Justice & Home Affairs
34mentions · last 12 months↓
View full analysis →The Justice and Home Affairs Committee scrutinises the work of the Home Office, examining immigration policy, settlement procedures, and the integration of migrants into UK society. This House of Lords select committee takes oral evidence from government departments, experts, and stakeholders to inform its inquiries. The committee has concentrated its recent work on settlement and citizenship policy, conducting a sustained investigation into how the UK immigration system processes applications and supports integration outcomes. It has heard from the Migration Advisory Committee and Office for National Statistics on migration data and demographic trends, questioned Home Office officials directly on immigration rules and settlement processes, and gathered evidence from practitioners including the Immigration Law Practitioners' Association and law firms on implementation challenges. The committee examined the National Audit Office's assessment of settlement and citizenship integration in February 2026, and received expert panel testimony on evidence-based policy approaches to settlement support. Throughout this inquiry, the committee has focused on understanding whether current settlement frameworks adequately support migrant integration and whether immigration rules function as intended.
18 sessions published in the last 12 months
Click any cell in the heatmap to see the sessions held that day and the insights extracted from them.
278 insights
07 Jul 2026
The Home Secretary was scrutinised on a wide Home Office agenda: police reform and leadership, live facial recognition, rural policing, violence against women and girls, asylum accommodation, the Common Travel Area, EU border controls, and major immigration changes including ILR, family reunion and appeals. She set out the Government’s line that policing needs a new three-tier model backed by a forthcoming Bill, that live facial recognition needs statutory underpinning and independent oversight, and that the asylum hotel pledge remains on track through greater use of military sites. On immigration, she defended tightening ILR and appeal rules as lawful and necessary to control an unprecedented migration cohort, while confirming several areas still under consultation, including transitional arrangements and family reunion. She also committed to further work or letters on enforcement, data, and the Life in the UK Test, and said the Government would publish a response to the police leadership commission later in the year.
30 Jun 2026
The committee scrutinised prison fire safety across the estate, focusing on high inherent fire risk, the slow rollout of automatic fire detection (AFD), the adequacy of staff and prisoner training, the effectiveness of drills, and how far Crown immunity limits enforcement in public prisons. Witnesses from the inspectorate and HMPPS said more progress had been made on safer vapes, inspection transparency and incident response, but accepted that many prisons still lacked AFD and that delivery was constrained by capacity, staffing turnover and the need for further funding. Ministers and officials defended current policy, said fire-safety money was secured for the current spending round, and confirmed priorities such as accelerating AFD and reviewing guidance where the PSI may not align with the Fire Safety Order.
23 Jun 2026
The committee scrutinised prison fire safety from two angles: operational management by prison governors and the technical case for automatic suppression systems. Governors’ representatives said fire-safety policy is often over-complex, sometimes contradictory, and poorly aligned with staffing and overcrowding realities; they argued governors lack control over buildings, maintenance and decanting decisions, and that stronger inspection/enforcement or Secretary of State sign-off would help. Fire-protection witnesses argued for risk-based roll-out of automatic detection and suppression, especially in new builds and high-risk areas, and said water mist/sprinklers can materially improve smoke control and survivability. They also highlighted practical barriers such as cost, retrofitting, capacity pressures, and the need to address deliberate fire-setting, including possible reconsideration of vapes.
16 Jun 2026
The committee scrutinised the scale of fire risk in prisons, the adequacy of automatic fire detection, smoke control and suppression, the quality of staff training and drills, and the effectiveness of oversight under Crown immunity. The Howard League said the Government has accepted for 20 years that automatic fire detection is required, yet many prison places still lack it; it also argued that public prisons are insulated from enforcement because of Crown immunity, making transparency, litigation and parliamentary scrutiny the main levers. The witnesses criticised long delays, slippage in delivery, weak publication of data, and framework gaps around time-based emergency response, while also arguing that overcrowding, understaffing and poor regimes contribute to fire-setting and that broader sentencing reform would ease the pressure on the system.
09 Jun 2026
The committee scrutinised fire safety risk across the prison estate, including the scale of deliberate firesetting, the role of vapes as an ignition source, and HMPPS’s shift toward prioritising automatic fire detection (AFD) over slower ventilation/suppression works. Witnesses explained that the 2027 remediation timetable was overtaken by the collapse of prime contractor ISG and later overcrowding/capacity judgments, and that full AFD delivery is now expected in the early 2030s. They defended oversight arrangements via CPFSI, BSI audits and internal assurance, acknowledged Clare Dupree’s death as linked to lack of AFD, and said fire safety is the top maintenance priority with £275 million committed this year. Ministers had not discussed banning vapes, and HMPPS said it is instead pursuing safer vape technology and wider mitigations.
10 Mar 2026
This session scrutinised the Home Office’s plan to reform Immigration Rules, including retrospective settlement provisions (pushing ILR/support from five to ten years), the role of earned settlement, and the fiscal implications highlighted by the government. Witnesses defended these reforms as necessary to manage unprecedented migration pressures, while acknowledging data gaps and the need for impact assessments. The committee probed data quality, cross-departmental data sharing, language/ESOL policy, and the Life in the UK Test, and pressed for transparency around costings (notably the £10 billion figure associated with health and social care visa migrants) and the Windrush-facing safeguards. The Home Office committed to publishing impact assessments at the point of legislation, continuing consultation, improving border data and exit data through digitalisation, and considering fee waivers where appropriate. The session underscored tensions between migration control, integration, and fiscal impacts, with a clear emphasis on evidencing both costs and societal benefits to the public.