Lords also press ministers to allow independent Rwanda monitoring as deportation bill returns to Commons
Rishi Sunak’s government is considering concessions on the Rwanda deportation bill to allow exemptions for Afghans who served alongside UK forces, parliamentary sources say.
Ministers are also being pressed to give ground to an amendment to the legislation so that the east African country could be ruled unsafe by a monitoring committee.
Continue reading...Legislation to return to the Commons with changes that would ensure conformity with UK and other law and protect claimants
The Rwanda deportation bill has been delayed for at least one more day after the House of Lords voted for amendments that would ensure that it adheres to international and key domestic laws.
The plan to spend £541m to send 300 people seeking asylum to east Africa was sent back to the House of Commons after peers voted several times to add protections for claimants to the bill.
Continue reading...Rishi Sunak’s authority suffers blow as several Conservatives vote against bill, which clears first Commons hurdle with 383 votes to 67
At 12.30pm a transport minister will respond to an urgent question in the Commons tabled by Labour on job losses in the rail industry. That means the debate on the smoking ban will will not start until about 1.15pm.
Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, is one of the Britons speaking at the National Conservatism conference in Brussels starting today. The conference, which features hardline rightwingers from around the world committed to the NatCons’ ‘faith, flag and family’ brand of conservatism, is going ahead despite two venues refusing to host them at relatively short notice.
The current UK government doesn’t have the political will to take on the ECHR and hasn’t laid the ground work for doing so.
And so it’s no surprise that recent noises in this direction are easily dismissed as inauthentic.
Any attempt to include a plan for ECHR withdrawal in a losing Conservative election manifesto risks setting the cause back a generation.
Continue reading...British PM says he will speak to Netanyahu to express solidarity and discuss how further escalation can be avoided
UK general election opinion poll tracker: Labour leading as election looms
David Cameron ruled out trying to become PM again in an interview this morning. (See 9.30am.) But Liz Truss has not done so. In an interview with LBC’s Iain Dale, being broadcast tonight, she did not entirely dismiss the possibility. This is from LBC’s Henry Riley.
Truss is giving interviews to publicise her memoir which is out this week. According to extracts sent out in advance, she also confirmed in her LBC interview that she wanted to see Donald Trump win the US presidential election. She said:
I don’t think [Joe] Biden has been particularly supportive to the United Kingdom. I think he’s often on the side of the EU. And I certainly think I would like to see a new president in the White House …
The thing I would say about Donald Trump is, because I served as secretary of state under both Trump and Biden, and Trump’s policies were actually very effective. If you look at his economic policies, and I met his regulatory czar, I travelled around the United States looking at what he’d done. He cut regulation, he cut taxes, he liberated the US energy supply. And this is why the US has had significantly higher economic growth than Britain.
Continue reading...Families of those who helped British forces could be deported from Pakistan despite promise to resettle them in UK
Afghan families who helped UK forces and then fled to neighbouring Pakistan are in danger of being deported back to the Taliban due to Home Office delays in bringing them to the UK.
In the chaotic evacuation period in the Afghan capital, Kabul, in August 2021 some family members eligible for resettlement in the UK became separated from the rest of their families. Some boarded flights while others were unable to due to crushes at the airport and instead fled over the border to Pakistan.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Data reveals 239% rise among those evicted from assigned accommodation, including hotels, in two years
There has been a 239% increase in homelessness among asylum seekers evicted from Home Office accommodation including hotels in two years, according to a report.
Data analysed by the Refugee Council found that 12,630 households in England faced homelessness after eviction from asylum accommodation in the two years to the end of September 2023.
Continue reading...Meeting to discuss PM’s key policy overshadowed by reports of lack of housing for deportees or airline to remove them from UK
Rishi Sunak has welcomed the Rwandan president to Downing Street amid signs that ministers are struggling to find an airline or housing in Kigali to carry out their flagship deportation plan.
The meeting on Tuesday was overshadowed by the former home secretary Suella Braverman’s criticism of fallen expectations over the policy, which aims to forcibly send people seeking asylum 4,000 miles to central Africa.
Continue reading...HM chief inspector of prisons says detainees held unnecessarily despite volunteering for fast-track deportation
Albanians volunteering to be repatriated under a fast-track deportation deal are being detained unnecessarily for several weeks at taxpayers’ expense, the prisons watchdog has found.
HM chief inspector of prisons also found that staff did not know about the vulnerabilities of detainees held in deportation centres before being removed to Tirana, and some were not being given privacy while using the lavatory.
