Category: Academic Analysis

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nando Sigona, Professor of International Migration and Forced Displacement and Director of the Institute for Research into International Migration and Superdiversity, University of Birmingham

The UK government’s latest proposals on asylum rest on an incorrect premise. In announcing them, home secretary Shabana Mahmood argued that “illegal migration is tearing our country apart”. But asylum-seeking is not illegal migration.

Asylum is a form of protection granted by a country to a non-citizen who faces persecution in their home country. The right to seek asylum is enshrined in international law, and applies irrespective of how the person travelled to the place where they are seeking protection.

Yet the policies being rolled out collapse two distinct categories into a single threat, to be addressed through deterrence and control. In effect, the category of the asylum seeker is equated to that of “illegal migrant”. Both are discussed as “abusing the system”, “flouting the rules” and “undermining communities”.

The underlying implication is that all asylum seekers are “illegal migrants”. Any system that follows will therefore be built on a distortion. Its consequences will fall not on the minority who try to game the system, but on the overwhelming majority who have legitimate claims for protection.

In 2024, 84,200 applications for asylum were made in the UK, relating to 108,100 individuals. More than 36,500 asylum appeals were lodged against negative decisions, with 48% of them allowed. Recent data show that in the months to March 2025, 47% of initial decisions resulted in the applicant being granted refugee status.

The new asylum measures promise faster decisions on asylum applications, tougher thresholds to be granted status, and expanded detention and removals. In continuity with the previous Conservative government, the rhetoric of “restoring control” makes the direction clear: restrict access to protection, harden the conditions for claiming it, and speed up refusals.

Labour is not hiding its reasoning for this approach. The government explicitly argues that firmer control is needed to prevent “darker forces” from coming into power. This is presented not as a concession to the far right, but as a public rationale for tightening the system. The message is clear: these policies are needed to keep politics steady, not because they improve the asylum system.

The issue is not simply that the proposals are harsh, unethical or likely to be ineffective. They represent a deeper shift: redefining protection as a discretionary favour rather than a legal obligation. Control becomes the primary focus, leaving less space for discussing refugee rights, protection and international obligations.

If asylum is framed as illegality, and settlement is reshaped into a privilege that must be endlessly earned, then our understanding of equal membership – the idea that those lawfully in the UK should enjoy stability and a clear path to full inclusion – is fundamentally altered.

A lifetime review

One of the key proposals is to extend the length of time it takes for a refugee to achieve settlement from five to 20 years. Until recently, settlement – the immigration status that allows a non-UK citizen to live, work and study in the UK without time restrictions – was the expected outcome for anyone granted refugee status. It is also a prerequisite for applying for British citizenship.

The new proposals transform settlement into something that must be continually earned. The path has become longer, more conditional and far more easily disrupted.

This aligns closely with other recent announcements on policies relating to migrants more generally. Higher salary thresholds, more enforcement, extended probationary periods and more complex routes to settlement have all been tabled.

These changes would build a structural disadvantage into the migration system. Non-citizens can live, work and contribute, but their belonging remains conditional. They become long-term residents on a form of probation, their status always open to review. This is more than an administrative change. It creates a hierarchy of membership that shapes lives, futures and families.

For a refugee family, this can mean years of uncertainty: parents unable to plan long-term careers or mortgages; partners and children living with the fear that a change in income, a missed renewal deadline or a shift in political priorities could jeopardise their right to remain.

It can also mean delays or barriers to family reunification, with spouses or children abroad left in limbo while the principal applicant waits to demonstrate continuous compliance. In practice, what should be a path to stability becomes a prolonged period of vulnerability, in which everyday life is overshadowed by the possibility of losing one’s status.

Nando Sigona receives funding from UKRI, Grant No.10061538.

– ref. Asylum is not illegal migration – why the UK government shouldn’t conflate the two – https://theconversation.com/asylum-is-not-illegal-migration-why-the-uk-government-shouldnt-conflate-the-two-270106

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nicholas Ryder, Professor of Law, Cardiff University

Fraud is now the most common offence in the UK accounting for more than 40% of reported crime. In the year to July 2025, around 4.2 million people reported being defrauded in England and Wales.

Yet that’s probably only a fraction of the true scale of the problem. The National Crime Agency estimates that around 86% of fraud goes unreported, meaning millions more are falling victim without ever coming forward.

The effect is enormous. In the UK alone, fraud is thought to cost the economy £219 billion a year. Globally, fraud losses are estimated at $5.1 trillion (£3.89 trillion), which is more than 80% of the UK’s total gross domestic product.

