UK to deny asylum to sex offenders

Convicted sex offenders will be denied the right to seek asylum and stay in the United Kingdom under new laws to be introduced by the British government.

Under the Refugee Convention, any criminal whose crimes carry a sentence of one year or more can be refused the right to stay, and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has announced that similar limitations will now apply to anyone convicted in the UK of an offence that puts them on the sex offenders' register, no matter how long their sentence is.

The rule change will be brought about via an amendment to the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill which is currently going through the legislative process, and has been announced in the run-up to local elections taking place across the country on May 1, which will be the first big public vote since last summer's general election, won by the Labour Party.

The Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, Jess Phillips, said: "We are determined to achieve our mission of halving violence against women and girls in a decade… It is right we ensure that convicted, registered sex offenders are not entitled to refugee status, as part of our work to see these awful crimes treated with the seriousness they deserve, and perpetrators held to account."

The official announcement was made at the same time as details of how to clear the asylum application backlog were unveiled, including applying artificial intelligence, or AI, "to speed up decision making".

Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said he welcomed efforts to make the asylum appeal process faster, but funding would be needed to back up good intentions, and he was particularly wary about the use of mechanized technology in dealing with such delicate human cases.

"Previous efforts to speed up this process have often led to a bigger court backlog due to poor quality initial decisions," he said, adding that "the use of AI therefore must be carefully considered before potentially life or death decisions become a testing ground for the technology".

Chris Philp, shadow home secretary for the opposition Conservative Party, called the new government legislation "too little, too late".

"Foreign criminals pose a danger to British citizens and must be removed, but so often this is frustrated by spurious legal claims based on human rights claims, not asylum claims," he said.

"The Conservatives had already tabled tough, clear reforms to remove all foreign criminals and to disapply the Human Rights Act so activists and lawyers cannot block deportations. But Labour voted against our measures - they are not serious about controlling our borders."

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