News
T2A Young Adult Voices is a new podcast featuring conversations between eight young adults from across the UK with lived experience of the criminal justice system. Six episodes are now available to listen too and are available on all major platforms buy searching ‘Young Adult Voices’ or on the T2A website
In each episode, contributors unpack a new topic – covering everything from race and care experience to resettlement and prison education programmes. Their discussions offer wide-ranging insights for professionals in the justice system on how to work more effectively with young adults.
T2A would like to thank Switchback, Leaders Unlocked, the Muslim Women in Prison project, Drive Forward Foundation, and Revolving Doors Agency for supporting the individuals who contributed to the podcast.
Learn more about working with young adults
For more than a decade T2A has been building and commissioning resources to help professionals working with young adults in the criminal justice system. If you want to learn more about working with young adults, look at our guides for practitioners and our research and reports.
MPs will this week make a fresh attempt to reform the joint enterprise legal dragnet, which has seen groups of friends and associates collectively punished for the crimes of an individual.
Spearheaded by Liverpool MP Kim Johnson, MPs have tabled an Early Day Motion, calling on the Labour government to make good on its pledge, while in opposition, to reform Joint Enterprise law, with a view to narrow the wide scope of the current law and to provide a fairer framework for prosecution and sentencing. As a practical first step, MPs are proposing a review by the Law Commission, with a view to it developing proposals to narrow the scope of the laws on joint enterprise and establish a fairer sentencing framework for those convicted under joint enterprise.
The call comes as the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies releases a new report, written by researcher and academic, Nisha Waller. The report – The legal dragnet – highlights how the current law on joint enterprise ‘allows and indeed encourages cases to be constructed with the absence of rigour and quality’.
Joint enterprise law – referred to in legal terms as secondary liability – allows for individuals to be convicted of crimes they did not physically carry out, if they are deemed to have encouraged or assisted the perpetrator. The approach has faced mounting criticism for the way it allows minor players and those on the periphery of crimes to be tried and convicted as if they were the perpetrator, with recent reports suggesting a rise in the number of people convicted of murder and manslaughter under joint enterprise law over the past five years.
In one case, highlighted in the report, three young men were given life sentences for murder. At the time of the offence, one was present but played no physical role in the offence, another was downstairs outside the flat where the offence took place, and the third was not even present at the scene. Meanwhile, the individual who actually committed the murder remains at large.
Speaking to the House of Commons Justice Committee in 2012, Sir Keir Starmer, who at the time was the Director of Public Prosecutions, said that joint enterprise prosecution ‘does not work well’ in the case of murder convictions, where ‘someone has played a very minor part in a very serious offence but is none the less convicted’. Some juries, he added, ‘may feel that it simply does not feel fair to convict someone for playing a very small part in a very serious offence’.
One barrister quoted in the report said: ‘We’re convicting people of murder when they play a “very small role, they’re just more than merely present’. Another said:
“the law allows them to draw so many people in they don’t have to go to pinpointing an individual, so they grab as many people even as tangentially as they can… it almost feels as though even if they lose a couple of them… they’ll get enough… that’s what it feels like… throw the net as wide as we possibly can.”
Earlier this year, the Labour MP, Kim Johnson sought a change to the law, to reduce the risk of unfair joint enterprise convictions. Her initiative ran out of parliamentary time, thanks to the early General Election. However, the then shadow minister for youth justice, Janet Daby MP, told the House of Commons that ‘Labour has previously said that it would look to reform joint enterprise, and that remains our ambition’. In July the Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, told the House of Commons that joint enterprise was an issue of ‘real concern’ for MPs across the House.
Supporters of the current arrangements argue that joint enterprise law gives the police and prosecutors flexibility to catch and convict all those who may have been involved in a crime. However, the report argues the very vagueness of the rules, and wide scope of their application, ‘leaves the state unable to confidently asset that only those truly responsible are being convicted’. Narrowing the scope of joint enterprise law, the report argues, would ensure ‘better precision from the police and prosecutors… and allow greater confidence that juries are convicted defendants based on their contribution to the crime, rather than the prosecution’s case theory and narrative’.
Reform of joint enterprise law would also allow the justice system to focus its resources, and contribute to easing the unprecedented demands faced by the courts, prison and probation services.
Report author, Nisha Waller, said: “Joint enterprise is unjustifiably vague and wide in scope. Law reform will not eradicate institutional racism and broader issues with police and prosecution practice however, the current law encourages the overcharging of suspects and allows cases to be propelled forward based on poor quality evidence. Prosecutors are then left to fill the gaps with speculative case theories and often racialised narratives from which juries are invited to infer joint responsibility.”
