UK prime minister says he sees ‘eye-to-eye’ with his Italian counterpart on issue of migration
Rishi Sunak has praised his “fantastic” Italian counterpart, Giorgia Meloni, as he announced the launch of a G7 coalition to tackle people-smuggling.
The prime minister, who is in Puglia in Italy for the G7 summit, said he and Meloni saw “eye-to-eye” on the issue and had spearheaded efforts to tackle it since they were elected.
Continue reading...European court also orders Budapest to pay €200m for ‘unprecedented’ breach of rules
Hungary has been ordered to pay a €200m (£169m) fine for its refusal to uphold the rights of asylum seekers in what was described as an “unprecedented” breach of EU law by the bloc’s highest court.
The European court of justice in Luxembourg also ordered Budapest to pay €1m a day until it complies with EU laws guaranteeing refugees the right to claim asylum inside Hungarian borders.
Continue reading...Sharp rise, equivalent to population of London, means nearly 120 million have been driven from their homes
The number of people forced out of their homes around the world last year was the equivalent of the population of London, according to the UN’s refugee agency.
The latest annual assessment from the United Nations high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) said a sharp rise in the number of people forcibly displaced during 2023 had brought the total to a record high of more than 117 million. Conflicts were largely to blame with many, such as those in Ukraine and Sudan, showing little sign of ending.
Continue reading...Labour leader says prime minister’s claim he would raise people’s taxes by £2,000 is ‘nonsense’
The Guardian’s visuals team has produced an interactive boundary map for the UK general election which shows you if your constituency has been altered because of boundary changes. You can check it out here:
Ed Davey has been speaking about his party’s plan to provide free personal care for adults. The Liberal Democrats leader said he wants carers to have a special, higher minimum wage.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Yvette Cooper says a Labour government would instruct new enforcement body to act over alleged exploitation of workers
Labour will launch an investigation into the treatment of migrant workers in the British social care sector if it wins the election, the party has announced, after dozens of cases of alleged exploitation were uncovered.
Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, called the allegations revealed by the Guardian “a disgrace”, accusing the government of turning a blind eye to the problem.
Continue reading...Even her toughest opponents admit she’s played it cleverly. Yet the long-term aims of Italy’s prime minister remain unclear
When she became Italy’s prime minister in October 2022, Giorgia Meloni looked like Brussels’ worst nightmare. Until then, the fiery leader of the Brothers of Italy – a party with neofascist roots – had seemed anything but EU-friendly.
For years, railing against the bloc had been Meloni’s stock in trade: the euro amounted to enslavement, the European Commission was effectively a loan shark. “Bring down this EU!” she urged the 2019 conservative CPAC conference in the US.
Continue reading...Migrants seek redress for ‘immense distress’ from deportations now thrown into chaos by election announcement
Asylum seekers detained by the Home Office and threatened with deportation to Rwanda are set to take legal action against the government after Rishi Sunak admitted that no flights will take place before the general election.
The Home Office started raiding accommodation and detaining people who arrived at routine immigration-reporting appointments on 29 April in a nationwide push codenamed Operation Vector.
Continue reading...Committee says department pressed ahead with plans without adequate understanding of what would be required
The Home Office has made “unacceptable and avoidable mistakes” in its haste to use disused barracks and a giant barge to house asylum seekers, parliament’s spending watchdog has concluded.
The public accounts committee said the department “does not have a credible plan” to send asylum seekers to Rwanda and has little to show for hundreds of millions of pounds spent so far on the policy or its accommodation plans.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Johnston Busingye formally appointed days after UK agreed Rwanda asylum deal with Paul Kagame in 2022
Rwanda’s top diplomat in the UK oversaw the use of the international justice system to target opponents of the country’s rulers around the world, the Guardian can reveal.
New details of the Rwandan government’s suppression of opposition beyond its borders add to concerns about the regime at the heart of Rishi Sunak’s asylum policy.
Continue reading...Appeal allowed Sudharsan Ithayachandran to return to UK to be with his family, but he died in Sri Lanka while awaiting visa
The family of a man who died abroad after being wrongly deported by the UK Home Office have blamed the department for causing delays that stopped him being reunited with his children.
Sudharsan Ithayachandran, 41, was deported from the UK to Sri Lanka on 24 December 2019 – his wedding anniversary – after admitting to working illegally at Tesco and using false documents.
Continue reading...Comments from former Ukip leader, who also said he will stand for parliament in the future, described as ‘outright Islamophobia’
Nigel Farage has come under fire for using his first election interview to “spout Islamophobia, hatred and divisive comments” after he said a growing number of Muslims do not share British values.
The honorary president of the Reform UK party drew heavy criticism on Sunday after claiming Rishi Sunak had allowed “more people into the country who are going to fight British values” than any UK leader before him.
Continue reading...Bills, including smoking ban for people born after 2009, unlikely to become law before 4 July vote
Rishi Sunak is now speaking at an event in Ilkeston in Derbyshire. It is in the Erewash constituency, where the Tory MP Maggie Throup had a majority of 10,606 at the last election.
He repeats the claim that a Labour government would cost every family £2,000.
Labour’s spending promises cost £16 billion per year in 2028-29, or £58.9 billion over the next four years.
But their revenue raisers would only collect £6.2 billion per year in 2028-29, or £20.4 billion over the next four years.
