Mahmood outlines safe immigration routes plan to win over Labour left

Shabana Mahmood will seek to shore up support for her controversial immigration bill on the progressive left of Labour, as she sets out plans to speed up the opening of new safe and legal routes that will permit thousands of refugees to come to the UK. The home secretary, who is the leading contender to stay in her job if Andy Burnham becomes prime minister, will next week introduce the legislation , which will also set new limits on immigration claims on human rights grounds and under modern slavery law. Burnham has been under pressure to clarify his stance on Mahmood’s immigration policies, amid unhappiness among some Labour MPs and charities who believe the restrictions on asylum claims are too draconian. Alf Dubs, the Labour peer, called on Friday for Burnham to move Mahmood out of the Home Office and for her asylum policies of “performative cruelty” to be ripped up. The veteran Labour peer, who came to the UK aged six in 1939 fleeing the persecution of Jews in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, said the home secretary’s talents “would be better used elsewhere in the cabinet”. “This is Labour’s reset moment when we can consign to the past some of the appalling language used by politicians to describe refugees: ‘invaders’, ‘an island of strangers’, ‘tearing our country apart’,” he said. …