Helen Mills, Head of Programmes at Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, said: “This report shows people are being convicted of the most serious crimes on the basis poor quality evidence and dubious stereotyping, particularly regarding gangs. The current ease of prosecution needs to be balanced with clearer thresholds about prosecuting multiple people for the crimes of one person. Reform of joint enterprise law is long overdue. The Law Commission review this report calls for would be a good first step to a safer law and for Labour to make good on its promise to reform joint enterprise law.”
Gloria Morrison of JENGbA said: “This research again exposes the dangerous flaws in using joint enterprise in murder/manslaughter trials further validating JENGbA’s concerns. Neither the courts nor the CPS are able to sort out the abuse of joint enterprise resulting in thousands of wrongful convictions.
Yet again JENGbA call for an immediate suspension of its use, particularly in light of mass overcrowding and the prison and probation crisis.”
Felicity Gerry KC, a legal expert and barrister who has represented people in joint enterprise cases said: “This report reveals the persistence of injustice in cases where the law overly criminalizes and punishes individuals under ‘joint enterprise’ laws, despite their minimal or non-existent contribution to the crime, for which others are responsible.
It underscores the urgent need for legal reform, not only as a matter of legal necessity, but as a moral imperative. Reform is crucial to restore fairness, clarify accountability, and rectify the severe legitimacy crisis in the criminal justice system, particularly in the most serious of cases”
Our CEO, Dame Sara Llewellin, has done a great deal to establish Barrow Cadbury Trust as a thought leader in the philanthropy and civil sector, and her successor is now being recruited. This is a rare opportunity for an inspirational leader, adept at strategic thinking and with a passion for Barrow Cadbury Trust’s vision and mission to join us and make a lasting difference.
The applicant will need to have a profound empathy for the values and aims of the Trust. With experience of high level leadership, the next CEO will work closely with the Chair, Board Executive Team and other staff to ensure all the organisation’s resources – our people, our skills, our money/endowment, and our reputation – are put to effective use in the vigorous pursuit of our vision, mission and values. You will be an enthusiastic advocate of the sector and its infrastructure, able to utilise strategic communication as a cornerstone approach to effective campaigning and influencing.
This is a unique opportunity. The applicant will need to bring an appreciation of the complexities of creating structural change, a successful track record of developing and implementing strategy, and a history of advancing diversity, equity and inclusion, which Barrow Cadbury Trust has a strong commitment to. We encourage applications from people with personal experience of the social justice issues we’re working on.
We are supported by our recruiting partner, Green Park in this recruitment process. To read more about this role and how to apply, please visit this microsite.
Closing date: Sunday 11:59pm 22 September, 2024
Please submit your application with your personal email address to ensure you receive acknowledgement of receipt.
Please note, to ensure confidentiality, applications submitted under a work email address will not receive acknowledgement of receipt.
Financial Inclusion in the UK 2024
The Centre on Household Assets and Savings Management (CHASM) at the University of
Birmingham was commissioned by the Financial Inclusion Commission to undertake a rapid review of financial inclusion. This report provides the findings of that work, focusing primarily on evidence published between January 2022 and March 2024 due to the significant changes in the economy in recent years, including COVID-19 and the cost of living crisis.
The full review looks at financial inclusion both in terms of the types of products and services
required and the groups of people most likely to be excluded, before making suggestions for
potential approaches to tackle exclusion – preferably within the framework of a national strategy.
This annual overview highlights key findings and possible approaches – again with the intention that these
are incorporated into a national strategy for financial inclusion.
Creative Brief: Birmingham Economic Justice Alliance Branding and Communications
24 July 2024
Introduction:
The Economic Justice Alliance (EJA) is a catalyst for realising economic justice in Birmingham. Formed of campaigners, community groups, civil society organisations, and communities impacted by economic injustice, the Alliance supports shared visioning and analysis while celebrating and bolstering the diverse strategies, actions, and tactics we need to win real change.
Birmingham’s economy touches its citizens’ lives in dozens of ways each day. From access to safe, affordable housing, nourishing food, to good jobs, sustainable healthcare and other public infrastructures, economic change is possible on many fronts. It needs to transform to meet the needs of Birmingham’s communities – and we need strong relationships and a shared vision of the future to meet the scale of the challenge ahead of us. By working, imagining, strategising, and acting together, we’re accelerating the pace of economic change in Birmingham.