Continue reading...Trhas Tesfay, who fled war in Ethiopia, says she suffers hunger headaches as she cannot eat Home Office hotel meals
One of Ethiopia’s elite female cyclists will be pedalling at the front of one of London’s biggest bike races next month while living in an asylum seeker hotel on less than £10 a week.
Trhas Teklehaimanot Tesfay, 22, rode a bicycle for the first time when she was 13 years old. She has achieved success in a range of competitions such as the African Continental Championships and the national championships of Ethiopia.
Continue reading...Prime minister says he held on to his US residency until 2021 only because he had not got around to revoking it
Rishi Sunak has insisted he does not want to move to the US and that he kept his green card for years only because returning it was “not something I got round to”.
The prime minister said he had “acted in accordance with all the rules” when in possession of a US green card, which he gave up only in 2021, while he was chancellor.
Continue reading...Charities and law firms sign letter to home secretary saying existing immigration routes are not working
A letter signed by almost 60 charities, law firms and organisations will be sent to the home secretary calling for the creation of a Ukraine-style visa scheme for Palestinians trapped in Gaza who have family in the UK.
The letter, signed by the Refugee Council, Care4Calais and the Helen Bamber Foundation, says “existing immigration routes are insufficient and not working” and describes how a Gaza family scheme would “enable Palestinians in Gaza to reunite with their immediate and extended family members in the UK”.
Continue reading...Five years after payment scheme launched, a former soldier says delays mean plan should be run independently
A former soldier who was a victim of the Windrush scandal has said he fears the government is “waiting for us to die off” before it pays compensation.
Conroy Downie, 67, and his daughter Katie Wilson-Downie have helped advise thousands of people affected by the Windrush scandal and have called for the compensation scheme to be run independently instead of by the Home Office.
Continue reading...Prof Sir John Curtice, the psephologist and lead election analyst for the BBC, said the chances of a Tory revival were small
In the House of Lords peers have just started debating the second reading of the leasehold and freehold reform bill. The bill has already passed through the Commons.
Normally, at this stage of the process, the content of a government bill is all but finalised. But, as No 10 admitted on Monday, the government has still not decided how far it will go in terms of cutting ground rents for existing leaseholders.
Continue reading...Robert Halfon quits as skills, apprenticeships and higher education minister as James Heappey confirms decision to step down
In interviews this morning Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, admitted that special educational needs provision was in crisis, Ben Quinn reports.
Universities in England could be told to terminate their arrangements with foreign countries if freedom of speech and academic freedom is undermined, the government’s free speech tsar has said. As PA Media reports, Prof Arif Ahmed, director for freedom of speech and academic freedom at the Office for Students (OfS), said many universities and colleges in England have “international arrangements” – including admitting overseas students on scholarships and hosting institutes partly funded by foreign governments. PA says:
The higher education regulator launched a consultation on guidance about freedom of speech, ahead of universities, colleges and student unions taking on new free speech duties.
The guidance includes examples to illustrate what higher education institutions may have to do to fulfil their new duties – due to come into effect in August – to secure freedom of speech within the law.
University A accepts international students on visiting scholarships funded by the government of country B. Scholars must accept the principles of the ruling party of country B, and direction from country B’s government via consular staff. Depending on the circumstances, these arrangements may undermine free speech and academic freedom at University A. If so, that university is likely to have to terminate or amend the scholarship agreement.
If it means that there are people who are employed by an institute who are preventing legitimate protests or shutting down lecturers from covering certain kinds of content regarding that country for instance, or that country’s foreign policy … If that behaviour amounts to a restriction of freedom of speech within the law, and someone brings a complaint to us, then we may find that the complaint is justified and then we make recommendations …
If there are problems, universities will have to do everything they can to act compatibly with their freedom-of-speech duties. Insofar as that means a rethinking of their relationship with other countries, obviously that’s something that would be a good idea for them to start thinking about now.
Continue reading...Exclusive: newly obtained footage and leaked documents show how a ‘mass casualty event’ could arise from aggressive tactics employed by border forces
French police funded by the UK government have endangered the lives of vulnerable migrants by intercepting small boats in the Channel, using tactics that search and rescue experts say could cause a “mass casualty event”.
Shocking new evidence obtained by the Observer, Lighthouse Reports, Le Monde and Der Spiegel reveals for the first time that the French maritime police have tried physically to force small boats to turn around – manoeuvres known as “pullbacks” – in an attempt to prevent them reaching British shores.
Continue reading...Home secretary chartered a private jet to make the one-day round trip to Kigali in December
James Cleverly, the home secretary, spent £165,561 chartering a private jet for a one-day round trip to Rwanda to sign Rishi Sunak’s deportation deal in Kigali.
