Home Office agrees to change policy and permit asylum seekers to work as doctors, nurses, and other skilled professionals

Stephanie Harrison KC and Isaac Ricca-Richardson acted for two doctors, ANS and YYS, in judicial review proceedings challenging the Secretary of State for the Home Department’s (SSHD’s) ‘Permission to work’ policy for people seeking asylum.

The proceedings, which were issued in April 2025, challenged the Home Office’s use of the Immigration Salary List (ISL) to severely restrict the jobs that people seeking asylum are allowed to work in, once eligible to work. The ISL was introduced in April 2024 following the abolition of the Shortage Occupation List, to which employment for people seeking asylum had previously been tied, and which set out a wider list of permissible jobs including doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals.

The Claimants were qualified, specialist doctors who had participated in the NHS funded REACHE training programme, based at Salford Royal Hospital, which supports and trains refugee and asylum-seeking doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals to qualify to work in the NHS once permission to work is granted.

The introduction of the ISL in April 2024 by the previous government meant that, though fully qualified and licensed to practise in the UK, the Claimants could not take up employment, despite critical NHS workforce shortages in their specialisms. They were instead forced to remain dependent on Home Office asylum support, and unable to contribute, despite their sincere wish to do so.

The grounds of challenge included that the use of the ISL for those seeking asylum was irrational and discriminatory, because:

1. The ISL was not designed for people seeking asylum, but for the overseas Skilled Worker route and, as the Migration Advisory Committee had made clear, was not suitable for this group.
2. The Home Office’s stated justification for using the ISL – namely to deter unlawful and dangerous crossings to the UK – had no objective evidence whatsoever to support it. The UK has the most restrictive policy on the ‘right to work’, but the available evidence shows that it has no effect on the decision as to which country people seek asylum in, even assuming that choice is exercised.
3. The restrictive policy had severe adverse consequences on individuals, in terms of mental health and wellbeing, perpetuating dependency on asylum support and accommodation, and undermining integration and community relations.
4. The policy also deprived the NHS of able and willing doctors, nurses and others from taking up employment where there are acute shortages.

In addition, the Claimants argued that the policy was unlawfully inflexible, that it was incompatible with human rights protected by the ECHR, and that the Home Office had breached the Public Sector Equality Duty under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, by failing to consider:

1. The potential impacts of the policy on protected groups including women and those with disabilities whose mental health is impacted by the inability to work.
2. The risk that the policy, by leaving larger numbers of asylum seekers dependent on Home Office accommodation and support, undermined integration and community relations due to increased likelihood of hostility and even violence towards people claiming asylum.

The Claimants were granted permission to apply for judicial review on all grounds, with an expedited hearing listed in December 2025. In the run up to the hearing, ANS was granted discretion to work as a doctor and YYS was granted refugee status and therefore permitted to work.  The Claimants attended a substantive hearing in December, which was adjourned to allow the SSHD to finalise an urgent review into whether to amend the policy.

Following the litigation, the SSHD has agreed to amend the policy and amend the Immigration Rules which were laid in parliament on 5 March 2026 and are due come into effect from 26 March 2026. This means that people claiming asylum, who have waited 12 months or more for an initial asylum decision, will be allowed to work in any occupation listed in Appendix Skilled Occupations at RQF level 6 (graduate level) or above. This includes doctors, nurses, and a broad range of highly skilled roles across many sectors.

These are welcome developments, but it is clear that the repeated recommendations of the Migration Advisory Committee – that there should be no restriction on the jobs asylum seekers can undertake, once eligible to work – should be urgently considered and now be adopted. The case for doing so is  clear, given the undisputed body of evidence that the asylum work policy does not act as a pull factor, and the obvious benefits of allowing asylum seekers to take up gainful employment.

The Claimants and their legal team are enormously grateful for all the incredible work at REACHE and support from the British Medical Association (BMA) and the Refugee Council Building Bridges Programme. The NHS’s press release about this policy change is available here.