New Home Secretary Threatens to Axe Visas as Labour Gets Tough on Borders

Shabana Mahmood has wasted no time making her mark as the new Home Secretary, warning that the UK could suspend visas from countries that refuse to take back their own citizens.

Speaking in London after meeting with allies from the Five Eyes security group, she said the UK would not tolerate nations that fail to co-operate on returns deals, particularly when it comes to migrants with no right to remain here.

Ms Mahmood explained that she and her counterparts from the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand had been discussing what action could be taken against uncooperative states, reported the Mirror.

“For countries that do not play ball, we’ve been talking about how we can take much more coordinated action between the Five Eyes countries,” she said. “For us, that means including possibly the cutting of visas in the future, just to say, you know, we do expect countries to play by the rules, and if one of your citizens has no right to be in our country, you do need to take them back.”

The new Home Secretary, who was appointed in last week’s reshuffle, has made it clear that tackling illegal migration and small boat crossings is a top priority.

She pledged that the Labour government would do “whatever it takes” to protect Britain’s borders and vowed to enforce immigration laws more strictly than before. “This is a Labour Government with Labour policy and Labour proposals. We’ve been looking at this for some time,” she said, stressing that the system cannot work if other nations refuse to co-operate.

Pressure is mounting on the government to sort out the asylum system it inherited from the Conservatives. At the end of June, around 32,000 people were still living in hotels while their applications were processed, costing taxpayers millions. Sir Keir Starmer has urged ministers to accelerate hotel closures and find alternative accommodation.

The government is now considering using defence sites to house asylum seekers temporarily. Hotels have become flashpoints for protests, and ministers are determined to close them as soon as possible.

Defence Secretary John Healey and other senior ministers recently joined the Prime Minister for a meeting focused on this issue, with the aim of speeding up the transition.

Defence minister Luke Pollard said both military and non-military sites were being reviewed for potential use. He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “We’ve deployed a military planning team into Border Security Command and the Home Office to look at military and non-military sites, about where we can help build temporary but adequate accommodation that enables us to transfer those folks from asylum hotels into that temporary accommodation so we can close even more hotels. We’ve closed 25 in the last year, but the Prime Minister is clear he wants every single one of them closed.”

With small boat arrivals still dominating headlines and asylum backlogs piling pressure on the system, the Home Secretary’s strong words mark the beginning of what could be a much tougher stance on immigration enforcement under Labour.