Despite this, successive governments have failed to treat fraud with the urgency and seriousness it deserves. Over decades, policy responses have been fragmented, under-resourced and short-lived. The result is a system that’s struggling to keep up with the scale and complexity of modern fraud.

Fraud takes many forms. It includes online scams, phishing emails, fake investment schemes, romance scams, identity theft and fraudulent messages pretending to be from banks or government departments. The common thread is deception for financial gain. Anyone can be a target.

Fraud also fuels wider harms. It enables organised crime, money laundering and even terrorist financing. And because so many scams take place online, often across borders, they are hard to trace and also hard to prosecute.

The UK’s record on tackling fraud has been disjointed at best. Some of the foundations were laid in the 1980s with the Roskill report, which led to the creation of the Serious Fraud Office. But little political attention followed.

It wasn’t until 2006 that the Fraud Act modernised the legal definition of fraud, making it easier to prosecute. But the law alone was not backed up by a serious long-term strategy. It would be another 13 years before fraud returned to the political agenda in a meaningful way.

In recent years, several government publications have attempted to address fraud. These included both economic crime plans, the Beating crime plan and the fraud strategy. The home affairs select committee has also investigated the issue, while fraud was added to the strategic policing requirement.

This means that police forces are required to treat the threat presented by fraud as a top priority. But these efforts have lacked coordination, consistency and staying power. Each new initiative has tended to start from scratch, often with unclear leadership and no follow-through.

A system unfit for purpose

Many fraud victims report their case to Action Fraud, the UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and cybercrime. But the service has been criticised as inadequate, difficult to use and slow to respond.

In 2023, the government released a new fraud strategy. It promised to reduce fraud by 10%, replace Action Fraud with a new reporting system, recruit 400 police officers to join a new national fraud squad, and collaborate more closely with tech firms and telecoms providers to tackle online scams.

Although they appeared to be positive steps, they wouldn’t go far enough. One think tank, the Social Market Foundation, estimated that tackling economic crime effectively would require 30,000 officers and £3.5 billion per year.

Much of the government’s fraud policy also relies on voluntary agreements with tech and telecoms companies, such as the online fraud charter and certain provisions in the Online Safety Act 2023. But voluntary measures are no match for the scale of the threat.

Why has so little been done?

There are political reasons why fraud has not been treated as a priority. For one, it lacks visibility. Unlike violent crime, fraud rarely makes headlines. And many fraud victims blame themselves. Tackling fraud also means taking on powerful industries, from social media platforms to banks, which successive governments have often been reluctant to do.

Short-termism in politics hasn’t helped either. Since 1986, the Home Office has had 20 different home secretaries, each with limited time to make a difference and many other competing priorities. This constant churn has made it hard to sustain any long-term plan.

Even the current government’s “Plan for Change” – published in December 2024 and an important policy roadmap – made no mention of fraud at all. That silence speaks volumes.

Fraud has changed considerably over the past few decades. It’s become faster, more global, more digital and more professional. But the UK’s systems are still stuck in the past.

A serious national response should include:

• a properly funded and well-staffed fraud reporting and enforcement system
• mandatory data-sharing between telecoms, banks and law enforcement
• robust public education campaigns to raise awareness and resilience
• a long-term plan that treats fraud not as an afterthought but as a national economic and security threat.

Some recent policies have made progress. There are new powers to gather information, better support for police and efforts to improve how the public can report scams. But these are not yet enough to close the gap between the scale of the threat and the ability of the authorities to respond to it.

Fraud is costing lives, livelihoods and public trust. Unless it is taken seriously – with the funding, leadership and coordination it demands – that cost will only continue to rise.

Nicholas Ryder receives funding from UKRI, the Joffe Trust and StopScams.

– ref. Successive UK governments keep failing on fraud – and the problem is only getting worse – https://theconversation.com/successive-uk-governments-keep-failing-on-fraud-and-the-problem-is-only-getting-worse-265822

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jon Gluyas, Professor of Geoenergy, Carbon Capture and Storage, Durham University

Imagine powering long-haul aircraft and heavy ships with fuels derived from just air, water and renewable electricity. This is moving from science fiction to the verge of reality, thanks to the falling price of renewables like wind and solar.

Whereas burning today’s fuels releases carbon into the atmosphere that has been sequestered underground for millions of years, these “e-fuels” would be more environmentally friendly, adding and subtracting carbon from the air in roughly equal quantities.

We’re seeing a glimpse of the future in HIF Global’s Haru Oni project in the south of Chile, backed by Porsche and ExxonMobil. It uses wind power to produce synthetic methanol and gasoline, marking one of the first commercial e-fuel ventures. Similar projects are under development in North Africa, Iceland and the Arabian peninsula, targeting export of e-methanol and e-kerosene.

