Amidst a major asylum policy overhaul, 720 bishops, rabbis, church ministers, and an imam from UK communities have written to the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, to raise concerns for refugee families.
The government has suspended a vital route for partner reunion and for children trying to reunite with parents, and under new settlement proposals would effectively end automatic family reunion for newly recognised refugees, replacing it with a far more restrictive system that narrows the definition of “family” and puts reunion out of reach for many.
The religious leaders, representing a wide range of faith groups, who gathered outside Parliament yesterday, are urging the Home Secretary, who has previously called for an expansion to family reunion, to “reconsider these proposals, to protect the right to family reunion, and to demonstrate the moral leadership that this moment demands.”
This letter was coordinated by the Joint Public Issues Team of the Baptist, Methodist and United Reformed Churches — a huge thank you to them. To sign it as a faith leader, please use this form.
March 2026
The Rt Hon Shabana Mahmood MP
Home Secretary
2 Marsham Street
London SW1P 4DF
Dear Home Secretary,
As leaders from faith communities across the UK, we write with deep concern about the Government's plans to permanently curtail refugee family reunion.
The current proposals – removing the right to family reunion for most refugees, narrowing the legal definition of "family", and placing steep new barriers before those fleeing danger – represent a profound departure from values that have long shaped our national life and are deeply embedded in our faith traditions: human dignity, fairness, protection for the vulnerable, and the importance of family life.
We urge you to recognise that family reunion is not a marginal element of refugee protection and resettlement; it is central to it. For many refugees, the presence and safety of close family is essential for their stability, wellbeing and integration. For people of faith, family is foundational to human belonging, resilience, and hope. To further restrict safe routes for family reunion is to push desperate people toward the very smuggling networks we all wish to dismantle.
We are mindful that there are public concerns about current levels of immigration. However, refugees represent a small proportion of immigrants to the UK, and in many communities, anxieties arise not from hostility towards refugees, but from long-standing pressures on housing, health services, and local infrastructures. It is therefore deeply troubling to see refugees and asylum seekers presented, sometimes explicitly and sometimes by implication, as the cause of strains for which they are not responsible.
In recent history our nation has repeatedly shown that compassion can rise above fear. When the world recoiled at the image of Alan Kurdi's lifeless body on a Turkish beach in 2015, and when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, people responded with generosity to those who needed sanctuary. That spirit did not arise from indifference or hostility; it arose from the recognition that every child is precious and every family deserves safety.
Governments can either champion such compassion or be led by the loudest calls against it. We urge you to choose the former.
We also respectfully remind you of your own earlier advocacy on this issue. In 2017, you urged the Government to extend family reunion rights – not restrict them – so that unaccompanied refugee children in the UK could be joined by their parents. You argued then that "surely it would be far better for that child, and for the care system, to have their parents in the UK to support them," and that aligning with European standards would not create a "pull factor" but would express the UK's long-standing commitment to protecting vulnerable children. We offer this reminder in the hope that the moral clarity, practical wisdom and commitment to family life expressed then, might continue to guide your decisions.
Making family reunion inaccessible and/or contingent on a fee-paying route will neither reduce journeys nor create a more settled country. It will simply deepen suffering and place Britain at odds with values long central to our national identity and to every major faith tradition in this land.
We therefore urge you to reconsider these proposals, to protect the right to family reunion, and to demonstrate the moral leadership that this moment demands.
Yours sincerely,
Revd Lynn Green, General Secretary, The Baptist Union of Great Britain
Revd Richard Andrew, President of the Methodist Conference
Matthew Forsyth, Vice-President of the Methodist Conference
Catriona Wheeler, General Assembly Moderator, United Reformed Church
Rt Revd Rose Hudson-Wilkin, Bishop of Dover and Chair of Churches Refugee Network
Bishop Mike Royal, General Secretary, Churches Together in England
Dr Nicola Brady, General Secretary, Churches Together in Britain and Ireland
Rt Revd and Rt Hon Lord Rowan Williams of Oystermouth, former Archbishop of Canterbury
Rabbi David Mason, Executive Director, HIAS+JCORE
Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra, Co-chair, Christian Muslim Forum
Imam Dr Sayed Razawi OBE, Chief Imam, Scotland and Director General, Scottish Ahlul Bayt Society
Rt Revd John Arnold, Roman Catholic Bishop of Salford
Rt Revd Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, Bishop of Chelmsford
Rt Revd Christopher Chessun, Bishop of Southwark
Dr Krish Kandiah OBE, Sanctuary Foundation
Rt Revd Rosie Frew, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
Most Reverend William Nolan, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow
Inderjit Bhogal OBE, Founder, City of Sanctuary (UK)
Elizabeth Slade, Chief Officer, General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches
Rt Revd Malcolm Chamberlain, Bishop of Wakefield
Lord Singh of Wimbledon, Director, Network of Sikh Organisations UK
Cecilia Eggleston, Moderator, Metropolitan Community Churches
Dr Peter Rookes, Faith lead, City of Sanctuary
Revd. Dr. Tessa Henry-Robinson, Moderator, Free Churches Group, Churches Together in England
Revd. Dr. John Bradbury, General Secretary, United Reformed Church
Victoria James, Chief Operating Officer, United Reformed Church
Most Revd Mark Strange, Bishop of Moray, Ross and Caithness, and Primus, Scottish Episcopal Church
David Thomson, CEO, All We Can
And 700+ more faith leaders