QARN meetings: next planned meeting dates – by Zoom:
Saturdays on Zoom – 17th October 2026, 9th January 2027, 10thApril 2027,
with our in-person and on-zoom AGM on 10th July 2027
and then Zoom on 9th October 2027.
Continue reading “QARN next meetings”
21 February 2026: 28 Members and Friends of QARN met online on Saturday 21 February 2026 for a Meeting for Worship for Business to discern how we can take forward to Britain Yearly Meeting our urgent concerns as a Quaker Recognised Body about refugee and asylum matters. We were reminded of the Citation of Friends by the Nobel Peace prize committee which mentioned compassion âfrom the nameless to the namelessâ. We see no compassion in the stance and actions of the government displayed in its current proposals for restructuring the asylum and immigration rules. We were reminded of our testimonies to truth, equality and peace which should underpin all actions.
Continue reading “Minute from a Special Meeting for Worship for Business of Quaker Asylum and Refugee Network (QARN)”Ginny Baumann of the QARN Steering Group has been coordinating a survey of Local and Area Quaker Meetings so that Quakers can have a better understanding of Quaker work alongside refugees and people seeking asylum.
We thank everyone who responded – the Survey results are here:
6 April 2025 – updated QARN leaflets:
More than 200 charities have signed an open letter (1) to the incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham today urging him to reject the politics of division and forge a new path for asylum seekers and refugees in the UK.
The letter, coordinated by campaign coalition Together With Refugees, has been signed by 219 organisations from local volunteer led groups to leaders of national charities including Care4Calais, Choose Love, City of Sanctuary UK, Freedom from Torture, NACCOM, Refugee Action, Refugee Council, Scottish Refugee Council and Women for Refugee Women.
The letter states: âAs leaders of charities and organisations supporting refugees across the UK, we witness every day the extraordinary compassion shown by ordinary people. While recent scenes of far-right marches, intimidation and attempts to spread fear have dominated headlines, they do not reflect the reality we see in communities across the country.â
Continue reading “TWR Press release: More than 200 charities urge the new PM to âreject the politics of divisionâ”
Happy Baby Community is a project started by local Quakers and we discussed this issue at the recent QARN AGM. Another extreme example of what the hostile environment looks like in practice …
What is the Issue to be raised in parliament?
Healthy Start Vouchers are given to all pregnant mothers and children 4 years and under in England, Wales and Northern Ireland except asylum seekers.
This makes no sense whatsoever in Public Health terms as most of these children will grow into adulthood here and will potentially have poorer health outcomes than the rest of the population.
The government had a chance to change this in the Child Poverty Strategy 5th December 2025, but they failed to include asylum seeking pregnant women and children under 4 years.
Asylum seekers in hotels receive ÂŁ9.95 per week per person. The hotel food is of poor nutritional value and many of the women we work with have gestational diabetes and their children lack a balanced diet.
Continue reading “Healthy Start Briefing”Proposed changes to the immigration and asylum systems pose significant risk to individuals in them, and the country as a whole. These hostile policies create a system where all migrants face increased discrimination, division and hate. Labour must take the opportunity of a change in leadership to rethink this course of action.
Increasing lengths of some visa routes from five years to ten, at least, and then applying it retroactively for those already in the system is a cruel and inhumane proposal which leaves many migrants in fear for our futures. Unable to build lives, or have stability, these proposals undermine our health and our families.
Continue reading “Changes to the immigration and asylum systems risk increasing harm”
Where a person is in the UK without valid leave to enter or remain, the Home Office needs to make and maintain contact with them in order to progress any outstanding application, to encourage the person to regularise their stay or depart the UK voluntarily, or in some cases to work towards an enforced removal.
This inspection â which was conducted between September 2024 and February 2025 â examined how the Home Office seeks to maintain contact, what it does to re-establish contact if it has been lost, and the impact of lost contact on both the business of the Home Office and on the migrants themselves. As ever, inspectors focused on the efficiency, effectiveness, and consistency of the Home Officeâs efforts.