E-fuels sit within the broader category of synthetic fuels, which are vital for sectors like aviation and shipping that won’t be able to switch to electric power or clean fuels such as hydrogen any time soon.

Synthetic fuels are chemically similar to the energy-dense liquid fuels these modes of transport currently rely on, though its equally possible to produce gases. They still only comprise a tiny share of fuels in these sectors – for instance, around 0.3% of global jet engine fuel was synthetic in 2024.

This is expected to change dramatically in the coming years, potentially rising as high as 50% by 2050. In the meantime, each synthetic fuel comes with trade-offs that affect their costs, scalability and the time to reach the market.

The alternatives

The two other main varieties of synthetic fuel are known as biochemical and thermochemical.

Biochemical fuels are derived either from processing waste fats and oils, or using fermentation or enzymes to transform things like crops and organic waste into alcohols. In both cases, there’s a final step that involves adding hydrogen, in a process called catalytic hydrogenation.

The supply chains are well established for this kind of production, but there’s a lot of competition for the raw materials. They have to be grown on land or water that would otherwise be used for food. Even under optimistic assumptions, these won’t satisfy global demand for sustainable fuels alone.

Thermochemical production uses high temperatures to convert wood residues, waste biomass or even plastics into syngas (a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen). This is then converted into liquid fuels through an industrial process such as Fischer–Tropsch, in which they are heated and run over a catalyst like cobalt.

There’s no need for food feedstocks here, and the industrial processes are proven. However, you must still collect and transport large volumes of feedstock, while the high-temperature plants are expensive. As it stands, the vast majority of today’s synthetic fuels are therefore biochemical, mostly from reprocessing oils.

E-fuels

E-fuels are the newest option. Many leaders in global energy expect them to play a central role in decarbonising aviation and shipping – especially as biomass feedstocks reach their limits. The challenge is that making e-fuels is energy-intensive and currently expensive, particularly where renewable power is scarce or costly. Here’s how it breaks down:

1. Carbon dioxide capture

Capturing and concentrating CO₂ requires about 1-3 megawatt hours (MWh) of energy per tonne, which is fairly significant. Using commercially supplied CO₂ is about one-third the cost of capturing it from the air, so hybrid approaches that use some commercial CO₂ will probably take off first. Commercial CO₂ is usually a byproduct from burning fossil fuels, so this has an environmental downside.

2. Hydrogen production

Even the best methods for extracting hydrogen from water operate at about 70% efficiency. This means that 50–55 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity are needed to produce 1kg of hydrogen, which stores only 33 kWh of chemical energy – in other words, considerably more energy goes in than out. This is one reason why making fuels from electricity will probably never be as cheap as using direct electrical power.

3. Compression, storage and transport

Hydrogen must be compressed or liquefied, consuming additional energy (for example, around 10–13 kWh per kg of hydrogen for liquefaction). Hydrogen is also prone to leakage and can embrittle steel pipelines, making long-distance transport difficult.

4. Converting carbon dioxide to fuel

The captured and concentrated C0₂ is converted into fuel by reacting it with hydrogen – or it can first be reduced to carbon monoxide in a catalytic “fuel synthesis” process. In both cases, the resultant product can be an alcohol such as methanol, or a more complex hydrocarbon such as a mixture of paraffins or waxes. Dependent on the desired final product, further processing may be necessary. These steps require high temperatures and pressures, adding energy demand and capital cost.

In sum, each of these four processes compounds energy losses. Until green electricity gets much cheaper, e-fuels will remain a premium product.

In the US and UK, electricity prices are currently around four times greater than natural gas, whereas in Europe it’s about 2.5 times greater. Roughly speaking, e-fuels will remain more expensive than fossil fuels until these prices reach parity. Electricity prices incorporate manufacturing and distribution costs as well as taxes, so we’ll need reductions across the board.

Synthetic fuels comparison

The good news is that the cost of green power should keep falling as the technology gets more efficient. In aviation, recent analysis predicts that most sustainable fuel will be biochemical or thermochemical until 2040, but after that most growth is likely to come from e-fuels. By 2050, these could make up over half of all synthetic fuels.

E-fuels could be made in regions rich in renewables such as North Africa, Patagonia and Iceland — creating new players in the global energy trade. A whole ecosystem involving everything from large-scale renewables to fuel logistics will have to be scaled rapidly to make this industry viable.

