Ministers are reviewing how international human rights law is being applied to allow people to stay in the UK after entering by irregular means, Yvette Cooper has said.
The home secretary said on Sunday she was looking into the implementation of article eight of the Human Rights Act, which protects the right to a family life and has been used by people to argue for their right to stay in the UK.
The review is one of a range of actions Cooper is taking as she tries to bring down the record numbers of people crossing the Channel in small boats.
On Sunday she announced a crackdown on gig employers such as takeaways and barber shops who employ people without the correct visa status, and on Monday she will host an international summit on organised migration crime in London.
The home secretary told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg: “There have been some cases that do raise some real significant concerns, and that is also about the way in which the immigration asylum system operates.
“It’s about the application [of human rights law], including of article eight, as the prime minister has said. So we are reviewing this area to make sure that the immigration and asylum system works effectively in the way that parliament intended it to and make sure that there is a proper sense of control in the system.”
Article eight has been at the centre of a number of controversial asylum cases, including one earlier this year when a Palestinian family was allowed to remain in the UK having first made their application through the Ukrainian Family Scheme.
The prime minister, Keir Starmer, said in February that Cooper was looking at how this part of human rights law interacted with the immigration system, calling it a “loophole”. Neither Starmer nor Cooper have said how they want to change the system to stop such cases in the future however.
The home secretary is looking for ways to bring down the number of arrivals by small boats, which reached 5,000 earlier this month – quicker than in any of the previous three years.
Cooper in part blamed calm weather for the rising number of crossings, but also announced a new rule to force companies in the “gig economy” to check workers’ visa status even if they are being employed as contractors rather than full employees.
She said on Sunday: “We need to do more, because this is not reaching the gig economy, where employers don’t have to do eligibility for work checks, and you can end up with criminal gangs promising people illegal work.”
She was not able to say how many people she expected to be caught by the new rules, but added: “What we need is for employers themselves to take action that prevents the illegal working in the first place. So some of this is about us increasing enforcement, but some of this is the prevention action that we need employers to take.”
On Monday the home secretary will host representatives from more than 40 countries in central London to discuss how to tackle organised migration crime.
