CHILDREN will be left destitute by a crackdown on migrants, announced today by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, a coalition of refugee organisations has warned.

Ms Mahmood’s plans include forced removal of failed asylum-seekers and delaying the qualifying period for settlement for migrants from five years to 10.

The Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium, which unites about 100 organisations, slammed the plans, which include incentivising asylum-seekers to leave voluntarily or face forced deportation.

Families would have “just a week to make a potentially life-changing decision” without “time to access legal advice,” it said.

“Cutting support for these families if they do not feel able to leave will simply result in more children being left homeless and destitute,” the consortium added.

Yazan Miri, of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, commented that “people seeking asylum and other immigrants we work with only hear one message from this government – you are not welcome.”

And the Refugee Council said Ms Mahmood’s measures would mean “refugee families who have survived war and persecution will now face uncertainty every 30 months, stopping them from putting down roots and settling into communities.”

Ms Mahmood had previously trailed the package of measures at last year’s Labour conference and claimed today that the asylum system is “not fair.” 

She said: “Hard-working people across this country engaged in the daily struggle to make ends meet; they see a state that they pay taxes for but it is unable to stop a flow of dinghies across the channel.

“And they see a state that is paying billions towards hotels like the one near them. It doesn’t look fair because it’s not fair and it erodes their trust in government.”

Her plans face considerable pushback from other Labour MPs. Folkestone MP Tony Hyde said: “You don’t win back public confidence in the asylum system by threatening to forcibly remove refugees who have lived here lawfully for 15 or 20 years. That just breeds insecurity and fractured communities.”

And Sarah Owen, a leader of the Tribune group, accused Mahmood of “mimicking Trump” adding “this is the wrong direction politically and morally.”

The Home Secretary claims her measures are in line with “Labour values” from a government that needed to be “more Labour.”

Under the measures migrants will also need to be fluent in English, in work, paying taxes and have a clean criminal record.

She posed her values against Reform and the Greens, claiming the first would block all migration while the latter would indulge in “fairytale” open borders.