In short, the chemistry works but the economics are still catching up. And while e-fuels are an exciting prospect, they’re not a silver bullet. Governments and the energy industry will still need to prioritise the switch to electric power and greater energy efficiency wherever possible.

Jon Gluyas is a named but unremunerated director of sustainable aviation fuels startup Exergic Ltd. There was a significant contribution to this article from Jon’s friend Neil Fowler, a retired industrialist.

– ref. Fuel made from just air, power and water is taking off – but several things are holding it back – https://theconversation.com/fuel-made-from-just-air-power-and-water-is-taking-off-but-several-things-are-holding-it-back-269326

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Haomin Wang, Lecturer in Economics, Cardiff University

Whatever decisions Rachel Reeves makes in her second budget as UK chancellor, it is clear that she needs to find lots of money. Some argue that the best and fairest way of doing this is to raise the taxes of the country’s wealthiest people.

Others feel that such a move will do further harm to the UK’s longstanding problem with productivity, by discouraging investment and entrepreneurship.

Economists describe this as the “equity-efficiency trade-off”, where taxes designed to promote fairness may come at the expense of efficiency and growth, by distorting incentives for work and investment.

But our research suggests that some of the very highest earners can simply ignore that trade-off – because the tax system gives them so much flexibility and choice about what they pay. In the UK for example, the way a business is organised has major implications for how it is taxed.

Sole traders (like a plumber or a freelance writer) and partnerships (an accountancy firm or a garage) are known as “pass-through” businesses. They do not pay corporation tax, with profits instead being passed to the owners and taxed as personal income (at 20%, 40% or 45% depending on the amount).

Limited companies are taxed differently, with profits subject to corporation tax (currently 25% for most firms). And within these parameters, company owners can then choose how they get paid.

If they take a salary, these are taxed as employment income but are deductible from company profits, therefore reducing the corporation tax base. And if they take their pay in the form of dividends, a portion of the company’s profits, these are taxed at lower rates (8.75%, 33.75% or 39.35%).

This flexibility allows entrepreneurs to legally lower their tax bills by adjusting both their business structure and how they take income – whether as salary or dividends. In practice then, wealthy business owners can reclassify their income or reorganise their firms. This gives them much more scope to manage their tax liabilities than ordinary wage earners.

Another difference between the two set-ups is that limited companies tend to be more complex and costly compared to pass-through businesses. But they also enjoy better access to finance, which allows for greater investment and expansion. So when entrepreneurs choose their business structure primarily to reduce taxes, they may sacrifice growth opportunities.

Our research into how entrepreneurs respond to taxation found that when entrepreneurs choose a business structure mainly for tax purposes, it can have an adverse effect on investment.

For example, someone may prefer to avoid the “double taxation” of corporate profits and dividends by remaining a pass-through business. But this limits access to credit and constrains expansion, resulting in a business which operates below its potential.

Fairness and flexibility

We also found that tax avoidance undermines the effectiveness of higher top tax rates. For when governments increase personal income taxes, wealthy business owners can simply restructure their income – by taking less salary and more dividends.

As a result, higher rates do little to raise revenue from the very richest. And regular employees, who cannot reclassify their income, end up carrying a relatively heavier burden.

Our work also suggests that when avoidance opportunities are closed – by aligning the tax treatment of different business forms – governments can raise more revenue and, at the same time, improve productivity and welfare. In other words, well-designed tax policy can promote both fairness and efficiency.

So perhaps discussions about how to raise revenue should move on from its traditional focus on introducing new taxes on wealth or increasing top income tax rates. After all, these kinds of measures may not achieve their goals if those on high incomes can exploit gaps in the tax code to reduce their liabilities.

Instead, with the UK’s economic pressures and rising inequality, politicians should note how existing rules shape incentives and behaviour.

A more promising route may involve revisiting how different forms of income are treated within the current system. Aligning the taxation of salaries and dividends for business owners, and reducing distortions between business structures, could improve both fairness and efficiency.

This would ensure that the tax system rewards productive entrepreneurship – rather than financial engineering.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. One small change Rachel Reeves could make to close tax loopholes and raise revenue – https://theconversation.com/one-small-change-rachel-reeves-could-make-to-close-tax-loopholes-and-raise-revenue-268079

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sheena Cruickshank, Professor in Immunology, University of Manchester

Peanut allergy is one of the most common food allergies, affecting between 1% and 2% of people living in the west. And, for many years, their prevalence has been rising.

But a recent study out of the US shows that the rate of peanut allergy diagnoses in infants has actually declined. It appears this decline may be due to changes in allergy guidelines – highlighting the importance of introducing this common allergen early on.

