Organisations and community groups will be able to sponsor thousands of asylum seekers to come to Britain under a new scheme unveiled by Shabana Mahmood.

The Home Secretary is pressing ahead with plans – first floated in November – to create new ‘safe and legal routes’ for refugees.

In what will be seen as a sop to the Left of the Labour party, Ms Mahmood is prioritising a scheme which will see community organisations sign up to house and support refugees, and find them jobs.

It will be based on a Canadian model and the UK’s Homes for Ukraine scheme, which has brought 270,000 Ukrainians here since the start of the war in 2022.

The new programme is expected to be open to asylum seekers from conflict zones around the world, with the United Nations refugee agency helping to determine who should come to Britain.

Separately, universities will be able to directly sponsor refugees to come here as students from autumn next year.

Ms Mahmood also revealed changes to human rights laws will be included in a new immigration Bill, to be published next week.

Shabana Mahmood has said a new community sponsorship scheme for refugees will be launched in conjunction with the UN’s refugee agency

Ms Mahmood has said the legislation will seek to prevent ‘abuse’ of human rights laws, including the right to a family life and modern slavery protections.

The new law will tighten the definition of ‘family’ for the purposes of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), restricting it to immediate family members only.

Critics of the asylum system have focused on Article 8 of the ECHR, saying it has been used to frustrate the deportation of people with no right to be in the UK.

The Home Office said the new definition would prevent situations such as one that prevented the deportation of a convicted domestic abuser from Poland because he acted as a ‘father figure’ to his nephew.

The new legislation will also remove modern slavery protections from foreign offenders who have been jailed and reject claims made when deportation action has already commenced if there was an opportunity to make a claim earlier.

There will also be a ‘new, tougher test’ in deportation cases to ensure human rights claims only outweigh the public interest in ‘the most exceptional cases’, a Home Office spokesman said.

However, previous attempts to limit the scope of Article 8 have failed to have an impact.

Last year 77,000 immigration legal challenges were granted on human rights grounds.

The Home Secretary said: ‘I will open new legal routes for genuine refugees, while closing loopholes that have been too often abused.

‘My goal is simple: to ensure we have an asylum system not just today, but for generations to come.’

She added: ‘Britain has always offered sanctuary to those fleeing war and persecution.

‘But this system only survives if the public trusts that it is fair, controlled, and not open to abuse.’

The announcement comes as figures show 9,852 migrants have arrived in the UK so far this year on small boats. 

This is despite a £660million three-year deal with the French government to increase beach patrols. 

Meanwhile, Ms Mahmood is facing questions about whether she will remain in post of Home Secretary once Sir Keir Starmer leaves Downing Street.

Her planned changes to rules governing indefinite leave to remain (ILR) have drawn criticism from some Labour MPs, with Sir Keir’s likely successor Andy Burnham facing calls to scrap them.

During his by-election campaign in Makerfield, Mr Burnham suggested that he wanted a ‘consultation’ on the proposals, leaving open the possibility that they could be revised.

Ms Mahmood also spent Friday embroiled in a row with one of her junior ministers, Mike Tapp, after he suggested exempting care workers from her ILR reforms.

Sir Keir resisted her calls to sack Mr Tapp, with Downing Street issuing a rebuke to both ministers.