The sheer scale of the task presents the Home Office with a challenge, and this inspection found that cross-system working to address this challenge is inhibited by a plethora of hand-offs, poor communication, and weaknesses in data collection and sharing (compounded by deficient IT). Some steps had been taken towards promoting a better system-wide approach, but the extent and interdependent nature of what needs to be done means there is a risk that the resources required to deliver further improvements will not be found or, if found, will be diverted to other priorities before the necessary changes can be made and embedded.
Continue reading “An inspection of Home Office management of contact with migrants who are without leave to enter or remain”When the present system of administrative reviews (AR) was introduced in 2015, replacing a raft of rights to appeal to the Immigration and Asylum Tribunal, the governmentâs stated intention was to provide âa proportionate and less costly mechanism for resolving caseworking errors.â At that time, the government committed to a service standard of 28 days for the Home Office to complete an AR, which it explained was much faster than the then average of 12 weeks for an appeal to be heard. When this inspection of ARs began in 2025, the system was a long way from operating as intended.
This inspection focused on the resourcing of the two Home Office teams responsible for handling AR applications; workflow and the prioritisation of AR applications; the quality, timeliness, and consistency of AR decision making, including quality assurance; and communication and engagement between Home Office AR teams and applicants and stakeholders.
Continue reading “Inspection report published: An inspection of administrative reviews”Asylum casework is an area that the ICIBI has inspected several times in the past, most recently in 2023, shortly after the then Prime Ministerâs pledge to clear the legacy asylum decision backlog. That inspection raised concerns that the focus on clearing the backlog âat all costsâ had resulted in the prioritisation of quantity over quality, with a potential negative impact on the efficiency of the end-to-end asylum process. This inspection â which examined the factors affecting the quality of asylum decision making â mirrored those findings. It found that while the Home Office had continued to make progress addressing the backlog of asylum cases awaiting a decision, decision quality had declined significantly and was at an unacceptable level, which had consequences for the rest of the system.
Continue reading “The Independent Chief Inspector comments on the asylum casework inspection report following its publication.”The Bill announced in the Kingâs Speech on 13 May 2026 has now been published and is beginning its slow passage through Parliament. It is the fifth immigration-related Act across five sessions of Parliament, no less. It seeks to fulfil the commitments made in the White Paper a year prior, including draconian new measures to penalise refugees and asylum seekers.
To try and help make sense of it, Free Movement have created an online Bill Tracker app that shows tracked changes on amended versions of other laws that will be affected by the new Bill. The official explanatory notes (the governmentâs own version of what the clauses of the Bill are supposed to accomplish) are woven through it and it will be kept up to date with amendments and new versions.
So what does it entail? Here are some non-exhaustive highlights: https://freemovement.org.uk/whats-in-the-immigration-and-asylum-bill-2026
Sanctuary Breaks is based near Stroud in Gloucestershire, offering respite breaks events for people seeking sanctuary.
The group wishes to link up with community based, regional organisations and sector networks for residential breaks for forced migrants including asylum seekers, refugees, victims of trafficking and torture. This can be recreational or trauma-informed stays in safe space at Hill House, a large fully modernised former family home with a kitchen for self catering, dining space, lounge, craftwork and music rooms, extensive private garden and outdoor space set in beautiful landscape with access to nature and many scenic walks.
Continue reading “Sanctuary Breaks”We condemn the shameful scenes in Glasgow on Tuesday night when people of colour were randomly, physically attacked by gangs of masked men dressed in black, meting out collective punishment and bringing racist pogroms to our streets.
Reform UK and Rupert Loweâs Restore Britain will not condemn these racist gangs, you can be sure.
Instead of focusing on the crime, they capitalise on those crimes committed by people of colour, immigrants or Muslims. Thatâs their specialism â targeting racial minorities.
That is racism and it distracts ordinary people from seeing who is really draining the wealth of our society and destroying public services.
Continue reading “Statement in response to the recent far right attacks”The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is issuing a stark warning as it finds the asylum system is failing to cope in the face of severe pressure.
Chair comment
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said:
âOur report provides an end-to-end snapshot of the entire asylum system, and its findings paint a disturbing picture – at the time of our inquiry, control of it had been all but lost.
Continue reading “Missing asylum seekers and mounting backlogs show a system on the brink”