Category Archives: Politics

Sending UK asylum seekers to Rwanda will save money, claims minister

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Claim about long-term benefits disputed by MP Andrew Mitchell who describes reported cost of £30,000 a person as ‘eye-watering’

Britain will save money in the “longer term” by sending some asylum seekers to Rwanda, a minister has said after the reported cost of about £30,000 a person was described as “eye-watering”.

Defending the decision to fly out many of those who arrive on the Kent coast to a country more than 4,000 miles away, the Home Office minister Tom Pursglove said it would “crush” the business model of people smugglers.

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Derry to mark 25 years of Good Friday agreement with John Hume musical

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Playhouse to stage Beyond Belief in 2023 to ‘say a proper goodbye’ to late SDLP leader who helped persuade IRA to give up arms

A musical drama about the life of John Hume, one of the main forces behind the Good Friday agreement, will be staged next year to mark the 25th anniversary of the historic deal that helped end 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland.

Beyond Belief, written by Damian Gorman with music by Brian O’Doherty, is the second part of a “peace-building trilogy” at the Playhouse in Hume’s home town, Derry, after The White Handkerchief, a play about the events of Bloody Sunday, earlier this year.

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UK asylum seekers to be housed in no-frills hostel in Rwandan capital

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People fleeing persecution to be taken to stripped-back Hope guest house in Kigali, which has only 50 rooms

Asylum seekers flown to Rwanda by the British government will be put up in a no-frills hostel a mile away from Kigali city centre.

People fleeing war and persecution will be taken to a guest house, built in 2014, which only has 50 rooms available, although there are plans to expand the facility.

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UK Rwanda plan for asylum seekers decried as inhumane, expensive and deadly

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Politicians, legal experts and refugee groups condemn Johnson’s plan to ‘offshore’ Channel crossing crisis

Boris Johnson’s plans to send unauthorised asylum seekers on a one-way ticket to Rwanda have been roundly condemned amid warnings that it will be challenged in the courts and could result in further deaths in the Channel.

After the prime minister outlined plans to hand an initial down-payment of £120m to the Rwandan government in the hope that it will accept “tens of thousands” of people, politicians and refugee groups condemned the move as inhumane, unworkable and a waste of public money.

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What are the Tories trying to achieve by offshoring asylum seekers?

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Analysis: Tories keen to shore up support with tough immigration policy but there are concerns about the detail

When Boris Johnson’s position was at its most precarious two months ago, he had to convince Conservative MPs sticking by his side was worth it.

A plan was devised – dubbed “Operation Red Meat” – to give those losing faith in his administration some belief that there was a higher purpose than just defending their leader through scandal after scandal.

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MP Imran Ahmad Khan resigns after conviction for child sexual assault

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Byelection triggered in Wakefield as MP expelled from Tory party says he is withdrawing from political life

Imran Ahmad Khan, the disgraced MP expelled from the Conservative party after being found guilty of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy, has announced he will resign, triggering a byelection in the Yorkshire seat of Wakefield.

Although Khan is appealing against Monday’s conviction, he admitted in a statement that the legal proceedings would last “many more months” and leave his constituents without proper political representation.

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‘Inhumane’: some Tories criticise plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda

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Small but vehement group have already expressed doubts about government’s outsourcing plan

Conservative opposition to plans to send asylum seekers for processing in Rwanda is likely to be led by a small but vehement group of peers and MPs who have already criticised outsourcing the issue overseas.

The House of Lords has now twice amended the nationality and borders bill to block the idea of non-UK processing for asylum claims. However, these government defeats were largely caused by Tory members staying away, giving opposition and crossbench peers a majority.

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UK plans to send thousands of asylum seekers to Rwanda, says Boris Johnson – UK politics live

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Latest updates: opposition parties denounce plan as ‘shameful’ and ‘evil’; home secretary Priti Patel in Kigali today to unveil more details

Simon Hart, the Welsh secretary, made a rare appearance on the morning broadcast round earlier today. He said the plan to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda would mark a “humane step forward”. He told Sky News:

We have to deal with this problem. We have a very good relationship with Rwanda: it’s an up-and-coming economy, it has got a very good record with migrants in this particular issue.

