Joani Reid asks for privacy after it was revealed her husband David Taylor was one of the three men arrested
Starmer begins PMQs by telling the Commons that his thoughts are with Sarah Everard “on this very painful anniversary” of her death.
He says the government is working hard to prevent boys and men from becoming abusers.
Continue reading...Law Society says home secretary’s review of refugee status after 30 months is in tension with UK’s legal obligations
Shabana Mahmood’s decision to tell every person applying for asylum from Monday that their status is temporary could undermine the refugee convention, the Law Society has said.
The body representing solicitors in England and Wales said the home secretary’s move to review every refugee’s status after 30 months was “in tension” with the UK’s legal obligations.
Continue reading...Project Play finds UK taxpayers are funding ‘record child fatalities’ and ‘repeated violence’ against children in northern France
The deaths of 22 children while trying to cross the Channel in the last two years, along with the mistreatment of thousands of others, were due to “catastrophic failures” of the UK and French governments, according to a new report.
Project Play, an NGO that has worked with 2,192 children hoping to cross the Channel from northern France to the UK to claim asylum in the last two years, has documented the impact of the hostile conditions in northern France due to regular teargassing, evictions and dinghy-slashing by the French police.
Continue reading...Home secretary will defy ‘plain wrong’ calls from unions and leftwing MPs that she is alienating Muslim voters
Shabana Mahmood will press on with hardline immigration policies despite calls for a reversal from unions and left-leaning Labour MPs after the Green party’s byelection victory.
Senior Labour sources insisted that the home secretary would continue to roll out changes to asylum policy, dismissing as “plain wrong” claims that it would further alienate Muslim voters.
Continue reading...Lati-Yana Brown’s parents had asked for application to be expedited so she could join them in UK after house ruined
An eight-year-old girl left destitute in Jamaica after Hurricane Melissa has been barred from coming to the UK to join her parents.
The Guardian reported on the case of Lati-Yana Stephanie Brown after the hurricane. Her mother, Kerrian Bigby, a carer, moved from Jamaica to be with Lati-Yana’s British father, Jerome Hardy, a telecommunications worker, in April 2023, leaving their daughter to be cared for by her grandmother.
Continue reading...PM says: ‘We kept to our manifesto in terms of what we’ve promised. But I accept the challenge that we’ve asked everybody to contribute’
The Conservative party is attacking the budget on the grounds that Rachel Reeves is putting up taxes supposedly to fund more spending on benefit claimants. Even though the rationale for this claim is questionable, the Tories were making it before the budget was announced, and Kemi Badenoch firmed it up last night, claiming it was a “Benefits Street budget”.
On LBC this morning, asked if the budget meant “alarm clock Britain paying for Benefits Street”, Reeves said she did not accept that. She said 60% of the families that would benefit from the removal of the two-child benefit cap (the most expensive welfare announcement in the budget) were in work.
I don’t think children should be punished by this pernicious policy any longer. And the cost to society of this is huge, the cost for councils of temporary accommodation, when people can no longer afford the rent, putting families in B&Bs, kids having to move to school all the time because parents have moved from B&B to another lot of temporary accommodation, and there’s costs for years to come, because all the evidence shows that kids that are growing up poor are less likely to get into work and more reliant on the welfare state in the future for them.
So this is a good investment in those kids, to give them the chances that I want for my kids, and everyone wants for their kids. It also saves money for taxpayers on that accommodation, on those additional health costs, and ensuring that those kids grow up to be productive adults.
Continue reading...Watchdog says force being applied ‘inconsistently, disproportionately, and without adequate justification’
Home Office contractors are over-using restraint in immigration detention centres and failing to tackle the toxic culture behind bars, according to the findings of a new watchdog report described as “deeply concerning”.
By Force of Habit: How the Use of Force in Immigration Detention Has Lost Sight of Necessity and Dignity was published by the Independent Monitoring Boards (IMB), which examines conditions in prisons and immigration detention centres. The findings revealed force being applied inconsistently, disproportionately, and without adequate justification, which it said undermined the dignity and welfare of highly vulnerable individuals.
Continue reading...The home secretary’s plans ‘may leave people in a sense of limbo and unable to integrate’, Burnham said
Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, is giving a speech in Salford this afternoon where he will set out details of his “good growth” plans, but he has already explained much of it overnight in a news release.
Explaining what his “new model of economic growth” is, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (the body Burnham runs) says:
Over the past decade, the city region has become the fastest growing part of the UK economy, driven by a high-performing centre unrecognisable from even 15 years ago.
