There are currently a lot of changes happening across the asylum and immigration system. After years of law and policy changes, there have been even more changes since Labour came into government in July 2024. Since Shabana Mahmood became Home Secretary in September 2025, there have been policy papers, consultations, briefings, speeches and legal changes, often with different start dates. This has been confusing in media reporting, and it can also be confusing for people trying to understand what has really changed.
This blog explains some of the key terms and what each type of document can do. A lot of the confusion comes from the fact that government changes are announced in different ways. Some documents only set out ideas or proposals and others actually change the law, the Immigration Rules, or the way the Home Office says it will make decisions in practice.
How the government changes law and practice
1. Before anything changes
These documents tell you what the government is planning or thinking about, but they do not usually change the law by themselves.
| What is it? | What does it do? | Example |
| Speeches Announcement Press release | How the government publicly says what it wants to do, or what changes it plans to make. | The Home Secretary’s statement “A fairer pathway to settlement” on 20 November 2025 set out plans for major settlement reforms, but those changes were not made by the speech itself. |
| Policy paper Briefing | A document giving more details about the government’s plans, priorities, or ideas. It may set out the reasons for change and the direction of travel, but it is not usually the legal change itself. | Asylum and Returns Policy Statement: Restoring Order and Control: a statement on the government’s asylum and returns policy, published in November 2025 described major proposed changes to the asylum and returns system. |
| Consultation | A process where the government asks for views from the public or the professionals who do the work before deciding whether or how to make changes | The earned settlement consultation which ran from 20 November 2025 to 12 February 2026, asked for views on changes to settlement rules. |
| White Paper | a government document describing bigger plans for future policy or legal change | Restoring control over the immigration system: white paper which was published on 12 May 2025 (under the previous Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper), outlining broadly how the government intends to change the UK’s immigration system. |
2. When a change is being made
The table below lists the documents that may actually lead to legal change. To understand them, it helps to know a few key words about how laws are made in the UK.
- Government = the group of politicians in power who run government departments and decide what changes they want to make. For example, the Home Office is part of the government. The government proposes changes but doesn’t make them law.
- Parliament = the place where UK laws are discussed, changed and approved
- House of Commons = the part of Parliament made up of elected MPs.
- MP (Member of Parliament) = a person elected by voters to represent a local area in Parliament. You can read more about how MPs and other politicians may be able to help your immigration or asylum case here.
- House of Lords = the other part of Parliament, which checks and reviews laws.
- Peers = members of the House of Lords who are unelected, unlike MPs.
- Royal Assent = the final step that turns a Bill into law.
| What is it? | What does it do? | Example |
| Bill | A proposed new law. It has to go through Parliament before it can become law. | Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill was introduced in January 2025 |
| Act | A law that has been passed by Parliament. | The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 2 December 2025, which means it became law |
| Immigration Rules | The main written rules the Home Office uses to decide immigration cases. | GOV.UK publishes the Immigration Rules online and updates them when changes are made |
| Statement of Changes | The formal document used to change the Immigration Rules and includes information on what date these new rules will start from. | HC 1691, published in March 2026, is a Statement of Changes linked to the Home Secretary’s 2 March 2026 announcement that refugee protection would be reviewed every 30 months. It formally made some of those changes to the Immigration Rules and states when the Home Office starts applying changes. |
| Statutory Instrument (often described as ‘SI’) Regulations | A type of law (secondary legislation) used to make more specific changes after Parliament has already passed the main law (primary legislation). | The Asylum Support (Amendment) Regulations 2026 are a statutory instrument which amend the Asylum Support Regulations 2000. |
| Commencement regulations | Regulations that bring a law, or part of a law, into force on a particular date | The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 (Commencement No. 2) Regulations 2026 bring specified parts of that Act into force on 2 February 2026. |
The UK Parliament website has various detailed guides on how Parliament works and how laws are made in the UK which you can read here.
3. What kind of legal change is it?
When the law changes, it does not always create the same kind of rule. Sometimes it creates a duty, sometimes a power, and sometimes it gives the Home Office discretion about how to act.
- Duty = something the law says the Home Office must do.
- Power = something the law says the Home Office can do.
- Discretion = the choice the Home Office has about whether or how to use that power in a particular case.
- Entitlement = something a person has a legal right to receive if they meet the rules.
For example: Home Office guidance says that, from 2 June 2026, asylum support will move from a duty to a power. Before that planned change, eligible people who were destitute had a stronger entitlement to support because the Home Office was under a duty to provide it. After the change, the Home Office would still have the power to provide support, but it would have more discretion about whether and how to do so. We don’t know what this will look like in practice or how the Home Office will actually implement it.
3. After the change
These help explain or apply the change, but are not usually the law itself.
| What is it? | What does it do? | Example |
| Guidance | A document explaining how the Home Office says the law or rules should work in practice. It may be written for the public or for the Home Office staff. | The public GOV.UK page “Claiming Universal Credit and other benefits if you are a refugee” explains what newly recognised refugees should do to claim benefit |
| Explanatory memorandumExplanatory notes | A document that explains what a legal change does and why it is being made. It helps people understand the change, but it is not the legal change itself. | Explanatory Memorandum to HC 1691, published on 6 March 2026, explains the March 2026 changes to the Immigration Rules. |
| Caseworker guidance | A document written for Home Office staff, telling them how to make decisions and apply the rules in day-to-day cases. | Ceasing section 95 support instruction, updated on 9 March 2026, tells caseworkers how and when to stop asylum support after a person gets refugee status. |
4. After a change is made: when courts get involved
Sometimes a law, rule, policy or Home Office decision is challenged in court after it has been made or applied. The court is independent from the government and is made up of judges, who decide cases according to the law and their own judgment, not according to what the government wants.
The court may then decide whether the change or decision was lawful. As a result, the court, for example, might leave things unchanged, cancel a decision, order the Home Office to do something or stop doing something, explain what the law means, pause something while the case is ongoing, or in some cases award damages.
| What is it? | What does it do? | Example |
| Judgement | The court’s written decision, explaining what the judge decided and why. | A judgment in an asylum support case may explain whether the Home Office or tribunal applied the law correctly |
| Case law | The legal principles that come from court decisions and can be used in later cases. | If a higher court explains what the law means, later judges usually follow that approach in similar cases |
| Court order | The formal written document from the court that says what must happen next. | A court order might require the Home Office to change its guidance, reconsider a decision, or reach an agreement before the court gives a final decision. |
| Litigation | The general word for legal action in court. | Litigation can be about one person’s case, or it can be used to challenge a wider policy or practice (this is often called strategic litigation) |
| Judicial Review | A type of litigation where a judge looks at whether a public body (e.g. the Home Office) acted lawfully. | A judicial review may challenge a Home Office policy, delay, or decision because it was unlawful or made unfairly |
Discussion: