‘Life is ebbing away’: Egyptians face peril at sea in dangerous new exodus to Europe

Poverty puts thousands into the grip of people smugglers plying a deadly trade in the Mediterranean

Youssef initially doesn’t want to remember the treacherous boat journey that took him from Egypt, then to Tobruk in Libya and finally to Italy, but he knows clearly why he left.

A young man in his 20s, Youssef is recently married and expecting a baby in a few months, and fears about the increasing cost of living in Egypt overwhelmed him. He gave in and contacted a people smuggler on the internet, using a Facebook group where those looking to migrate can post information about crossings.

Continue reading...

Australia’s skilled migration program needs overhaul to boost economy, report says

Grattan Institute says government should target permanent skilled visas at younger, higher-skilled migrants

A better skilled migration program could be the solution to Australia’s major economic challenges, a new report says.

A lack of productivity growth, growing debt in the federal budget and the economy’s transition to net-zero could be assisted by key reforms, the submission by the public policy thinktank, the Grattan Institute, to the federal government’s migration review has said.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Channel deaths: desperate call from boat raised alarm for rescue operation

Skipper of fishing vessel tells how his crew spent two hours pulling 31 people from the freezing water

Four people died and more than 40 were rescued after a desperate call to a charity warned that a boat carrying asylum seekers including children had capsized in the Channel on Wednesday morning.

An unidentified man on the sinking vessel, in a recording obtained by the Guardian, asked at 2.53am for the alarm to be raised to save his family who were in the icy waters.

Continue reading...

‘You could see the panic’: how the Channel small boat incident unfolded

Experts said lessons appeared to have been learned from previous incidents as teams scrambled into action after dinghy capsized

The emergency call came through at 2.53am. “Please help me bro, please, please, please. We are in the water. We have a family.”

The unidentified man, on a stricken dinghy, used WhatsApp to contact the French NGO Utopia 56, a humanitarian association, which works to support migrants in the camps in northern France.

Continue reading...

PMQs live: Rishi Sunak quizzed by Keir Starmer over nurses’ strikes

Latest updates: prime minister faces Labour leader ahead of industrial action by nurses on Thursday

Yesterday Mark Harper, the transport secretary, claimed that public support for the rail strikes was declining. Today Ipsos has published some polling that backs up this claim, although support for the RMT has not collapsed, and public opinion is still divided. It puts support for the strikes at 30%, down from 43% in September. And opposition to the strikes is at 36%, up from 31%.

Yesterday Savanta published polling showing a similar trend. It said that net support for the rail workers on strike was +21 in October (those supporting them, minus those not supporting them), and that now it was down to +13.

Continue reading...

Rishi Sunak says changes to asylum system should lead to ‘vast majority’ of Albanian applications being refused – live

Prime minister makes statement in Commons, saying he wants to abolish backlog of unprocessed asylum claims by end of next year

The Conservative MP Adam Afriyie has been made bankrupt after a judge in a specialist court heard how he owed around £1.7m, PA Media reports. A bankruptcy order was made against Afriyie, who represents Windsor, at an online hearing in the insolvency and companies court today by judge Nicholas Briggs.

This story, by my colleagues Heather Stewart and Rowena Mason last year, explains the background to this case.

We completed our enquiry into the impact of the ending of freedom of movement on the adult social care sector in April and submitted the report to government and parliament. We recommended that care workers continue to be eligible to apply for a health and care worker visa and made some additional recommendations for changes to the immigration system to ease the burden on social care employers and migrants.

However, our main recommendation was that a minimum rate of pay should be established for care workers at a premium to the statutory minimum wage where care is being provided with public funds. We suggested that this should initially be set at £1 per hour above the national living wage but expected a more substantial premium to be needed to properly address the crisis in social care recruitment and retention.

Continue reading...

Melilla border crush: Amnesty criticises ‘unlawful force’ and lack of first aid

Group says Moroccan and Spanish police failed to provide even basic first aid for hours after deadly crush at enclave

The “widespread use of unlawful force” by Moroccan and Spanish authorities contributed to the deaths of at least 37 people who perished during a mass storming of the border fence between Morocco and Spain’s north African enclave of Melilla in June, according to a report.

