Payments to help migrants return home could see ‘big increase’, says Mahmood

Shabana Mahmood said she is considering “a big increase” in payments for migrants to return voluntarily to their home countries, insisting that the policy represented “value for money”.

The Home Secretary told the BBC’s Political Thinking podcast that she had already directed officials to “pilot a small programme” of increased payments “just to see how it changes behaviour”.

The UK currently offers payments of up to £3,000 for some people with no right to remain in the country who agree to return home.

In plans to overhaul the asylum system set out on Monday, Ms Mahmood said the offer of financial packages to assist with voluntary returns would continue.

But she told Political Thinking the figures involved could increase.

She said: “I haven’t alighted on the full sums involved yet, but I am willing to consider a big increase on what we currently pay.

“I know it sticks in the craw of many people and they don’t like it, but it is value for money, it does work, and a voluntary return is often the very best way to get people to return to their home country as quickly as possible.”

Labour backbenchers have strongly criticised Ms Mahmood’s wide-ranging reforms, which are aimed at deterring migrants from seeking asylum in the UK and making it easier to remove people with no right to be in the country.

But they have been praised by far-right activist Tommy Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who posted on social media: “The Overton window has been obliterated, well done patriots.”

The “Overton window” refers to the range of political ideas considered acceptable by the mainstream at a particular time.

Asked about Robinson’s comments, Ms Mahmood said she would not “have any truck with anything that an individual like that has to say” but insisted the Government could not cede discussion of migration issues to the far right.

She said: “If mainstream politics cannot have a discussion about secure borders and the rules by which people enter this country and the rules by which they must leave, if we cede that territory to the far right, if we show that we are either unable, unwilling, or simply don’t have the capacity to even think about the issue properly, and we cede it all to the far right, then we have let our country down.”

And following comments from Reform UK politicians suggesting she was emulating their language, Ms Mahmood said party leader Nigel Farage was “not looking to fix this problem”.

She said: “They’re making mischief, but it’s me that’s living now rent-free in their heads because I’m a politician that’s willing to both acknowledge a problem and have the solutions that are needed to fix it.

“They just need an issue to exploit.”