How Mahmood's new Ukrainian-style refugee scheme will work

Shabana Mahmood has vowed to introduce a new safe routes system for refugees styled on the Ukrainian sponsorship scheme.

As part of the Home Secretary’s new plan, safe routes, which could open as soon as this autumn, would allow “trusted” private citizens, community groups and organisations to sponsor refugees to come to the UK.

A separate route for employers to sponsor refugees is expected to open next year.

New EU border checks should be suspended before peak summer, aviation industry leaders have said, after Brits reported huge delays due to the new Entry/Exit System (EES). 

The system, rolled out fully in April, involves people from the UK having their fingerprints registered and photographs taken to enter certain countries.

The EES is used to enter the Schengen Area, which consists of 29 European countries, mainly in the EU.

For most UK travellers, the process is done at foreign airports.

Severe operational consequences disrupting passengers and putting border authorities, airports and airlines under unsustainable pressure.

Senior figures at three major aviation industry bodies wrote to Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission warning waiting times at border control had “increased significantly, now reaching up to five hours”.

Since it’s implementation, the EES has caused travel chaos for Brits.

Russia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv with missiles and drones, killing at least 13 people and injuring dozens more.

Russia launched a series of strikes on Kyiv, hitting residential ⁠buildings and ⁠triggering ​a fire in a hotel on a central boulevard.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko has said 13 people had been killed, ⁠with about three dozen locations across the city damaged in the attacks.

Many residents took shelter at metro stations after the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, issued the first warnings of the attack.

Zelenskyy was forced to cut short a trip to Dublin on Wednesday, citing intelligence reports of a large-scale Russian attack.

Ukraine said on Tuesday it hit one of Russia’s largest satellite communication centers in north Moscow for the second time in just over a week.

Russian president Vladimir Putin also recently admitted Russia is facing fuel shortages after Ukraine launched repeated strikes on oil refineries, while Kyiv notably launched a large-scale attack on Moscow last month.

Sir Keir Starmer’s much-delayed Defence Investment Plan had one big bet at its heart: drones are the future of warfare.

American company Anduril makes the “Seabed Sentry“- a weighted cylinder that uses sensors and AI to monitor what is happening under the sea. They could be used to listen out for spying and sabotage by Russian submarines. They are far cheaper than crewed submarines using traditional sonar.

A dozen of the cylinders can be dropped onto the seabed at a time by an autonomous submarine, with the devices forming a network which communicate between themselves and listens out for undersea activity.

The UK is woefully unprepared with the Royal Navy in a desperate condition. Whoever sits in Downing Street come next September will need to address matters of defence, homeland and cyber defence especially, with urgency.

Officials have drawn up contingency plans to cut further green levies from energy bills if prices remain high this winter, The i Paper has been told.

Several options are now circulating among Burnham’s transition team who are believed to be weighing up how to deliver on that pledge. A Treasury source said work on a package was ongoing to help with rising costs.

Burnham could remove remaining green levies from energy bills, funded through general taxation instead.

One proposal would be to raise the bank surcharge from its current 3 per cent.

Replace stamp duty, loosen fiscal rules and tax the capital gains uplift on inherited assets.

A written statement published by the Chancellor said the remaining sum would be “confirmed at Budget 2026, in a fair and balanced way”.

The coronation of Andy Burnham is fraught with dangers. Never will a prime minister have arrived in Downing Street with so little scrutiny of what he wants to do.

Electric flying taxis could be above the streets of London by 2028, a manufacturer has claimed. Here’s what you need to know.

Vertical Aerospace is still testing the aircraft and it will need to be approved by both the approval from the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and the European Aviation Safety Authority (EASA). But the company says the aim is for air taxis to become as cheap and convenient as ordering an Uber to the airport.

The new UK refugee sponsorship plan was inspired by Canada’s Private Sponsorship of Refugees scheme, which has settled 400,000 people in the country since 1979.

The Home Office expects it to operate in a similar way to the UK’s Homes for Ukraine scheme, which allowed households and community groups to sponsor more than 200,000 refugees fleeing the war zone.

The number of refugees using the new routes scheme was not specified, though it is understood that there will be a named cap. The Home Office said it would “operate at a much higher capacity” than the current UK Resettlement Scheme, which provides a route for a small number of people each year, with some speculating that the new scheme could take in up to 10,000 people.

Refugees from countries the UN has designated as disaster zones due to war, famine, drought or natural disasters will be referred to the UK by the refugee agency UNHCR.

Those from countries at the highest risk, such as Sudan and Eritrea, are likely to be prioritised, with refugees being individually sponsored by businesses, organisations, including universities and church groups or individuals who will pay their visa fees and support them once they enter the UK.

Canada’s system has been hailed as a success in integrating migrants, with 70 per cent of sponsored refugees finding work within a year compared to 40 per cent of those on other routes, according to the Home Office.

The Home Secretary hopes this route will help to bring down small boat arrivals, as people from these countries make up a large proportion of those entering the UK illegally.

There were 27,000 refugees granted asylum through safe and legal routes last year, and 39,000 arrivals by small boat in the year ending March 2026. The new system would bring both of these figures down, it is hoped, by allowing only those who would have a successful asylum claim to enter the country.

Earlier this year, Mahmood announced changes akin to Denmark’s asylum system, doubling the time given for temporary protection to refugees and doubling the time needed to gain residency.

It was also revealed that net migration, those entering the country minus those leaving, fell to 171,000 in 2025.

In addition to the new routes, Mahmood has said a new Immigration and Asylum Bill, to be unveiled on Tuesday, will seek to prevent “abuse” of human rights laws, including the right to a family life and modern slavery protections.

The new law will tighten the definition of “family” for the purposes of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), restricting it to immediate family members only.

Critics of the asylum system have focused on Article 8 of the ECHR, saying it has been used to frustrate the deportation of people with no right to be in the UK.

The new legislation will also remove modern slavery protections from foreign offenders who have been jailed and reject claims made when deportation action has already commenced if there was an opportunity to make a claim earlier.

Mahmood said: “Britain has always offered sanctuary to those fleeing war and persecution.

“But this system only survives if the public trusts that it is fair, controlled, and not open to abuse.”

This comes as her planned changes to the rules governing indefinite leave to remain (ILR) have drawn criticism from some Labour MPs, with Sir Keir Starmer’s likely successor, Andy Burnham, facing calls to scrap them.

During his by-election campaign in Makerfield, Burnham suggested he wanted a “consultation” on the proposals. However, it is reported that the former Greater Manchester mayor approved of the changes following talks with Mahmood.

Mahmood also spent Friday embroiled in a row with one of her junior ministers, Mike Tapp, after he suggested exempting care workers from her ILR reforms.

Starmer resisted her calls to sack Tapp, with Downing Street issuing a rebuke to both ministers.

The Government is also split over plans to revive a “golden visa” scheme to attract wealthy individuals to the UK, proposed by business secretary Peter Kyle, according to the Financial Times.

The proposal would allow people who invest £5m in British business to become citizens after five years, and is said to be opposed by both the Treasury and the Home Office, who are sceptical of the promised growth.