Ministers are planning to make it harder for refugees to bring family members to the UK as part of a package of measures that Yvette Cooper will announce on Monday as she looks to get a grip on the fractious debate over irregular migration.

The home secretary will tell MPs she plans to make a number of changes to the way asylum cases are treated, including to the family reunion policy, which officials believe is acting as a magnet for people crossing the Channel.

Cooper’s statement to the Commons on the first day back after the recess is intended to draw a line under a difficult summer for the government, marked by public protests and legal wrangling over its use of hotels to house asylum seekers.

The home secretary will say: “Our action to strengthen border security, increase returns and overhaul the broken asylum system are putting much stronger foundations in place so we can fix the chaos we inherited and end costly asylum hotels.

“That means ensuring we have the powers we need to pursue the criminal smuggling gangs profiting from small boat crossings that other parties have voted against, but also new firm rules in place to manage the asylum system so we can close hotels.”

In a direct rebuttal to Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, who has dominated headlines for the past week with his plan to deport almost all of those who cross the Channel in small boats, she will add: “These are complex challenges and they require sustainable and workable solutions, not fantasy promises which can’t be delivered.”

Cooper will promise to overhaul the UK’s family reunion policy, which allows people to bring their partners and children to the country once they are granted refugee status.

The number of people who entered on such visas has risen sharply since 2022, with just over 20,000 being granted in the year to June 2025 – a 30% rise on the previous 12 months.

Officials say the rise in refugee numbers is in part to blame, but they also believe the UK now has a more lax regime than many nearby countries after moves elsewhere in Europe to tighten their rules.

In Denmark, for example, refugees must prove financial stability before being allowed to bring over family members. Cooper is understood to be looking at similar changes, as well as setting a minimum period refugees must be settled before being allowed to invite their families.

The home secretary will also confirm changes to the asylum process which will remove the power of judges to hear appeals, handing them to a select panel of trained experts. Officials say this will operate in a similar way to the magistrate system, with trained members of the public hearing cases under the supervision of legal experts.

Cooper will also highlight the number of “disruptions” law enforcement officials are making to people smuggling gangs, whether through arrests, asset seizures or action to close communication networks. The government says officers took 347 such actions in 2024-25 – the highest on record.

They also point to an unexpected dip in small boat crossings over August to the lowest levels in four years – something they say was triggered in part by law enforcement operations to seize dinghies at the Bulgarian border over the summer.

This recent drop has not been enough to appease public anger, especially at the ongoing use of hotels to house those whose claims have not yet been processed.

Essex police announced moves over the weekend to clamp down on the largest of those protests, outside the Bell hotel in Epping, after two police officers were injured on Friday. Protests must end by 8pm, while demonstrators will be stopped from blocking the road and could be ordered to remove face coverings, the force said.

In response to the protests, Farage announced a series of policy proposals to bar most asylum seekers from Britain.

Farage was criticised over the weekend by Stephen Cottrell, the archbishop of York, who called his policy “isolationist, short-term [and] kneejerk”.

But he received backing in part from an unexpected quarter as Jack Straw, a former Labour home secretary, added his name to a list of experts who believe the UK can leave the European convention of human rights without undermining peace in Northern Ireland.

Downing Street last week accused the Reform leader of not being a “serious person” for advocating the UK’s departure from the convention, which it said would damage the Good Friday agreement.

Straw, however, on Monday gave his backing to a report from the thinktank Policy Exchange claiming this was not the case. “The debate about our future relationship with the ECHR … should be conducted on its merits,” he said.

“This paper [from Policy Exchange] argues, in thorough and forensic detail, that ‘whatever the merits of UK withdrawal from the ECHR, nothing in the Belfast agreement rules it out as a viable course of action.’”