And it’s an arrangement which I think suits both countries very well and provides the best opportunities for economic migrants, for those who have been in the forefront of this particular appalling problem for so long now.

We’ve put forward proposals to make it more difficult for smuggler gangs to advertise online on social media, which is partly how they do it.

We think there should be safe and legal routes that people need for family reunions and so on, so that they don’t have to arrive through these illegal routes in order to make their asylum claims.

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Tens of thousands of asylum seekers could be sent to Rwanda, says Johnson

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PM insists east African country is safe and scheme will prove ‘very considerable deterrent’

Tens of thousands of unauthorised migrants who seek sanctuary in the UK will be flown more than 4,000 miles to Rwanda under a new set of immigration policies, Boris Johnson has said.

The prime minister insisted at a press conference that the African state, criticised last year by the UK for its human rights record, was one of the safest countries in the world. He also announced that the Royal Navy would take over patrolling the Channel to intercept small boats from France.

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MPs call for British child and ill mother to be returned to UK from Syrian camp

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Mother is unlikely to survive without medical intervention, leaving her young son orphaned, say doctors

MPs and a human rights group have called on the UK government to repatriate a young British boy and his gravely ill mother from a detention camp in Syria, after doctors said she was at risk of dying and leaving the child orphaned.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said it was reviewing the case of Zaid* and his mother, Maryam* – who was injured in an explosion in Syria in 2019 and left with shrapnel in her head – “as a matter of priority”.

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Future Partygate revelations may be even worse for Boris Johnson, says Tory MP – UK politics live

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Latest updates: a Conservative MP calling for the PM to resign says he fears there are more fines to come for Johnson

More than 35 homebuilders have agreed to put £2bn towards fixing unsafe cladding on high-rise buildings in England identified in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower disaster, Michael Gove, the housing secretary, has said. My colleague Rowena Mason has the story here.

The Conservative MP Nigel Mills has told PA Media more about why he thinks Boris Johnson should go now (see 9.10am) and why he does not accept that this would be a mistake because of the war in Ukraine. He said:

I have two comments on that. The first one is, when will Ukraine be any better than it is now? If you told me this crisis would be over in three months’ time, then you might say, ‘well OK, let’s get this done [then] the prime minister can meet his fate’.

But the Ukraine crisis could last for a very, very long time. Are we saying there’s no chance of a change of prime minister for years?

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Inquiry into leak of Matt Hancock kiss images leads to no prosecutions

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ICO finds insufficient evidence against those suspected of capturing footage of minister with colleague

No one will be prosecuted over the leak of CCTV footage showing Matt Hancock engaged in a clinch with a colleague in his office, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has announced.

The footage and stills of the embrace, which prompted his resignation as health secretary, were leaked to the Sun in June last year. It was most likely obtained by someone using their phone to record a CCTV screen, the ICO said.

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Boris Johnson ‘made a mockery’ of UK’s Covid sacrifices, says Ruth Davidson

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Former Scottish Tory leader renews calls for PM to resign, in split from current leader Douglas Ross

Ruth Davidson, the former Scottish Tory leader, has renewed her calls for Boris Johnson to quit over the partygate scandal as she accused him of “traducing” the office of prime minister.

One of the first Tories to call for his resignation when the scandal first broke, Davidson echoed a handful of Tory MPs who confirmed on Wednesday they stood by their no-confidence letters after Johnson’s fine for breaching his government’s Covid rules.

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UK imposes sanctions on another 206 Russians after Ukraine railway attack

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Foreign secretary says 178 of those targeted helped prop up self-proclaimed republics in Luhansk and Donetsk

The UK government has imposed sanctions on another 206 individuals in response to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, including 178 people it said were involved in propping up the self-proclaimed republics in Luhansk and Donetsk.

Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, said the latest sanctions were imposed in a direct response to the “horrific rocket attacks” on a train station in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, that killed dozens of civilians.