I don’t really think the arrangements in Scotland for the school holidays have really been anywhere near the calculations made by the prime minister …
I think it would be respectful if that was the case but it’s pretty typical of the lack of respect shown to Scotland that we’re an afterthought from the Westminster establishment and particularly the Conservative establishment.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Vice-chancellors suggest fee rise of £2,000 to £3,500 a year, but others say that is ‘politically impossible’
Vice-chancellors and former ministers are warning that the cash crisis facing universities is so serious that the next government will have to urgently raise tuition fees or increase funding to avoid bankruptcies within two years.
They said the state of university finances was more dire than revealed in last week’s report by the Office for Students, which forecast 40% of England’s universities would end this year in the red.
Continue reading...Human Rights Watch says Clementine De Montjoye’s case raises fresh questions about UK’s asylum seeker scheme
The Rwandan government has barred a senior human rights researcher from entering the country, prompting accusations that officials are seeking to dodge independent scrutiny just weeks before the UK government is due to send asylum seekers there for the first time.
Rwandan immigration authorities denied entry to Clementine de Montjoye, a senior researcher in Human Rights Watch’s Africa division, when she arrived at Kigali International Airport on 13 May.
Continue reading...Anthony Olubunmi George, 61, has been refused leave to remain despite living most of his adult life in Britain
A disabled man who has lived in the UK for 38 years has been threatened with removal from the UK by the Home Office.
Anthony Olubunmi George, 61, came to the UK at the age of 24 in 1986 from Nigeria. He has not left the UK since and has no criminal convictions. In 2019, he had two strokes, which left him with problems with speech and mobility.
Continue reading...UK and Rwanda agree deal to extend cohort of those eligible to be forcibly removed to east African country
Tens of thousands of people who have been refused asylum in the UK have been added to the group of people at risk of being forcibly removed to Rwanda, the Home Office has announced.
The UK and Rwandan governments have agreed a deal to extend the cohort of those eligible to be forcibly removed to the east African country to refused asylum seekers. Lawyers have condemned the development and said it would drive asylum seekers underground.
Continue reading...Rishi Sunak says Belfast judgment will not affect his plans and the Good Friday agreement should not be used to obstruct Westminster policy
Sunak starts with global security threats.
The dangers that threaten our country are real.
There’s an increasing number of authoritarian states like Russia, Iran, North Korea and China working together to undermine us and our values.
People are abusing our liberal democratic values of freedom of speech, the right to protest, to intimidate, threaten and assault others, to sing antisemitic chants on our streets and our university campuses, and to weaponize the evils of antisemitism or anti-Muslim hatred, in a divisive ideological attempt to set Britain against Britain.
And from gender activists hijacking children’s sex education, to cancel culture, vocal and aggressive fringe groups are trying to impose their views on the rest of us.
Continue reading...The Labour leader confirmed he would scrap the Rwanda scheme in his Dover speech, then confusingly blurred his own argument
Could Keir Starmer “Make Asylum Boring Again”? That would be the ultimate test of success for his claim that he can grip the issue that has caused Rishi Sunak more trouble than any other. Starmer’s message is that he is no less committed to securing the borders and stopping the small boats crossing the Channel, but that achieving this requires a serious plan to tackle smuggling gangs and fix the asylum system in Britain too. So how different is Labour’s plan – and would it work?
Labour’s analysis should be that making asylum work depends on blending control and compassion. The Dover speech was a political exercise in asymmetric triangulation. Robust messages about control were loudly proclaimed. More liberal ideas about a rules-based system could be found, but mostly by reading between the lines.
Starmer did confirm that Labour would scrap the Rwanda scheme. Labour had seemed to wobble in the face of premature Conservative confidence that Rwanda is already working to deter. Ironically, the biggest risk for Sunak’s deterrent argument would come if he finally gets to test it practically. Send the first flights to Rwanda this summer and further arrivals across the Channel will surely outpace any removals 10 times over.
There is a clash of principle over asylum. Labour would process the asylum claims of those who arrived without permission. The Conservatives have now passed several laws vowing they will not. Yet ministers are in denial. Whether or not up to 500 people go to Rwanda does not give the government any plan for the next 50,000 people it still claims it intends to remove. So flagship new duties on the home secretary to refuse these claims for ever have not been given legal force – as the courts would strike that out in all those cases where the government has no realistic alternative. Yet the government has ceased to process asylum cases, reversing last year’s success in clearing the historic backlog.
Starmer is right to deny the charge that Labour’s policy is an “amnesty”, since processing the backlog would see some asylum claims granted and others refused. But he confusingly blurs his own argument with a tit-for-tat labelling of government policy as a “Travelodge amnesty”.
Continue reading...Party members say visa restrictions will damage economy and lead to the closure of already-struggling universities
Universities will be plunged into greater financial distress and Britain’s economic recovery dented should ministers proceed with a new “self-defeating” clampdown on international student visas, senior Tories are warning.
Vice-chancellors believe a renewed attempt to reduce visa numbers is just weeks away after ministers ordered their immigration advisers to make an emergency assessment of how a visa designed to attract students to the UK was operating. The report is expected to land on the desk of home secretary James Cleverly next week.
Continue reading...Government sources had indicated flights would begin in July, but order shows first could happen on 24 June
Rishi Sunak’s deportation flights to Rwanda, the cornerstone of the government’s immigration policy, could begin as early as 24 June, court papers seen by the Guardian show.
Government sources had indicated that the first flights carrying asylum seekers would take off in July, but a court order released on Friday has disclosed that the government now says flights could take off in late June.
Continue reading...