The EJA is a growing and evolving ecosystem of groups connected by a shared commitment to economic justice. While the groups and participants vary in size, focus area, and strategies, we come together to support a shared vision to improve the lives of people in Birmingham.
The Alliance has recently developed a communications strategy and following on from this it will be launching a new website and other external communications. Ahead of this it is commissioning a creative design project to develop its brand identity and create supporting assets.
Objective:
Develop the creative tools to enable the communication and implementation of the EJA’s strategy in Birmingham.
Create a distinctive brand identity with supporting assets, gaining audience understanding of the mission and theory of change and attracting their engagement.
What is a key thing our audience(s) will believe after seeing this work?
The Economic Justice Alliance gives us a place to build the skills, relationships, and strategies we need to make Birmingham a better, fairer place to live.
Scope of work
We are looking for a branding and communications agency or individual designer that can take a broad and collaborative approach to the project. This involves working with key players at the Barrow Cadbury Trust, People’s Economy (the Alliance’s appointed communications partner) and the Alliance’s steering group to develop a suite of brand and communications assets including:
- Creative brand assets such as a logo, fonts, colour palette, social media branding, creative brand templates (including newsletter assets, documents and powerpoints), website architecture and wireframes, brand guidelines guidelines, illustration, digital assets and iconography.
We have already developed a communications strategy including defined audiences, audience value propositions, tone of voice and a storytelling model that will support this work and be provided to whoever is appointed upon project initiation.
Applications
We welcome applications from freelance designers and brand and communication agencies, ideally based in or with a strong, demonstrable connection to Birmingham and communities experiencing economic injustice. We are looking for applications from people or organisations with experience and track record of working within social impact and social movement contexts.
Timeline
The deadline for expressions of interest is 11:59pm Sunday 18th August.
We will shortlist 3-5 expressions of interest to take forward and reach out to request any further details we require and schedule an interview on w/c 26th August. A decision will be made shortly after with the intention for work to begin in early September.
Submitting a proposal
We are looking for proposals from agencies or individuals explaining:
- Why you are well-placed to carry out the work
- A description of how you would approach the project, including approaches to consulting relevant stakeholders and the number of feedback rounds
- A description of key deliverables that would be provided upon completion (see ‘Scope of Work’ for what we would like to see delivered)
- The resources you have to give to the project (ie staff or freelancers)
- Details about the staff or freelancers on the project including your links to Birmingham and/or communities experiencing economic injustice
- What you need from the Alliance and relevant stakeholders to complete the project
- Timescales – i.e. how soon you could carry out the work if a tender was awarded
- Links to and/or details of relevant recent examples of other similar work you have carried out, in particular in social impact and social movements contexts
- Details of any experience and relevant skills in designing for accessibility
- A detailed quote for the work you propose to carry out
The deadline for expressions of interest is 11:59pm Sunday 18th August. Email to Fatima Iftikhar [email protected].
Budget
£10,000 (inclusive of VAT)
Today, 55 co-signatories working across the women and girls’, criminal justice, mental health, and youth work sectors, including Barrow Cadbury Trust, are calling SOS on the crisis facing women and girls across Britain.
Agenda Alliance has written to the leaders of the four main political parties, to ask that whoever forms the next government creates a stand alone Secretary of State for Women and Girls in their Cabinet.
The letter – sent to Sir Keir Starmer (Labour), Rishi Sunak (Conservatives), Sir Ed Davey (Liberal Democrats) and Carla Denyer/Adrian Ramsey (Greens) is in full below:
“Policymakers need a kick up the butt. They need to do something, and they need to do it fast otherwise there are going to be so many more disadvantaged women; more suicides, homelessness, child removal. It needs acting on and it needs acting on fast.”
Nici, member of Agenda Alliance’s Women’s Advisory Network
“We are writing from Agenda Alliance, a coalition of over 100 member organisations working to make a difference to the lives of women and girls at the sharpest end of inequality. Our Alliance includes large national bodies and smaller, specialist organisations, working in collaboration to influence public policy and improve the response to women and girls experiencing multiple unmet needs. As the 4 July General Election approaches, we are writing to ask you to commit to a central ask to improve the lives of women and girls. We want the next government to create a dedicated Secretary of State for Women and Girls, matching the seriousness of women and girls’ needs with serious political resource.
