No 'silver bullet' to tackle illegal migration says Shabana Mahmood as she slashes time for asylum claims to be assessed from today

Ms Mahmood announced that from today refugee status will become temporary and subject to review every 30 months for all adults claiming asylum from today, rather than wait for five years.

The hope is that a swifter review of migrants' asylum status will lead to more migrants being sent back to their home countries as long as they are deemed "safe" by the UK Government.

The policy change comes after Labour lost the Gorton and Denton by-election after a campaign in which concerns about illegal migration featured prominently.

Ms Mahmood's change follows a visit last week to Denmark by the Home Secretary where she learned how the country slashed asylum claims by more than 90 per cent in a decade.

Last November, as part of the most sweeping reforms to tackle illegal migration since the Second World War, the Government announced an end to lifetime refugee protection.

Adults and accompanied children claiming asylum from today will see their stay halved to 30 months if granted.

While protection will be renewed for refugees in genuine need of sanctuary, those whose countries are deemed safe will be expected to return home.

Under the previous system, refugees were granted five years of protection and allowed to bring their families – followed by almost automatic permanent settlement with continued access to benefits and housing.

Dozens of leftwing Labour MPs have attacked the reforms.

Asked she would water them down, she insisted: "I'm going to go ahead with this package, as I've announced, this week."

Ms Mahmood told GB News's Political Editor Christopher Hope that she wanted to make the UK less attractive for migrants and recognises "the scale and the pace of the change that has already happened and doesn't place more pressure on those communities".

But she refused to say by how much her plans will cut migrant numbers.

She said: "In terms of numbers, I'm not setting a target. I'm doing that deliberately because I know that there have been historic targets that have been set and missed by the Conservatives when they're in government.

"So I don't want to, you know, say something to people that I can't guarantee I can deliver."

Ms Mahmood insisted she shared GB News' concerns about the scale of illegal migration and said she hoped to see the effects of the reforms by the next general election, expected in 2029.

She said: "I do recognise that the sheer scale of numbers that we've seen come into the country has been very high, the so-called Boris wave.

"I know that that's been discussed a lot on GB News. Your viewers will be very aware those numbers are very big as well.

"So I want to get the whole of these systems under control, deal with the issues of legal migration as well as well as illegal.

"And what I would say to your viewers is, you know, judge us on our delivery... Bear with us. Give us a chance to do it and then judge us on that delivery."

Ms Mahmood was speaking to GB News last Wednesday, just as hundreds of small boat migrants were filmed making landfall in Kent in Border force vessels.

She insisted that the UK's work with the French government had "prevented 40,000" crossings, adding: "These numbers will be even higher if we didn't have that cooperation."

Ms Mahmood admitted that the numbers sent back to France in the "one in, one out" scheme had not been as high as hoped.

She said: "The one in, one out model was a pilot to try and see if we could get a system of returns with the French. I think we've shown that it's possible.

"Obviously, we haven't been able to do quite as big numbers as we would have wanted, but we will want to see them ramp up before the pilot comes to a close, before we evaluate how it's gone."

She added: "We will evaluate and we'll work with the French to think about what we might do to scale it up. But what we're trying to do is lots of different things.

"There's no one silver bullet. I wish there was. Honestly, if I could just do one thing and it would solve it all, I would have done it all."

Ms Mahmood said voters' frustrations about both Labour and the Conservatives' failure to grip the problem had benefited "populist" parties like Reform UK and the Greens.

She said: "When you have a problem that's been running for so long and people feel really down about the state of our borders, and it feels like a problem the state can't fix, of course, a bunch of populists are going to come in.

"They'll either say, like the Green Party is saying, open the borders full stop, or they'll be like Reform, which is suggesting that you can take people who've lived in this country for 30 years lawfully, we'll get rid of them as well.

"Neither of these two parties is offering real solutions. And what I would say to your viewers is 'I know trust here is low.

"I know that people have made a lot of promises before, but I am determined to get this system under control, to restore order to our borders and judge us on our delivery'."

Ms Mahmood questioned whether Reform's commitment to pull out of the European Convention of Human Rights to allow the party to deport thousands of migrants would work.

She said: "What Reform are saying, they'll have to renegotiate returns agreements with all of those countries.

"Those things take time as well. So I would just say, beware people who come along and say, 'I can just do this one thing and it'll be done' because it's not true.

"If it was, the Tories would have done it or we would have done it and it would have been sorted. But we can fix this."