Vladimir Yakunin, a former head of Russian Railways who the Foreign Office said had close ties to Putin. The US had already imposed sanctions on Yakunin.

Igor Kesaev, the founder of the cigarette company Megapolis, who the UK says has a £2.9bn fortune.

Saodat Narzieva, “a pro-Kremlin oligarch with close ties to Putin” and a sister of Alisher Usmanov. She was hit with EU sanctions last week.

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Commonwealth rift in Caribbean as re-election of Lady Scotland challenged

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Jamaican minister’s entry to race for secretary general called ‘monumental error’ by Antigua

Patricia Scotland’s hopes of being re-elected Commonwealth secretary general are under threat, after Jamaica’s foreign minister, Kamina Johnson-Smith, announced that she was challenging Scotland for the post.

The decision has sparked controversy in the Caribbean, which had previously met to back Scotland’s bid for a second term. The Antiguan prime minister, Gaston Browne, has described Jamaica’s decision to break ranks as a “monumental error”.

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Replacing Human Rights Act will weaken protections, say peers and MPs

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Joint committee on human rights says plans contravene principle that human rights are universal

Dominic Raab’s proposal to replace the Human Rights Act with a British bill of rights is not evidence-based and will diminish protections for individuals, MPs and peers have said.

The criticisms by the joint committee on human rights (JCHR) are the latest directed at the planned changes, which the justice secretary has said will counter “wokery and political correctness” and expedite the deportation of foreign criminals.

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Tory MP Crispin Blunt withdraws statement questioning guilty verdict in Imran Ahmad Khan’s sexual assault trial – politics live

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Latest updates: all the news and developments in politics in the UK

As mentioned earlier, it is crime week in the Labour elections campaign grid and last night the party announced that - as it put it in its own press release - it was “calling for immediate nationwide injunctions to block Just Stop Oil protests as demonstrations continue to cause misery for motorists across Britain”.

Keir Starmer tweeted about this last night.

Up and down the country, people are struggling to get fuel to put in their cars to get to work to put food on the table, pay rent or mortgage and it’s a very basic thing. People are struggling under the cost of living crisis already with stratospheric energy bills. Life is tough enough. And we want people who need their cars to get to work to be able to.

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Crispin Blunt urged to apologise for comments on Imran Ahmad Khan case

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Tory MP said trial in which colleague was found guilty was ‘nothing short of an international scandal’

The Conservative MP Crispin Blunt is under pressure to apologise for and retract comments that a fellow MP found guilty of sexual assault was a victim of a “miscarriage of justice”.

Blunt deleted the tweet and removed the comment from his website after an intervention from Tory whips overnight. A Tory source said: “Crispin’s views are wholly unacceptable. Following exchanges late last night we expect the statement to be retracted first thing this morning.”

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UK politics: Starmer accuses Sunak of taxation ‘hypocrisy’ – as it happened

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This live blog is now closed. You can see some of our latest politics stories below:

At the Downing Street lobby briefing the No 10 spokesperson confirmed that Lord Geidt, the independent adviser on ministerial standards, would be conducting an inquiry into Rishi Sunak’s declarations of interest. Sunak requested one last night – but Geidt is only allowed to launch an inquiry with the permission of the PM, which has now been given.

But the spokesperson was unable to confirm that the inquiry would cover Sunak’s decision to retain his US green card after he became a minister, and even while he was chancellor. It is reported that he only gave it up last October.

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Prime minister pays tribute to Sir David Amess after killer convicted

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Politicians call for focus to be put on slain MP’s life and work – rather than on deeds of his murderer

Boris Johnson has joined MPs and others in paying tribute to Sir David Amess, with several stressing the importance of focusing on the Conservative backbencher’s life and work rather than the deeds of his murderer.

In a tweeted statement, Johnson called Amess, who was killed last October by Ali Harbi Ali in an Islamist-inspired terrorist attack, “a beloved colleague, public servant and friend who championed the city of Southend in everything he did”, saying his thoughts were with Amess’s family.

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