Our trailblazing devolution deals and unique partnership approach have fuelled annual growth of 3.1 per cent – more than double the rate of the country as a whole. A recent report from Oxford Economics praised Greater Manchester’s growth journey, calling us a “trailblazer for local devolution.”
A new strategic partnership between GMCA and GMPF [Greater Manchester Pension Fund] – the first of its kind in the country – will prioritise local investment and align the GMPF’s investment to our integrated pipeline. Projects in the integrated pipeline will be able to access patient capital that aims for sustainable growth and long-term impact.
We’ll invest in a way that makes the most of every pound, delivering social as well as economic benefits.
Our Greater Manchester baccalaureate is transforming technical education, giving young people a clear line of sight to high quality jobs in our growing economy, and we’re helping residents to live healthier, happier lives and access new employment and training opportunities through our Live Well approach.
Underpinning all this is the Bee Network – our safe, green and affordable public transport system, which is seamlessly connecting people and places like never before. Next year eight rail lines will be brought into the network, which already includes bus, rail, tram, and active travel routes.
I appreciate the support, but I couldn’t have brought forward a plan of the kind I brought forward today [his Manchester “good growth” plan] without being fully focused on my role as mayor of Greater Manchester.
And I’m providing leadership on growth, which is what I think the country needs, and is helpful to the government right now.
And we’re doing this in advance of the budget, I hope, to really bring to life the growth story for the government.
I would just finish by saying this; I think part of the country’s problem is the political culture of Westminster, which is playing out in front of us right now. You go to Manchester, and we’ve built a new economy, and a new way of doing politics, and more of that is what the country needs.
Continue reading...Exclusive: union leaders say proposed changes are immoral and could threaten patient safety if there is staff exodus
Up to 50,000 nurses could quit the UK over the government’s immigration proposals, plunging the NHS into its biggest ever workforce crisis, research suggests.
Keir Starmer has vowed to curb net migration, with plans to force migrants to wait as long as 10 years to apply to settle in the UK instead of automatically gaining settled status after five years.
Continue reading...Health secretary says he is not comfortable with some elements of policy but that it is the right thing to do for the country
Wes Streeting has admitted he is not comfortable with forcibly deporting families under the home secretary’s migration plans, while maintaining it is still the right thing to do.
The health secretary said he thought the number of forced removals would be low under the proposed model, which is similar to Denmark’s, because there would be an increased financial incentive for people entering the UK illegally to return to their country of origin.
Continue reading...As Reform announces what it claims are £25bn in savings through cuts, Labour says ‘Farage’s fantasy numbers don’t add up’
Alf Dubs, the Labour peer and former MP who came to the UK on Kindertransport in 1939 and who campaigns on behalf of migrants, told the Today programme this morning that he was “depressed” by the asylum politicies announced by the government yesterday. He explained:
I find it upsetting that we’ve got to adopt such a hard line – what we need is a bit of compassion in our politics, and I think that some of the measures were going in the wrong direction, they won’t help.
The hard line approach will not, in fact, deter people from coming here – at least on the basis of people I spoke to in Calais, for example – I don’t think it will deter them.
I think there is a proper case for children, there’s a proper case for family reunion – when there are children who are on their own and who’ve got family in this country, then I think the right thing to do is to have family reunion and bringing children over here.
But to use children as a weapon, as the home secretary is doing, I think is a shabby thing – I’m lost for words, frankly, because my concern was that if we remove people who come here, what happens if they’ve had children in the meantime?
Continue reading...In today’s newsletter: Shabana Mahmood is pitching radical new limits on whether asylum seekers can ever gain settled status – but it may come with political consequences
Good morning. In September, Nigel Farage floated a Reform UK policy of ending indefinite leave to remain that critics said would eject hundreds of thousands of people from the country. In October, the Conservatives began talking about deporting large numbers of people previously considered legally settled. Now, the Labour government is preparing to impose radical new limits on whether asylum seekers can ever gain settled status. The Overton window on immigration keeps marching implacably rightwards.
In a document published by the government yesterday afternoon, the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, described the plans as “the most sweeping asylum reforms in modern times”. The prime minister, Keir Starmer, said that having an asylum system at all depends on “social confidence” that it is “fair, effective and humane”. A lot of Labour MPs look set to disagree with the approach, causing yet another political headache for No 10.
Society | More than two in five sexually active under-18s in the UK have either been strangled or strangled someone during sex, research has found, despite the serious dangers of the practice.
Jeffrey Epstein | The Harvard professor and economist Larry Summers said he would step back from public life after documents released by the House oversight committee revealed email exchanges between him and Jeffrey Epstein, who called himself Summers’ “wing man”.