The Amnesty International report also accuses Moroccan and Spanish police of failing to provide even basic first aid to those injured in the crush as they were left “in the full glare of the sun for up to eight hours”. It says Moroccan authorities prioritised moving corpses and treating security officials above the needs of injured migrants and refugees.

Continue reading...

Jeremy Hunt fails to quash claims Treasury vetoed pay offer that may have averted rail strikes – UK politics live

Chancellor did not contest claim when asked whether his department blocked a pay rise of around 10% for rail workers

Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, has refused to quash claims that the Treasury vetoed a pay offer that may have led to a resolution of the rail strike.

Last month the Daily Telegraph claimed that the Department for Transport wanted to offer rail workers a rise worth between 8% and 9% over two year, but that it was prevented from doing so by the Treasury.

There is unanimity across the government in that it wants high inflation to be temporary, and I think there is understanding that that is essential for the very people who are feeling most angry about their situation.

We have to be really careful not to agree to pay demands that have the opposite of the intended effect because they lock in high inflation.

So if we make the wrong choices now, we won’t have that 3.7% of inflation in January or February of 2024 and this will change from being a one-off problem, to being a permanent problem, which will be the worst possible thing for people working in public services. That is why it’s generally a very difficult issue.

I would urge everyone to boycott Netflix and make sure that we actually focus on the things that matter.

Continue reading...

Australian government overturns decision to cancel citizenship of man on death row in Iraq

Home affairs tells Ahmad Merhi’s lawyer the law used to strip him of Australian citizenship was invalid with almost 20 other cancellations also voided

The Department of Home Affairs has overturned a decision to cancel the citizenship of a former Sydney man on death row in Iraq after it ruled the law used to strip him of his Australian citizenship was invalid.

The department has now revealed that 18 other Australians had their citizenship illegally revoked.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

UN refugee body criticises ‘errors’ in asylum report backed by Braverman

Organisation questions use of ‘illegal’ to describe asylum seekers in report calling for radical crackdown

A report partially endorsed by the UK home secretary, Suella Braverman, calling for a radical crackdown on those seeking asylum has been criticised by a UN body for “factual and legal errors”.

Braverman wrote the foreword to the report by the right-leaning Centre for Policy Studies that says “if necessary” Britain should change human rights laws and withdraw from the European convention on human rights in order to tackle Channel crossings by small boat.

Continue reading...

Paraglider crosses border from Morocco into Spanish enclave and disappears

Spanish authorities hunt for person seen landing near border fence in Melilla and running off

Spanish authorities are looking for a person who used a paraglider to cross over a border fence from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Melilla in what appears to be the first use of the method to migrate into European territory.

Footage obtained by El Faro newspaper shows a person landing near the fence and then running off, leading officials to suspect the individual was trying to reach Europe.

Continue reading...

Migrants travel from Nigeria to Canary Islands balanced on ship’s rudder

The three stowaways were rescued by the Spanish Coastguard in Las Palmas on Monday after an 11-day voyage

The Spanish coastguard has rescued three migrants who stowed away on a tanker that arrived in the Canary Islands from Nigeria by balancing on its rudder just above the waterline.

In a photograph distributed on Twitter by the coastguard on Monday, the three stowaways are shown perched on the rudder of the oil and chemical tanker Alithini II.

Continue reading...

Brexit has worsened shortage of NHS doctors, analysis shows

Exclusive: More than 4,000 European medics have chosen not to work in NHS since Britain left EU, data reveals

Brexit has worsened the UK’s acute shortage of doctors in key areas of care and led to more than 4,000 European doctors choosing not to work in the NHS, research reveals.

The disclosure comes as growing numbers of medics quit in disillusionment at their relentlessly busy working lives in the increasingly overstretched health service. Official figures show the NHS in England alone has vacancies for 10,582 physicians.

Continue reading...

Bereaved relatives write to Rishi Sunak on anniversary of Channel drowning

Prime minister urged to prevent future tragedies by relatives of 31 refugees who died one year ago

Sixteen bereaved relatives of 31 refugees who drowned in the Channel have written to Rishi Sunak on the first anniversary of their loved ones’ deaths, urging him to make changes to prevent future tragedies.

On 24 November 2021, 31 people slowly froze to death in the Channel. They had repeatedly made SOS calls to French and UK emergency services but no help was sent to them. Of those on board the overcrowded dinghy 27 bodies were recovered. Four are still missing.