There is a strong case for ensuring women and girls are represented at the highest levels of politics – especially women and girls experiencing multiple disadvantage. Multiple unmet needs are often interconnected, complex and gender-specific. They may include contact with the criminal justice system, poverty, using substances to cope, having no recourse to public funds and having no safe place to call home. For many women and girls these challenges are underpinned by extensive experience of abuse and violence throughout their lives. However, single issue policy responses which try and address these problems one at a time ignore the connections between them, causing these problems to escalate.
Far too often, women experiencing disadvantage and misogyny are stigmatised, labelled as just ‘victims’; ‘criminals’; ‘bad mothers’, ‘addicts’, ‘poor’ or ‘useless’. These labels stick, and they ignore the fact that women and girls experiencing multiple unmet needs are whole individuals, who are hopeful, inspiring, joyful, aspirational and caring.
Early intervention from relational, cross-cutting services which provide gender-, age-, culture- and trauma-responsive support is critical – but without senior political backing, effective, gendered prevention won’t have a lasting transformative impact. Political focus on the issues women and girls face has been diluted for too long: since the inception of these roles, ministers assigned to support women and girls have only had a position in Cabinet because they also hold other full-time government roles, such as Home Secretary; Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport; or Secretary of State for Business and Trade. Responsibility for women and girls facing the greatest disadvantage shouldn’t be a bolt on to other more senior roles.
We all want society to be safer and more functional – polling tells us that the majority of Britons, whoever they vote for, think public services are in a very bad state. A Secretary of State for Women and Girls would work across Government at the most senior levels to reshape public services and embed a preventative approach. They should draw together healthcare, education, housing, violence against women and girls and justice policy to deliver lasting change which addresses how women and girls’ problems are often multiple and interconnected. Primarily, we believe that a Secretary of State for Women and Girls should:
– Centre prioritisation and prevention. A cross-cutting, Cabinet level women and girls’ representative will work across government departments to embed early intervention and hold them accountable for ensuring that all policy responds to gender, age, culture and trauma as a matter of course.
– Share their power. Women and girls with lived experience have the answers to so many persistent policy problems – but they are so rarely included. This role should hold a core focus on designing future solutions alongside women and girls with lived experience, from consultation to legislation, service delivery to service evaluation.
– Champion the sector. After decades of declining investment in vital services, women and girls need high level political advocacy to bring departments together and address the distinct issues the specialist sector supporting them faces. We need funding models which embed full-cost recovery, articulate the cost-savings of prevention, and provide ring-fenced resource for specialist and by-and-for organisations.
We are attaching to this letter detailed policy recommendations which set out our ambitions for what a senior political focus on women and girls could achieve. If we are bold enough to address gendered multiple disadvantage with fresh eyes, the returns will be huge. The 55 organisations who are signatories to this letter are urging you to pledge your support, and call for dedicated political focus on women and girls now.
We would welcome the opportunity to meet you or a member of your team and discuss this manifesto ask further; do not hesitate to get in touch with our Policy and Public Affairs Officer Tara on [email protected] to arrange a meeting.
Yours faithfully,
Indy Cross
Chief Executive of Agenda Alliance
The Corston Independent Funders’ Coalition (CIFC) has today launched its revised Statement of Purpose (SoP).
The SoP will tell the next government that the Coalition is renewing its commitment to working in partnership with many of our funded partners and other kindred organisations and funders “to realise a world where women experience justice, fairness, safety, and equitable treatment within a justice system which values their rights and needs”.
The focus of this collaboration has been expanded to include all stages in which women are in contact with or at risk of contact with the justice system, including early intervention work. The Coalition is also exploring whether prevention work with girls should be a focus to enable it to realise the recommendations set out by Baroness Corston in her seminal report in 2007, which advocated for ‘a radical new approach, treating women both holistically and individually – a woman-centred approach’.
The coalition is currently ten full members and four supportive funders, including Barrow Cadbury, who are friends of the CIFC, and its next steps are to build working groups and pilot projects to deliver on its four objectives which are:
- Adoption of good practice grant making approaches and techniques bysharing learning and advocating for women within its own Trusts and Foundations and funder networks.
- Identifying and implementing good and promising practice, sharing key learning with practitioners, funders, and decision makers.
- Identifying emerging issues facing women in the criminal justice system and the organisations that support them and leveraging the heft, legacy, and expertise of the Coalition to work with and alongside those partners to secure improvements to local and national legislation, policy, and practice.
- Mobilising its own resources to deliver a robust and vibrant funding model and, where possible, advocating for a similar approach from statutory funders so that women’s centres and specialist organisations and services have the funds needed to deliver vital services.