Cop30 | Jamaica has led calls from vulnerable nations at the Cop30 climate summit to urge immediate action on climate breakdown as the conference entered its second week.
Gaza | The UN security council has endorsed proposals put forward by Donald Trump for a lasting peace in Gaza, including the deployment of an international stabilisation force and a possible path to a sovereign Palestinian state.
Poland | Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk has described an explosion along a section of railway line used for deliveries to Ukraine as an “unprecedented act of sabotage” that could have led to disaster.
Continue reading...Labour MP calls government’s asylum plans ‘dystopian’ as home secretary announces measures in Commons
Momentum, the leftwing Labour group, has also denounced the government’s asylum plans. In a statement it says:
The home secretary’s new immigration plans are divisive and xenophobic.
Scapegoating migrants will not fix our public services or end austerity.
Draconian, unworkable and potentially illegal anti-asylum policies only feed Reform’s support.
The government has learnt nothing from the period since the general election.
Some of the legal changes being proposed are truly frightening:
Abolishing the right to a family life would ultimately affect many more people than asylum-seekers.
Continue reading...Home secretary will also consult on ending financial support for those with children if refused asylum, document shows
The government has failed to show the “necessary toughness” to enforce the removal of families whose asylum claims have been refused, Shabana Mahmood has claimed.
In a policy document published on Monday as the government sets out plans for the biggest shake-up of asylum laws in 40 years, the home secretary also set out plans to consult on measures to allow the removal of financial support for families with children under the age of 18 if they have been refused asylum.
Continue reading...There is understood to be growing unease in party over home secretary’s sweeping overhaul of refugee rights
Shabana Mahmood has warned Labour MPs that “dark forces are stirring up anger” over migration, amid growing alarm among senior party figures over the most sweeping overhaul of refugee rights in a generation.
On Monday, Mahmood will announce controversial new laws to overhaul refugee status, which must be reassessed every two years, as well as curbing asylum appeals and toughening the approach to rights to family life.
Restricting asylum seekers to one single appeal rather than different appeals on multiple grounds.
Creating a new body for fast-tracking cases for dangerous criminals and those with little hope of success.
Legislating to restrict last-minute modern slavery claims
Joining other countries in seeking reform of ECHR article 3 rights, to more narrowly define the risk of torture and degrading treatment.
Changing the Home Office’s duty to provide support to asylum seekers to a discretionary power, enabling them to potentially be removed from accommodation.
Continue reading...Home secretary says it is ‘moral mission’ for her to tackle asylum system. This live blog is closed
Ukrainians are in the UK on a “bespoke scheme”, Mahmood says, and it is on a temporary basis.
If Ukraine becomes a safe country again and the conflict ends, “the principle of the new reforms are that if your country becomes safe then you will return,” she says.
Continue reading...Shabana Mahmood to unveil new proposals modelled on Denmark’s controversial system
Refugees who have established lives with homes and families in the UK – including Ukrainians – will still face having to return if their home countries become safe, the home secretary has said.
Shabana Mahmood said the asylum system was “out of control and putting huge pressure on communities” as she announced plans to end the permanent status of refugees, who would need to reapply to remain in Britain every two and a half years.
Continue reading...Home secretary to set out sweeping plans to deter people from coming to the UK and make deportations easier
The home secretary is due to announce sweeping changes next week aimed at making the UK less attractive for migrants and modelled on the Danish system.
Shabana Mahmood is expected to set out plans to deter migrants from coming to the UK and make it easier to deport those who do, in a statement to MPs on Monday.
Continue reading...Denmark has slashed asylum numbers by granting only short-term status and by targeting ‘ghettoes’, which critics say has damaged the country’s values
Of all the measures introduced to deter people from seeking asylum in Denmark over the last decade, it is the impermanence of refugees’ status that is often cited as the most effective.
Before 2015, refugees in Denmark were initially allowed to stay for between five and seven years, after which their residence permits would automatically become permanent. But 10 years ago, when more than a million people arrived in Europe fleeing conflict and repression, largely from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Eritrea, the Danish government dramatically changed the rules.
Continue reading...Two fathers in Britain enlist law firm to get government to follow through on evacuation promises made months ago
The British government is facing legal action over its lack of action to help evacuate families in Gaza after committing to do so months ago.
Two families have argued that the government’s failure to act is unlawful and in breach of their family’s human rights. They are among a number of separated families to which the government has failed to keep its evacuation promise, according to the law firm Leigh Day, which is representing them.
Continue reading...