In a letter to the Guardian, Uran Ferizi criticises ‘obsession’ with demonising Albanians
Albanians in Britain are paying the price in schools and workplaces of being scapegoated by rightwing media and politicians, the Albanian ambassador has said.
Uran Ferizi also criticised Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, for comments in parliament where she singled out Albanians when discussing problems with immigration.
Continue reading...Two men and two women were swept away by currents while attempting to board dinghy off French coast
A man has been arrested on suspicion of endangering life after four people died in a small boat Channel crossing on Thursday.
The man, described by prosecutors as a 27-year-old Sudanese national, was arrested by National Crime Agency investigators on Friday.
Continue reading...John Healey says navy forced Russia to abandon activity in month-long operation
In interviews this morning Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, declined to confirm reports that a Russian warship has been escorting two sanctioned Russian ships through the English channel.
Sanctioned Russian ships carry oil being sold to fund the war in Ukraine, and the UK government recently announced that the armed forces have been authorised to board these ships in British waters to stop them.
What I can tell you is that we have given permission now for action to be taken against the Russian shadow fleet. Operational decisions then have to be taken in the right way by the military.
There are indications of the way in which not just the Russian shadow fleet is operating, but also the way in which we are seeing increased Russian threats, not just to the UK, but across Europe as well.
Continue reading...At least 42 others rescued after incident in strong currents off coast of Boulogne
Two men and two women have died after a small boat sank in the Channel between France and Britain, French local authorities have said.
They died after being swept away by strong currents while trying to board a dinghy, according to François-Xavier Lauch, the prefect of Pas-de-Calais. The dinghy was described as a taxi-boat, which travels along stretches of the northern French and Belgian coasts, picking up refugees and migrants along the shore.
Continue reading...Watchdog finds allegations against City of Sanctuary UK were misleading after complaint from Tory MP
A refugee charity subjected to vicious social media attacks over a migrant welcome project in schools has been cleared of wrongdoing after watchdogs found allegations it encouraged pupils to send Valentine’s Day cards to asylum seekers were misleading and false.
City of Sanctuary UK came under fire last year after rumours spread online that under its schools programme, children were being “forced” to write heart-shaped welcome cards to adult migrants, including cards addressed to “my fiance”.
Continue reading...The Reform UK leader says he is ‘shocked’ by the remarks which were ‘over the top in every single way’
The Green party is backing resident doctors who are on strike. This morning the party issued a statement on the dispute from its co-deputy leader, Mothin Ali, saying:
Rather than shifting goalposts or arm twisting resident doctors with threats over training places, Wes Streeting needs to get serious about resolving resident doctors long term concerns over pay, training and working conditions. The government’s 10-year plan for the NHS will go nowhere if the workforce feels unappreciated, devalued and demotivated.
I think I’m going to stay out of the selection of music by different bands. We live in a free country; people are going to say things. Let’s just let people listen to the music they want to.
People should choose their music and they don’t really they need advice from John Swinney unless they want to listen to The Jam or Amy McDonald.
Well, the government should go on and take their decisions within their powers, but I’m not going to give a running commentary on music taste.
Continue reading...Concerns raised over minors placed in adult detention centres since removals began under scheme in September
More than 70 children from various conflict zones whose ages were disputed by the Home Office have been held in detention centres in the UK in preparation for forced removal to France under the government’s “one in, one out” scheme, research shows.
The one in, one out initiative means each small boat arrival can be forcibly returned to France in exchange for another person – who has not attempted the crossing – being brought to the UK legally.
Continue reading...First fatal incident this year occurred hours after £16.2m ‘stop the boats’ deal agreed between Britain and France
Two people have died and another is missing after trying to cross the Channel from France to the UK on Wednesday morning. It is the first fatal incident in the Channel this year.
The deaths occurred just hours after an interim £16.2m “stop the boats” deal was agreed between the UK and France which will be in place until May. Negotiations will continue for a longer-term deal to replace the previous three-year deal, which expired on Tuesday. According to reports, the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, is trying to secure a “payment by results” agreement to reduce small boat crossings.
