026 receive thirty months’ permission rather than the previous five years. Advisers should note the breadth of the regulation-making power the Bill grants ministers here, which would allow much of the detail to be worked out later through secondary legislation.
Repayment of asylum support
The fourth change gives the Home Secretary a new power to require adults who have received asylum support to contribute towards its cost once they are financially able to do so. The Bill itself does not state how much would be payable, but the Home Office has indicated a figure of around £10,000 in total, recoverable in monthly instalments paid directly to the department or collected through the benefits or tax system.
The detail of who would pay, and at what income threshold, would be set out in regulations, and the Bill provides that the threshold must not be set at a level that would leave a person destitute. People who received support only as children, or who began receiving it before the provision came into force, would be excluded, and the explanatory notes indicate that victims of modern slavery would also be exempt.
Advisers should be alert to the settlement implications, because an unpaid contribution could become a debt, and the absence of government debt is a proposed condition of the Government’s earned settlement plans. The measure has drawn criticism on grounds of both fairness and practicality: the Refugee Council has described it as an unfair extra tax on refugees, while the Migration Observatory has questioned how many people would ever earn enough to reach a repayment threshold.
Modern slavery reforms
The fifth set of changes amends the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and reflects the Bill’s dual character as a modern slavery measure. The reforms are broadly aimed at preventing what the Government regards as misuse of the system, giving law enforcement further powers and improving transparency in supply chains.
On enforcement, the Bill would allow a Slavery and Trafficking Risk Order to be imposed following an acquittal, expand the police forces able to apply for orders and permit electronic monitoring of those subject to them. The National Referral Mechanism would be reformed so that a person’s credibility is expressly weighed when deciding whether they are a victim, with delay or inconsistency in disclosure counting against them. The recovery period would end immediately upon a negative conclusive grounds decision, the duty to grant leave to remain for recovery would be removed, and people who pose a threat to national security would be disqualified from protection.
Finally, the supply chain transparency regime would be extended to public authorities and backed for the first time by financial penalties, up to £1 million or one per cent of turnover. These measures have prompted concern from anti-trafficking organisations, with a statement co-signed by twenty-seven groups warning that fixed disclosure timeframes and the abrupt withdrawal of support risk driving vulnerable people further from help.
Where the Bill stands, and what happens next
It is important to keep in mind that the Immigration and Asylum Bill 2026 is a policy proposal and not yet law. A Bill must complete its passage through both Houses of Parliament, where it will be scrutinised, debated, amended and voted on, before it can receive Royal Assent, and its provisions can change considerably along the way.
At present the Bill has moved beyond its opening stages. It received its first reading on 30 June 2026 and passed its second reading in the House of Commons on 13 July 2026, when MPs voted in favour of the general principles behind it. It now awaits committee stage, where a Public Bill Committee is due to begin examining it line by line, with detailed scrutiny expected to run into the autumn before the Bill returns to the Commons chamber and then moves to the House of Lords. That leaves a meaningful window in which the proposals may be refined or resisted, and advisers would be well placed to follow the committee’s work closely, since it is often at this stage that the practical shape of the eventual legislation becomes clear.
An updated blog will be published as the Bill progresses through Parliament.
Stay ahead of the Bill
HJT Training’s CPD courses are designed to keep advisers abreast of important developments like these as they unfold. Explore our courses here
For enquiries on bookings, contact enquiries@hjt-training.co.uk or call +44 7446 466898
Written by Shareen Khan- Legal Content Writer, HJT Training
Disclaimer: This blog post is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Immigration advisors should consult the full case decisions and official policy documents as required when advising clients on specific cases.