Tell your MP: The UK needs a safe and dignified asylum system

28 Jul 26 | 29 Jul 26

Tell your MP: The UK needs a safe and dignified asylum system

In Birmingham, MSF mental health specialists hold a consultation with a patient seeking asylum

Andy Burnham is the UK's new Prime Minister. But, he's already committed to the same dangerous policies that are harming patients caught in the asylum system.

People seeking sanctuary have often already fled conflict, persecution, or torture. They may have been trapped in hazardous refugee camps and made dangerous journeys across the seas. However, once reaching a place of supposed safety, they find themselves facing hostility and an asylum system that is stacked against them.

That's because of the onslaught of policies announced by successive UK Governments in recent years: The closing down of safe routes for even the most vulnerable people. UK funding being poured in to support violent policing tactics in France. The housing of traumatised people in unsafe accommodation that causes further mental harm.

The list goes on.

Explained: MSF and the UK asylum crisis

MSF is responding to the medical consequences of the UK’s harmful asylum system.

Successive governments have continued to implement punitive anti-migration deterrence policies that have caused medical and psychological harm and eroded the protections for people seeking safety.

Our concerns are grounded in well-documented negative health impacts, as witnessed by our teams in Libya, Greece, Poland, Bangladesh, France, Mexico, Malaysia and on Nauru.

The UK Government is no exception.

Learn more

With a new PM, we need a fresh start. A chance to start building an asylum system that doesn’t harm people in it, but instead treats them with dignity, humanity, and care.

That’s why we’re calling on all MPs to put the pressure on, and to demand better from Andy Burnham's Government.

Send a message to your MP

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A special MSF briefing for MPs will automatically be included with your email

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I am sick of the way that people seeking sanctuary are being treated by the UK Government. With a new Prime Minister in office, now is the time to build an asylum system that does not harm the health and wellbeing of the people in it – but treats them with dignity, humanity, and care. &nbsp;As your constituent, I am asking that you write to the new Prime Minister to address these concerns, and urging him to:<ul><li>Create more safe routes to the UK for those within and outside Europe to prevent unnecessary deaths in the Channel and end the manufactured humanitarian crisis in northern France</li><li>Replace dangerous, harmful asylum accommodation and mass containment sites with safe and dignified housing</li><li>End harmful practices that lead to medical crises, endanger children and families, and compound pre-existing trauma</li><li>Respect the rights and dignity of people seeking sanctuary, upholding their protections under international law.</li></ul>A full briefing can be found in the link at the bottom of this email, detailing some of the harms that Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) UK has found their patients face at the hands of the UK asylum system. There is no doubt that UK policies are directly harming the mental and physical health of people seeking sanctuary, both in northern France – where the UK funds violent border policing and dangerous pushbacks – and closer to home, where mass containment sites and hotels have become home to misery, ill-health, and compounded trauma. &nbsp;Andy Burnham has already signalled that he is willing to continue down this dangerous route and let these harmful practices continue. But it’s not too late to change course.Please reply to this email to let me know whether you are writing to the Prime Minister on this issue, and what his response is. &nbsp;Sincerely,&nbsp;

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Tell your MP: The UK needs a safe and dignified asylum system