There will be a test and learn phase until at least the end of this year to understand where and how the most impact can be made in this new phase of the Coalition’s life. Watch this space!
As a member of the Corston Independent Funders Coalition (CIFC) and a long-time advocate of progressive criminal justice policies for women, Barrow Cadbury Trust welcomes the announcement that the Government has paused its plans, announced by the Ministry of Justice in January 2021, to build 500 women’s prison places.
Those 500 new prison places in existing prisons were estimated to cost £150 million – pulling funding away from badly needed and proven community approaches. These cuts appear to be driven by the Government pulling in its belt rather than acknowledging what campaigners have long argued – that community-based interventions have better outcomes for women and their families.
In Feb 2023 Barrow Cadbury Trust asked Doctor Kate Paradine to comment on the Female Offender Strategy Delivery Plan. She expressed disappointment that it had taken 5 years to put together a delivery plan for the 2018 Government Strategy on Women’s Offending, despite prompts in January 2022 from a National Audit Office report criticising “disappointing” progress in implementing the strategy, and in April 2022 a Public Accounts Committee report calling for the Ministry of Justice to get a grip on delivery with a clear plan, funding and measures of progress.
Despite so many setbacks and delays there is still collective energy and commitment from campaigners to push for implementation of the MoJ’s Female Offender Strategy. In line with Baroness Corston’s vision set out in the Corston Report from 2007, the CIFC seeks to enable systemic change in how women experience the justice system supporting women-centred, holistic, and trauma-responsive approaches to divert them away from crime. Chloe Geoghegan, Chair of CIFC said:
“The recent announcement that plans to build 500 new women’s prison places have been paused is much welcomed. The new prison places always flew in the face of the Government’s own Female Offender Strategy, which sought to reduce the number of women in contact with the justice system and increase the number of women managed in the community.
If the Government is serious about its commitments, the £150 million earmarked for these prison places urgently needs to be reallocated to community services engaged in prevention, early intervention, and rehabilitation work with women. Central to these objectives are continued, increased, and long-term commitments to funding women’s centres, a vital lifeline for women facing multiple disadvantages.
The women who access these centres have experienced extreme trauma, deprivation, and social exclusion and are all too often, unjustly, swept into the revolving door of criminalisation as a result. With this £150 million, the Government has a unique opportunity to secure the long-term sustainability of services that interrupt cycles of harm and crime and, in doing so, could leave a legacy of helping to transform the lives and futures of thousands of women and their families.”
The announcement gave no indication that the money earmarked would be spent on women in the community and we fear that, if not clawed back, it will be used to expand the male prison estate. But the Trust working with CIFC will keep up the pressure to ensure the needs of women in contact with the criminal justice system do not continue to take a back seat in spending and policy priorities.
Laurie Hunte, Criminal Justice Programme Manager
Today Fair By Design is launching its new film featuring people with lived experience of the poverty premium in payments.
Everyday millions of payments are made in the UK, from online transactions to cash in shops. They are an essential part of life today. However, some payment methods create a poverty premium, meaning people are charged more for the way they spend their own money.
Fair By Design’s latest lived experience film highlights this injustice through three stories looking at energy, car insurance and access to cash. These stories show that people in poverty are charged more for essentials because of the way they pay for them.
The film builds on work on the poverty premium in payments, and how people in poverty can access fair and flexible methods of payment. You can read a full paper on the issue here.
Public dissatisfaction with the Government’s handling of immigration is at its highest level since before the EU referendum, according to new data from the Immigration Attitudes Tracker from Ipsos and British Future, which has tracked public attitudes to immigration since 2015.
The findings are set out in a new report, Immigration and the election: Time to choose, published by British Future.
Some 69% of the public say they are dissatisfied with the way the current government is dealing with immigration and just 9% are satisfied. Only 16% of current Conservative supporters – and just 8% of those who voted Conservative in 2019 – are satisfied with the government’s handling of the issue.
Reasons for dissatisfaction vary according to people’s politics. The number one reason given is ‘not doing enough to stop channel crossings’, chosen by 54% of those who are dissatisfied, with 51% also saying it is because ‘immigration numbers are too high’. Yet 28% of those dissatisfied say it’s because of ‘creating a negative or fearful environment for migrants who live in Britain’ and for 25% the reason is ‘not treating asylum seekers well’.
For Labour supporters who are dissatisfied with the government, ‘Creating a negative or fearful environment for migrants’ (42%) is as important as ‘Not doing enough to stop channel crossings’ (41%).