Continue reading...Two-month arrangement aimed at preventing small-boat crossings comes as existing deal expires
The UK will pay France an extra £16.2m to keep police patrolling Channel beaches and prevent a surge in small-boat crossings after negotiators failed to agree a permanent deal before a midnight deadline.
The stopgap arrangement, which will last for two months, comes after French negotiators refused to agree to UK demands for further interventions and patrols to stop asylum seekers from reaching the UK via the Channel.
Continue reading...Madeleine Sumption says politicians make big claims about things they only partially control to appeal to voters
Keir Starmer’s pledge to “smash the gangs” profiting from small boat crossings has followed a pattern set by Conservative-led governments of employing “bullish rhetoric” with little evidence that it can be delivered, an expert has claimed.
Madeleine Sumption, the director of the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory, says the prime minister has repeated the mistakes of Rishi Sunak and David Cameron by making “bold claims with great certainty about things governments only partially control” .
Continue reading...Exclusive: At least four people have travelled back to the UK by lorry in the last two weeks
Asylum seekers who arrived in the UK in small boats and were forcibly returned to France under the controversial “one in, one out” deal have returned to the UK in lorries, the Guardian has learned.
When asked about the recent returnees, the Home Office said that people who came back to the UK after removal to France were detained and returned to France at the earliest opportunity. Amnesty International UK has called for “one in, one out” to be scrapped.
Continue reading...PM to face opposition leader and MPs in the House of Commons
Polanski says the government should be doing more to improve home insulation, and on the drive towards renewable energy.
And he says the government should commit to ensuring energy bills do not rise above the April-June price cap.
The government should guarantee right now that it will not allow energy bills to rise beyond the April-June price cap – instead setting aside approximately £8.4bn to prevent a rise of up to £300 per household that could be coming down the track.
No, it’s not cheap. But the alternative is unacceptable: if the price cap rises, we will see interest rate rises. Mortgage rates up. Bond yields up. And inflation up – and we will be back into the doom loop that has done untold damage to our economy and caused misery for households across the UK for years now.
There are ways to pay. Instead of scrapping the windfall tax on energy companies, as this government is planning to do, we should be strengthening it instead. We need a real, loophole-free windfall tax with no exemptions for reinvesting in fossil fuels. A robust tax that claws back every single pound of reckless profiteering from this crisis and repurposes it immediately to protect every home in the country. And while taxing extreme wealth in the ways we need to will take time to implement, there are levers the government could pull right now – like equalising capital gains tax with income tax and reforming the base, to raise £12bn.
It’s time for the government to act decisively, eliminate the uncertainty that is plaguing people and the markets and insulate us from some of the worst economic effects of Trump’s war.
This was not a war of self-defence, there was no imminent threat. Negotiations were ongoing. It was, as the BBC’s international editor said, a war of choice.
People across the Middle East are terrified of what Trump and Netanyanhu’s war will mean for them and their loved ones. And the repercussions are echoing across the world as instability spreads and oil prices spike.
People are already struggling so hard just to make ends meet. People feel like they’re running every day just to stay in the same place. The idea that yet again – for the second time in just a few years – that we are going to have to deal with another enormous spike in the cost of the basics is unacceptable.
It’s unacceptable because we didn’t need to be here. It’s unforgivable that just four years after we last saw an energy price shock, that one triggered by Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, far too little has been done to protect this country, its people, and its economy – from the impact of yet another energy price shock.
Continue reading...Greater Manchester mayor adds to Rayner’s criticism of planned immigration changes, which she has called ‘un-British’
Andy Burnham has backed stark criticism of the direction of Keir Starmer’s government by Angela Rayner after she said the very survival of the Labour party was at stake.
Rayner, the former deputy prime minister and an influential backbencher, used a speech on Tuesday night to warn that the prime minister “cannot go through the motions” in the face of declining support.
Continue reading...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...