Sunak’s press secretary says Downing Street not shown legal basis for rebel amendments, despite this being offered and asked for
Rishi Sunak starts with the usual spiel about his engagements, and how he has got meetings with colleagues.
Rishi Sunak is taking PMQs in 10 minutes.
Continue reading...European court of human rights orders Athens to pay €80,000 to family of Belal Tello, who died after 2014 incident
The European court of human rights has ruled that Greece violated a Syrian refugee’s right to life when coastguards fired more than a dozen rounds at the people smugglers’ boat he was on nearly a decade ago.
The Strasbourg-based court ordered Greece to pay €80,000 (about £68,000) in damages to the wife and two children of Belal Tello, who was shot in the head as Greek coastguards attempted to halt the boat he was travelling in. Tello died in 2015, after months in hospital.
Continue reading...ICMPD expects people to try to move before anticipated post-election tightening of migration laws
Migration to Europe will increase in 2024 as people try to reach the continent before the introduction of new laws aimed at cutting the number of arrivals, a leading thinktank has said.
Unsettled by multiple election campaigns in Europe, including the UK, and the US, during which immigration will be a divisive topic, many of those looking to come to Europe will rush to arrive before the system changes, predicted the Austrian-based International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD).
Continue reading...Lady Carr, most senior judge in England and Wales, says she will decide if judges are allocated to asylum appeals hearings in apparent rebuke to No 10
More than 60 Tory MPs have signed at least one of the various rebel amendments to the Rwanda bill tabled by hardliners. But very few of them have said publicly that, if the amendments are not passed, they will definitely vote against the bill at third reading. Suella Braverman and Miriam Cates are among the diehards in this category. But Simon Clarke, in his ConservativeHome, only says, that, if the bill is not changed, he will not vote for the bill at third reading, implying he would abstain.
In an interview with Sky News, Robert Jenrick, the former immigration minister who has tabled the rebel amendments attracting most support, said he was “prepared” to vote against the bill at third reading. He said:
I am prepared to vote against the bill … because this bill doesn’t work, and I do believe that a better bill is possible.
So the government has a choice. It can either accept my amendments … or it can bring back a new and improved bill, and it could do that within a matter of days because we know the shape of that bill.
Continue reading...PM will recall how Tory anger toppled May, Johnson and Truss as he seeks solution to party fractures
Rishi Sunak was the most junior of ministers when Theresa May faced her worst Brexit ructions, but as he battles Commons votes, endless amendments and mutinous Conservative factions, the prime minister might have some retrospective sympathy for his predecessor-but-two.
The parallels do not end there. With Brexit largely viewed as completed, Sunak’s Rwanda deportation bill has become emblematic of what many Tory MPs see as the party’s main ideological battleground: migration, and most specifically, small boats.
Continue reading...Lax employment law cited as motivation for ice-cold crossing in which five people died off Wimereux
The mayor of the French seaside resort where five people died off the coast trying to reach the UK has blamed the British immigration system for the crisis that engulfed the town at the weekend.
“What’s happening today is their fault,” said Jean-Luc Dubaële, the mayor of Wimereux, claiming Britain was offering “monts et merveilles”, a French expression meaning they were promising the world.
Continue reading...Stateless Kurdish man’s compensation case is the first sparked by high court ruling that indefinite detention is unlawful
A stateless Kurdish man released from immigration detention is seeking “aggravated” and “compensatory” damages for alleged false imprisonment – the first such case sparked by the high court’s ruling that indefinite detention is unlawful.
The intellectually impaired man, known as DVU18, has sued the immigration minister, Andrew Giles, through a litigation guardian, in a case that could pave the way for the 149 people released to sue for hundreds of thousands of dollars of compensation each.
Continue reading...Defence secretary dismisses poll, saying things will change by time general election takes place
And here is some more comment on the YouGov poll on X from experts and commentators.
From Will Jennings, an academic and psephologist
At last, details of the @YouGov MRP. Bad for the Conservatives (unsurprisingly), but this is curious to say the least: “In constituencies across England and Wales, the Labour vote is up by an average of just four per cent compared to 2019”.
These results are actually *way better* for the government than the most recent standard YouGov poll, which would produce a 334 seat Labour majority according to Electoral Calculus. So something quite peculiar is going on...
Continue reading...Rise in salary requirements will further fuel staff shortages in industry that relies on skilled migrant workers
• Business live – latest updates
What do you call an Italian restaurant that doesn’t serve pizza?
During the 2022 Edinburgh fringe, Gusto’s restaurant in the city sounded like the punchline to one of the comedy festival’s jokes.
There’s a threshold at which it becomes impossible to make money, so you have to put prices up, which drives inflation, which flies in the face of what the government say they’re trying to do,” says Snell.