Immigration and the election
When we do finally go to the polls later this year, will this be an ‘immigration election’ asks the report? Only for a minority. Around half of Conservatives (53%) say the issue is important in deciding how they will vote in the coming election, but it still comes after after the NHS (57%) and cost of living (55%) as their third most important issue. For Labour voters immigration ranks 12th in importance, with half as many saying it matters in deciding their vote (27%).
A numbers game?
In a period of high net migration, the new tracker survey finds that 52% of the public now supports reducing immigration (up from 48% in 2023). Four in ten people do not want reductions: 23% would prefer numbers to stay the same and 17% would like them to increase. Support for reducing immigration is still significantly lower than in 2015, the first year of the tracker, when 67% of the public backed reductions.
Attitudes differ significantly by politics. Seven in ten Conservative supporters (72%) want immigration numbers reduced. But most Labour supporters don’t, preferring immigration numbers to either remain the same (32%) or increase (20%), while 40% want reductions.
However, even those who want lower numbers find it difficult to identify what migration they would cut. Almost half of the 337,240 work visas granted in 2023 were ‘Skilled Worker – Health and Care’ visas. The tracker finds that 51% of the public would like the number of doctors coming to the UK from overseas to increase (24% remain the same, 15% decrease); 52% would like the number of migrant nurses to increase (23% remain the same, 15% decrease) and 42% would like more people coming to the UK from overseas to work in care homes (27% remain the same, 18% decrease).
For a range of other working roles, support for not reducing immigration numbers is higher than that for reducing them. Less than 3 in 10 people support reducing numbers of seasonal fruit and vegetable pickers, construction labourers, restaurant & catering staff, teachers, academics, computer experts and lorry drivers coming to the UK. When allocating work visas for immigration, the public would prefer the government to prioritise migration to address shortages at all skill levels (52%) than attracting people for highly skilled roles (26%).
Support for reducing the number of international students coming to the UK has increased by 4 points, with around a third of people (35%) preferring numbers to be reduced. But most of the public (53%) does not want to reduce student numbers. A third would prefer numbers to remain the same (34%) and a further fifth (19%) would like to see them increase.
The politics of immigration
As the UK heads towards a General Election, the tracker finds that the Labour Party is more trusted than the Conservatives to have ‘the right immigration policies overall’. Reform UK is slightly more trusted than the Conservatives but less trusted than Labour. Some 22% of the public says they trust the Conservative Party to have ‘the right immigration policies overall’, while 68% say they don’t trust the party. For Labour, 33% trust the party while 51% say they don’t. And 26% of the public says they trust the Reform UK Party on immigration, while 47% say they don’t – a similar score to the Lib Dems (trust 23%, distrust 50%).
Among leading politicians tested, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had the highest ‘distrust’ score, with 70% of the public saying they do not trust the PM on immigration and 21% saying they do. Some 57% say they distrust Labour leader Keir Starmer on immigration, with 31% saying they trust him. Nigel Farage is distrusted by 59% of the public on immigration and trusted by 29% – making him slightly more trusted than former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who is distrusted by 63% and trusted by 22% of the public.
Refugees, asylum and Rwanda
On asylum, the tracker finds that 47% of the public supports the Rwanda scheme and 29% are opposed to it. Opinion is divided by politics, with 75% support among Conservatives (and 10% opposition) compared to 31% support among Labour supporters and 47% opposition.
Only 32% of the public thinks the Rwanda scheme is likely to reduce the number of people trying to enter the UK without permission to seek asylum, while 56% think it is unlikely to do so.
Because the Rwanda scheme has often been mis-described, for instance as an offshoring scheme, the tracker tested which of three versions of the Rwanda policy people prefer:
- 32% chose the description of the government’s actual Rwanda scheme: “Remove asylum seekers to Rwanda to claim asylum there, without first assessing the claim.”
- 25% preferred a different version of the Rwanda scheme to the one that the government is pursuing: “Assess these asylum claims in the UK first, to only consider removals to Rwanda for those whose asylum claims fail”.
- 26% chose “Do not send anyone to Rwanda, regardless of how they arrived.”
- 5% chose “none of these” and 12% “don’t know”.
Overall, more people still think immigration has a positive impact on Britain (40%) than a negative impact (35%) though positivity has fallen slightly, by 3 points, since the last tracker in 2023 and from its March 2020 peak of 48%.
Ipsos interviewed a representative sample of 3,000 adults online aged 18+ across Great Britain between 17-28 February 2024. Data are weighted to reflect the population profile. All polls are subject to a range of potential sources of error.