A food allergy is a type of allergic reaction which occurs when your immune system reacts inappropriately to things it should ignore – such as pollen or certain types of foods. The most common allergic condition is hayfever – a reaction to pollen. Peanut allergy is one of the most common true food allergies – and also the most common cause of fatal food reactions.

The proportion of people with food allergies in England has more than doubled between 2008 and 2018. Similar data in the US showed more than triple the number of people developed a food allergy between 1997 and 2008.

The reasons for these increases are complex and due to many factors – including exposure to environmental pollutants, alterations in the gut microbiome and genetic predisposition. There also appears to be a link between certain inflammatory health conditions (such as atopic dermatitis and an infant’s likelihood of developing a food allergy.

Read more:
What’s behind the large rise in food allergies among children in the UK?

But this latest study has shown that the US appears to have deviated from this overall trend, with peanut allergies actually falling in infants.

The study examined changes in the rates of peanut allergies since 2015. This was the year allergy guidelines in the US changed to encourage infants considered most at risk of food allergy (such as those with atopic dermatitis) to be introduced to peanuts early in life.

Previous research had shown that these guideline changes had resulted in an increase in the number of parents introducing peanuts into their child’s diet by one year of age. The research team wanted to assess whether this had had any affect on peanut allergy rates, too.

They enrolled almost 39,000 children during the pre-guidelines phase (when advice was to avoid peanuts) and around 47,000 in the post-guidelines phase (after 2015). Allergy incidence in both groups was tracked for one to two years.

The research showed that the total rate of peanut allergy decreased from almost 0.8% to 0.5%. This meant fewer at-risk infants developed a peanut allergy following the guideline change.

These findings mirror prior work in the UK showing that early exposure to peanuts before the age of five was linked to a reduced likelihood of developing an allergy.

Food allergy guidelines

In the late-1990s and early 2000s, the burgeoning incidence of food allergies and their life-threatening implications prompted sweeping policy changes in many western countries.

In the UK in 1998 and the US in 2000, guidelines changed to recommend high-risk allergens (such as peanuts) were completely avoided by pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers and infants considered at high risk for allergy.

But these guidelines were made in the absence of any rigorous studies actually showing they’d have a positive effect. Indeed, animal studies had suggested there may be no benefits – showing that eating potential allergens early in life actually invokes an important phenomenon called oral tolerance.

Oral tolerance is where the immune system ignores a potential allergen after it has been introduced to the gut through diet. How oral tolerance develops isn’t fully understood, but involves several mechanisms that help immune cells to be effectively “switched off” so they don’t mistake certain foods for a threat.

But despite the change in advice to avoid peanuts, rates of peanut allergies did not fall.

A major UK review conducted in 2008 consequently showed there was no clear evidence that eating or not eating peanuts (or foods containing peanuts) during pregnancy, while breastfeeding or in early childhood had any effect on the chances of a child developing a peanut allergy. As such, the advice in the UK to avoid peanuts (and eggs) during pregnancy and early childhood was reversed in 2009.

A randomised trial conducted since this policy change came into place showed that among infants considered at high risk of allergy, consistent consumption of peanuts from 11 months of age resulted in an over 80% lower rate of peanut allergy by the age of five compared with children who had avoided peanuts.

Other studies confirmed these findings, which subsequently led to guidelines changing in the US in 2015.

Many questions remain

It’s now increasingly clear that the early introduction of potentially allergic foods may actually benefit us and reduce our risk of developing a life-changing allergy. Nonetheless, there’s much we still don’t understand.

For example, while the mechanisms underpinning oral tolerance are being elucidated, we still don’t know what the best window of age is for safely invoking it.

We also don’t understand why infants with atopic dermatitis are most at risk of developing a food allergy. The hypothesis is that early exposure to food proteins through a disrupted skin barrier is what leads to allergy, as the immune system becomes sensitised to the food.

It’s also important to note that overall, the incidence of food allergies is still increasing. While this recent US study offers hope for preventing some types of food allergies, questions still remain. For example, some people can develop food allergies during adolescence and adulthood. More must be done to understand why this happens.

There are also still barriers impeding access to diagnosis for severe food allergies. This means many at-risk patients have not been diagnosed, so they also have been prescribed potentially life-saving treatments. These trends are magnified for people living in more deprived areas of the country.

Much more needs to be done to answer these questions and tackle food allergies more broadly.

Sheena Cruickshank receives funding from EPSRC and MRC to investigate how environmental factors impact respiratory and gut conditions

– ref. Are peanut allergies actually declining? – https://theconversation.com/are-peanut-allergies-actually-declining-269739