The House | The UK can learn from how Switzerland rebuilt public trust in its asylum system

3 min read25 min

In the UK, much of the recent ‘gains’ made from cutting the backlog of asylum claims have simply transferred the backlog into the appeal system. In 2024, almost 50 per cent of asylum decisions were overturned on appeal in the UK. This not only undermines efforts to cut the backlog, but it also undermines public trust in the workings of the asylum system.

In the same period in Switzerland, despite much faster average processing times for claims, the successful appeal rate was only around 5 per cent. How was this achieved?

In their allocated accommodation centre, each asylum claimant is provided from the outset with on-site access to state-funded legal representation and advice on their claim, including during interviews with state migration officials and when the draft asylum decision on their claim is prepared. 

This front-loading of legal support improves both the quality and acceptance of first-instance decisions. Not only are there fewer successful appeals, but fewer appeals need to be heard at all. And the appeals process allows only a single appeal, based on written submission only, and with no additional legal funding available.

The UK, conversely, has moved in the opposite direction, combining haphazard access to legal representation for asylum claimants with extensive and multi-layered opportunities to appeal. 

For those whose claims are not accepted, though, Switzerland has a firm, three-pronged returns strategy – promoting voluntary returns, backed up by the threat of enforced returns, supported by return agreements negotiated with other countries. 

With legal advice on their claim, the claimant can receive a clear understanding upfront if their claim has little chance of success, and also get independent information and advice on their return options, all while in the initial accommodation centre. 

What the Swiss have done in reforming their system is important, but how they did it has been crucial. Seeking to bridge the divides between central and local concerns, and between those sympathetic to asylum seekers’ plight and those with concerns that the system is being taken advantage of. This has shaped the changes but also made them more broadly acceptable and practically implementable, rather than bogged down in endless lawfare. 

All interested parties in the reforms understood that there was no magic bullet to the challenge of running an asylum system, that there would always be difficult cases which would take time to resolve, but that material improvements to the system could be made by more swiftly processing the claims of those who clearly need protection, while more swiftly returning those who do not. 

The UK seems so far removed from being able to achieve the same. Most recently, we have seen a complete collapse of trust between the key state and non-state actors in the asylum system, and fundamental changes to the system have been introduced with an almost total absence of meaningful engagement.

It does not have to be this way, though. Until relatively recently, the UK did a much better job in this respect. Both sides of the asylum issue, while undoubtedly still in a tense relationship, at least recognised some of the practical possibilities for working together more cooperatively on seeking to identify common ground and to address difficult challenges within the asylum system. And indeed they did so, on returns in particular, engaging in at least some type of compromise and cooperation, similar to those that supported the Swiss asylum reforms in taking shape and helping to rebuild public trust.

It is hard to see even a glimmer of that in the UK any more. While changing this will not be easy, the Swiss experience both reminds us of our recent past, as well as lighting a possible way to a different future.

Jonathan Thomas is a Senior Fellow at the Social Market Foundation