Continue reading...German chancellor condemns ‘fanatics with assimilation fantasies’ after reports about AfD meeting
Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has urged democrats to stand together against “fanatics with assimilation fantasies” after it emerged that politicians from the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party had discussed a “masterplan” for mass deportations in the event of the party coming to power.
The far-right meeting, involving members of the AfD, the head of the Identitarian Movement and neo-Nazi activists, took place last November at a countryside hotel on the outskirts of Potsdam.
Continue reading...NGO’s figure is nearly triple that of 2022, making last year deadliest on record along migration route
An estimated 18 people a day died or disappeared while trying to reach the shores of Spain last year, a leading NGO has said, as increased migration controls led to people taking more treacherous routes in the hope of making it to Europe.
The 6,618 people who died included 384 children, Caminando Fronteras (Walking Borders) said in its latest report, many attempting to reach Spain’s Canary Islands.
Continue reading...Business minister Kevin Hollinrake to give statement on Horizon scandal and what the government plans to do
James Chapman, a former political editor of the Daily Mail who worked as special adviser for David Davis when he was Brexit secretary for about a year until he left convinced that Brexit was a terrible mistake, says he does not think the “back to square one” line really works as an attack line against Labour.
The trouble with Sunak’s latest slogan is that I suspect a large number of voters think Britain is so broken under the Tories that “going back to square one” sounds like a wholly positive idea
Continue reading...Suit is aimed at stopping a law allowing police to detain people suspected of crossing the US border without authorization
The US Department of Justice has sued Texas and its Republican governor, Greg Abbott, to block a new and controversial state immigration law from going into effect.
After threatening the state with legal action after last year’s passage of SB4, a new Texas law which allows state police to arrest any person they suspect has crossed the US-Mexico border without authorization, the justice department did so on Wednesday. Immigration and border control officially falls under the purview of the federal government – not individual states.
Continue reading...Independent French auditors say UK information on people crossing Channel is ‘very patchy’
The UK is not coordinating sufficiently with France to reduce the number of people crossing the Channel in small boats or providing enough detailed information, French state auditors have said.
The cour des comptes, an independent French body that examines the use of public funds, has published a report on the efficiency of French policy on illegal migration, in which it said France was “struggling to develop operational cooperation arrangements” with its neighbours, including the UK.
Continue reading...Downing Street refuses to endorse home secretary as he says his aim is to reduce number of people crossing Channel on small boats to ‘zero’. This live blog is closed
At the Downing Street lobby briefing this morning the PM’s spokesperson claimed the government had “gone further” than promised in tackling the asylum application backlog. In response to comments from Labour and others saying the legacy backlog has not been fully cleared, the spokesperson said:
We committed to clearing the backlog. That is what the government has done.
We are being very transparent about what that entails.
I said that this government would clear the backlog of asylum decisions by the end of 2023.
That’s exactly what we’ve done.
Blaze in Dublin comes less than fortnight after suspected arson attack on vacant Galway hotel earmarked for asylum seekers
Irish police have been investigating a second fire in less than a fortnight at a building local people reportedly believed would be used to accommodate asylum seekers.
The emergency services were called to the scene at the Ringsend area of Dublin in the early hours of New Year’s Eve.
Continue reading...Flight contained 303 Indians en route to Central American country whose light visa requirements have attracted US-bound travelers
The detention in France of a charter plane bound for Nicaragua has renewed attention on the Central American nation’s role as a springboard for migrants from across the world seeking to make their way to the United States.
The flight, which left the United Arab Emirates on 21 December with 303 passengers of Indian nationality, was grounded during a refueling stop after an anonymous tip-off alleging human trafficking.
Continue reading...Keir Starmer mulling ‘detailed plans’ to outsource process overseas as alternative to Rwanda plan
Labour is reportedly considering a scheme that would see asylum seekers’ claims processed elsewhere.
Keir Starmer is mulling “detailed plans” for an offshoring scheme as he seeks to deter Tory attacks on Labour’s alternative to the Rwanda plan, the Times said on Monday.
Continue reading...Foreign secretary also said Iran was a ‘thoroughly malign’ geopolitical influence
A failure to tackle the issue of small boat crossings in the English Channel would be destructive to people’s faith in politicians and government, David Cameron has claimed.
In comments aimed at rebellious Tory backbenchers unhappy with Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda legislation, Lord Cameron, the foreign secretary, said it was the “best bill to get the job done”.
Continue reading...Club consisting of many Syrians living in Germany has its trip interrupted, as attitudes to migration seem to be hardening
For the past seven years, they’ve crisscrossed Germany, climbing mountains, following babbling streams and trekking through leafy forests.
It was the hiking club’s most recent outing in the eastern state of Saxony, however, that thrust them into uncharted territory. As members of the group, many of them Syrians living in Germany, made their way through the area’s spectacular scenery, a call was made to police to report a group of migrants, amid suspicions that they had been smuggled across the nearby Czech border.
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