JPIT’s Steve Tinning argues that Reform UK’s latest asylum proposals threaten the lives of people seeking sanctuary, while risking a dangerous shift in what is considered politically acceptable.
I have had the extraordinary privilege of walking alongside people who have sought sanctuary in Britain. People who have fled unimaginable danger, lost almost everything and slowly begun rebuilding their lives. I have seen the hope that comes when someone who has lived in fear finally believes they might have a future.
And now Nigel Farage and Reform UK are proposing that Britain should simply stop hearing asylum claims. They are not making a case for faster decisions. Not more effective immigration controls. Not a better system for distinguishing those who genuinely need protection from those who do not.
No, they propose suspending the asylum system in its entirety for a parliamentary term of up to five years, automatically rejecting new applications, ending claims already in progress and scrapping asylum tribunals, including some 90,000 outstanding appeals. Refugee resettlement routes would close, with an exception for Ukrainians. Even people already granted protection since 2024 could have their status reviewed and potentially revoked.
Think about what that means.
Someone fleeing torture? We will not hear your asylum claim.
A woman escaping persecution in Afghanistan? We will not consider whether you need sanctuary.
A Christian threatened with imprisonment or death because of their faith? Your life may be in danger. But we don’t want to know.
Reform insists they would not send people back to be tortured or killed, suggesting that some could instead be removed to safe third countries. But how would they establish who faces persecution while refusing to consider asylum claims through an appropriately thorough process? How would they know those third countries are safe? And without an effective opportunity to challenge a mistaken decision, what happens when mistakes are made?
These are not technicalities. They are questions about human lives.
The vision here is not for a tougher asylum system. It is a proposal to stop offering asylum in Britain completely, and I find that morally reprehensible. But there is something else about this announcement that troubles me almost as deeply. The first danger is what these proposals could mean for the people subjected to them. The second is what they might do to the rest of us, simply by being proposed.
When the unacceptable becomes reasonable
In March 2023, more than 1,500 church leaders joined senior representatives of the Baptist, Methodist and United Reformed Churches in condemning the Conservative government’s Illegal Migration Bill.
That legislation sought to prevent people arriving by certain routes from having their asylum claims considered in Britain, instead requiring their removal to their country of origin or a designated ‘safe’ third country, such as Rwanda.
Our joint statement described those proposals as “completely incompatible with our Christian conviction that all human beings are made in the image of God”. We also wrote: “If ever there was a contemporary example of ignoring our neighbour and walking by on the other side, this is it.”
We meant it then. We should mean it now.
Three years later, Reform proposes going further. Rather than excluding claims on the basis of how someone arrives in the UK, it proposes suspending the asylum system altogether. The very fact that we are now debating something so much more extreme should give us pause.
This is the danger of shifting the ‘Overton window’: the range of positions considered acceptable within mainstream political debate.
I find myself wondering whether Nigel Farage truly expects these proposals to be implemented, or whether, in fact, their political purpose is served simply by his announcing them. I cannot know his intentions. But I can see the potential effect.
Proposals that once provoked widespread moral outrage can begin to seem like the more reasonable option. Our political conversation shifts from asking how we can most effectively meet our responsibilities towards people fleeing persecution to debating how much protection we can get away with withdrawing. The current government is already pursuing restrictions to the legal status and rights of refugees, which risk separating families, pushing more refugees into poverty, and harming the integration of refugees into communities in the UK.
And those of us who believe in the biblical principle of welcoming the stranger find ourselves defending the bare minimum of human decency, rather than making the positive case for the hospitality our faith calls us to practise.
What was morally indefensible yesterday does not become acceptable simply because someone proposes something even worse today.
A different story of Britain
Eleven years ago, the heartbreaking photograph of three-year-old Alan Kurdi lying lifeless on a Turkish beach confronted Britain with the humanity behind the Syrian refugee crisis. The Conservative government committed to resettling 20,000 vulnerable refugees. Churches and communities mobilised. People opened their homes, offered friendship and helped families rebuild their lives. We have witnessed that same generosity through Homes for Ukraine, through programmes welcoming Afghans and through countless local acts of kindness and hospitality.
I do not believe most British people are fundamentally hostile to those who seek safety here. I have seen far too much compassion to believe that.
Nor do I dismiss the genuine concerns people have about immigration, housing, public services and the pressures facing their communities. Those concerns deserve serious answers. Governments have a responsibility to manage borders, make fair decisions and maintain public confidence in the asylum system. But there is a profound difference between responding to people’s fears and exploiting them.
Nigel Farage, alongside other political figures and sections of the media, has helped cultivate a harmful narrative in which people seeking sanctuary are too often presented as threats, burdens, criminals, or convenient explanations for Britain’s difficulties.
A family fleeing persecution did not create our housing crisis. A child seeking sanctuary from war is not responsible for the deterioration of our public services.
Political leadership should help us confront complicated realities, not offer vulnerable human beings up as scapegoats.
And this is why we must confront this kind of corrosive rhetoric. Left unchallenged, it can drown out the better instincts of a nation, making hostility seem sensible and compassion appear dangerously naive.
By their fruits
Reform UK has sought to present itself as a defender of Britain’s Christian heritage. But what does it mean to defend a Christian heritage while advocating policies that appear so profoundly at odds with the teachings of Christ?
Scripture commands God’s people to love the stranger. Jesus identifies himself with those who are hungry, vulnerable and in need of welcome. And Paul describes the fruit of the Spirit as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Jesus tells us that we will recognise people by their fruits.
So where is the kindness in refusing to hear the plea of someone fleeing persecution? Where is the goodness in closing routes through which vulnerable families might find sanctuary? Where is the love of neighbour in removing protection without properly considering the danger someone might face?
A nation’s Christian character cannot be measured simply by the traditions it preserves, the symbols it displays or the heritage it claims. Surely it is better recognised when people freely embrace the hope and goodness of Christ’s way, allowing God’s Spirit to shape how they live, how they treat their neighbours and what they expect of those who govern them. Then we might see more of the values of God’s Kingdom reflected in our national life: compassion rather than cruelty, hospitality rather than hostility, and a commitment to the dignity of all who are created in the image of God, particularly those with the least power to protect themselves.
Christian symbols and traditions mean little if we defend them more fiercely than we practice the love to which they point.
Of course, none of this means every asylum application must succeed, or that governments should abandon immigration controls. We need an asylum system that is fair, efficient, properly managed and compassionate. One that considers individual claims carefully, provides meaningful opportunities to challenge mistakes, offers safe routes to protection and makes lawful, humane decisions about return.
We cannot reliably distinguish those who need protection from those who do not if we refuse to hear their stories. We cannot afford to become a country where compassion must be apologised for, where fairness is considered weakness and where withdrawing protection from vulnerable people is mistaken for political courage.
That is why this announcement matters, whether or not these proposals ever become law.
It threatens the future of people who may desperately need sanctuary. And it risks eroding the moral expectations by which we judge our treatment of them.
I refuse to believe that Britain has lost its capacity for compassion.
Instead, I choose to believe that the compassion that has welcomed so many is still part of who we are. It deserves and needs to be heard.
And Christians should be among the loudest voices, standing alongside all those passionately and persistently making the case for it.
Take action: join our interfaith lobby of parliament on 17 November and stand up for refugees.