Continue reading...

US warns its ‘darker-skinned’ citizens of Dominican Republic’s migrant crackdown

Haitian migrants are being deported from Caribbean country and authorities seem to be targeting people based on their appearance

US officials in the Dominican Republic are warning “darker-skinned” Americans they are at risk of being swept up in the country’s crackdown on Haitian migrants.

The advice from the US embassy in Santo Domingo suggests that authorities there are using a person’s appearance as a criteria for detention of those suspected of being in the country illegally.

Continue reading...

Starmer rules out taking UK back into single market or customs union if Labour win election – UK politics live

Latest updates: Labour’s Keir Starmer is speaking to the CBI

Starmer says Britain is trapped in a “vicious cycle of stagnation”.

The UK has had the worst record for growth in centuries, he says. He says a new model is needed. And this should be a turning point.

They put our public finances in a perilous position, wasted the chance to transform our potential in an era of low interest rates, and created an economy with weak foundations.

But the war didn’t ban onshore wind. The war didn’t scrap home insulation. And the war didn’t stall British nuclear energy.

Continue reading...

Inquiry into worst Channel disaster for 30 years fails to contact victims’ families

At least 27 people died when their dinghy capsized in November 2021, but the UK investigation has yet to talk to their relatives

A UK investigation into the drowning of at least 27 people trying to cross the Channel in a small boat has yet to contact most of the victims’ families 12 months after the tragedy, the Observer can reveal.

The Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) has not yet been in touch with the majority of the families despite legal sources claiming it has all their contact details, prompting accusations that the inquiry’s progress is “dehumanising” the dead.

Continue reading...

MPs, unions and refugee groups condemn Braverman’s small boats deal with France

Critics claim latest effort to reduce Channel crossings is ‘throwing good money after bad’

Conservative MPs have joined unions and refugee groups in condemning a £63m deal signed by Suella Braverman with her French counterpart to reduce the number of people attempting to cross the Channel in small boats.

Natalie Elphicke, the member for Dover, and Tim Loughton, a senior home affairs select committee member, questioned whether the bilateral agreement will do enough to address a surge of new arrivals after it failed to establish joint patrols or guarantee that people smugglers are detained.

Continue reading...

UK gave away ‘too much for too little’ in free trade deal with Australia, says former minister, blaming Truss – as it happened

George Eustice says the free trade deal with Australia – hailed by Boris Johnson as one of the big gains from Brexit – was poor. This live blog is now closed

James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, was criticised last month for saying that gay football fans visiting Qatar for the Word Cup should “be respectful”, and make allowance for the country’s intolerance of homosexuality.

In an interview on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Cleverly defended his comments, saying that the Foreign Office always advises people to obey local laws when they are travelling. He told the programme:

My focus is to make sure that British visitors, particularly LGBTQ+ visitors to Qatar going to enjoy the World Cup, are safe and that they enjoy their tournament. So my advice was purely about ensuring that they have a safe and secure time at the World Cup.

We always say that you have to respect the laws of your host nation. That is a universal element of British travel advice.

I’ve spoken at length with the Qatari authorities on this and it’s worth bearing in mind that men and women don’t typically hold hands in Qatar, and other conservative Muslim countries like Qatar, so my strong advice is to look at the UK government’s travel advice.

This deal is just the same as previous deals - spending money and resources on intercepting and obstructing people crossing the Channel, while doing nothing to address their need for safe access to an asylum system.

The inevitable result will be more dangerous journeys and more profits led by ruthless smuggling gangs and other serious criminals exploiting the refusal of the UK and French government to take and share responsibility.

Continue reading...

France-Italy migration row escalates after rescue ship docks in Toulon

French government calls Italy ‘inhumane’ for refusing vessel but Italian PM hits back as rift deepens

France and Italy have intensified their bitter row over migration after a charity-operated ship carrying hundreds of asylum seekers rescued in the central Mediterranean docked in the French port of Toulon after almost three weeks during which Italy’s far-right government failed to give it safe port.

The French government called Italy “irresponsible” and “inhumane” for not coming to the aid of the ship, which had been stuck in Italian waters for weeks carrying sick passengers who had been rescued at sea between Libya and Italy.

Continue reading...