Children will be forcibly deported if their families refuse to take a £40,000 offer to leave the UK voluntarily. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is offering 150 failed asylum seeker families living in hotels vast sums of taxpayers’ cash to leave.

Each person will be offered £10,000 if they agree to leave within seven days, but the handouts are being capped at £40,000. And Home Office sources have admitted they are willing to forcibly remove families, including women and children, if they do not have the legal right to remain in the UK. As part of the plan, the Home Office is consulting with experts on how to “physically handle children during the removal, where it is appropriate”.

A source said: “The average cost to a taxpayer, of each family, is £158,000 a year.

“They will have seven days to reply to that offer and then leave the country.

“Crucially, if they do not take this offer, we will look to forcibly remove them from the country. That includes children, but we will never separate parents from their children.

“This has been an incredibly successful model in Denmark, in terms of using incentives smartly to increase the removals of failed asylum seekers.

“We estimate, should the pilot be successful, we will save £20million for the taxpayer.”

Migrants will not be deported to unsafe countries, Ms Mahmood insisted.

The Home Secretary told an audience at the Institute for Public Policy Research: “For too long, families who have failed their claims have known that we were not enforcing our rules which created a perverse incentive to make a channel crossing with children in the small boat.

“It is now on the parents in these families who can safely return to the home they came from to do the right thing…

“By accepting an incentive payment, rather than face an enforced return.”

Reform’s Zia Yusuf blasted: “So, Labour went to Denmark, worked out illegal migrants need a deterrent to stop them coming here, and they announce that those that come here illegally will now win £40,000.”

But a source hit back: “Our intelligence shows people smugglers charge between £15,000 and £35,000 per illegal migrant. As a result, the pilot to pay them to leave cannot act as a pull factor because it costs more to get here in the first place. If they do not take this offer, the family will be forcibly removed.”

Under Labour’s plans, migrants who commit crimes will be booted out of asylum accommodation and stripped of their cash handouts.

Ms Mahmood will revoke European laws to automatically provide arrivals with support.

From June, the help will become “conditional” and only given to those “who genuinely need it and follow the law”.

Those who work in Britain’s black economy will also be thrown out of hotels, houses, flats and bedsits funded by taxpayers, alongside foreign criminals and those refusing to leave the UK voluntarily.

Some 30,000 migrants could lose their support, officials predicted.

She told the IPPR: “Once we have determined that somebody does not have a right to be in this country legally, it is essential that they leave.

“There is nothing fair about not enforcing our rules.

“Particularly as we know many melt into illegal work, undercutting legal workers.

“Since taking office, we have removed nearly 60 thousand people with no right to live here

“But we must go further.”

Migrants’ rights to permanent asylum will be scrapped.

Instead, they will be offered temporary status, which will be reviewed every 30 months.

If their country is deemed safe enough for them to return, they will be sent back. Only children who arrive in the UK unaccompanied will be exempt.

Until now, successful asylum seekers have been granted refugee status for five years and allowed to bring their families to the UK. They then got almost automatic fee-free permanent settlement with continued access to benefits and housing.

Refugees will also be required to “earn” their settlement rights by working and contributing to society.

They will have to wait up to 20 years before they can apply to settle in the UK – and up to 30 years if they arrived illegally via small boats across the Channel or by claiming asylum after overstaying work, student or visitor visas.

The Home Secretary said: “What of our asylum system?

“It would surely mean delivering the noble intentions of the drafters of the original, 1951 Refugee Convention.

“Providing safety to genuine refugees – shelter from the storm until they are able to return safely home.

“That, as the Convention clearly states, the right to protection, must come alongside a responsibility to live by the laws and values of this land.

“And finally, that our asylum system is not abused by unscrupulous people smugglers, who profit from false promises and trade in human misery.”

Labour insisted the number of foreign criminals, failed asylum seekers and immigration offenders being deported have been “scaled up” to nearly 60,000 since July 2024.

Ms Mahmood admitted it was a “difficult time” for the Labour Party, and that the party’s identity is being “bitterly” contested on issues like migration