The trip took place on 4 December to sign the new deal with the east African state after the supreme court’s finding that Rwanda was an “unsafe country”.
Continue reading...Lords back amendments saying bill must comply with international law, on classifying Rwanda as a safe country and independent monitoring
Yesterday I covered quite a lot of comment on the Rachel Reeves’ Mais lecture based on a three-page press release sent out by Labour with advance extracts. The full speech runs to 8,000 words and it is certainly worth a read. Here is some commentary published after the full text was made public.
Paul Mason, the former economics journalist who is now an active Labour supporter, says in a blog for the Spectator that Reeves is proposing an approach that should make it easier for the government to justify capital investment. He explains:
Reeves effectively offered markets a trade-off. She set out the same broad fiscal rule as the government: debt falling at the end of five years and a deficit moving towards primary balance. She will make it law that any fiscal decision by government will be subject to an independent forecast of its effects by the OBR. But, she said: “I will also ask the OBR to report on the long-term impact of capital spending decisions. And as Chancellor I will report on wider measures of public sector assets and liabilities at fiscal events, showing how the health of the public balance sheet is bolstered by good investment decisions.”
Why is this so big? Because the OBR does not currently model the ‘long-term impact of capital spending decisions’. It believes that £1 billion of new capital investment produces £1 billion of growth in the first year, tapering to nothing by year five. Furthermore, since 2019 it has repeatedly expressed scepticism that a sustained programme of public investment can produce a permanent uplift in the UK’s output potential.
George Eaton at the New Statesman says the Reeves speech contained Reeves’ “most explicit repudiation yet of the model pursued by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s governments”. He says:
In her 8,000-word Mais Lecture, delivered last night at City University, the shadow chancellor offered her most explicit repudiation yet of the model pursued by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s governments. Though she praised New Labour’s record on public service investment and poverty reduction, Reeves warned that the project failed to recognise that “globalisation and new technologies could widen as well as diminish inequality, disempower people as much as liberate them, displace as well as create good work”.
She added that the labour market “remained characterised by too much insecurity” and that “key weaknesses on productivity and regional inequality” persisted. This is not merely an abstract critique – it leads Reeves and Keir Starmer to embrace radically different economic prescriptions.
Mais lecture is the most intellectually wide-ranging speech Rachel Reeves has given. Worth reading for takes on Lawson, austerity, New Labour, link between dynamism & worker-security, and how geo-politics changes our national growth story (& more besides)
Continue reading...Report also discloses approval was rushed through without developing safety plans or consulting councils
Rishi Sunak’s plan to save public money by moving asylum seekers out of hotels is in tatters after Whitehall’s spending watchdog disclosed that the government’s alternative sites will cost millions of pounds more.
The National Audit Office said attempts to place people seeking refuge in a barge, two former RAF bases and former student accommodation will cost £1.2bn – £46m more than keeping them in hotels.
The Home Office is considering scaling back the number of people at Wethersfield – which is in the constituency of the home secretary, James Cleverly – after reports of self-harm and violence among asylum seekers.
Officials secured large sites to house people before talking to local councils and MPs and used emergency planning regulations to ensure plans were rushed through.
The department pursued the programme despite “repeated” assessments that it “could not be delivered as planned”.
Reviews by the Infrastructure and Projects Authority rated the Home Office’s work on large-scale accommodation as “red”, meaning “successful delivery of the programme to time, cost and quality appears to be unachievable”.
The Home Office also rated its own performance as “red” as it recognised the challenges of the work, repeatedly revising accommodation targets “downwards”.
The department “prioritised awarding contracts quickly, and modifying existing contracts over fully-competitive tenders”, with “overly-ambitious accommodation timetables” leading to “increased procurement risks”.
Continue reading...Former defence secretary tells colleagues there is no alternative to Rishi Sunak and to ‘get on with’ preparing for an election. This live blog is closed
Ofcom has ruled today that GB News broke impartiality rules on five occasions by using Tory MPs as news presenters.
But it has not imposed sanctions on the broadaster. It says these count as first offence, and that there may be sanctions if it happens again.
Under the Broadcasting Code, news, in whatever form, must be presented with due impartiality. Additionally, a politician cannot be a newsreader, news interviewer or news reporter unless, exceptionally, there is editorial justification.
In line with the right to freedom of expression, broadcasters have editorial freedom to offer audiences a wide range of programme formats, including using politicians to present current affairs or other non-news programmes. Politicians may also appear in broadcast news content as an interviewee or any other type of guest.
These are the first breaches of Rules 5.1 and 5.3 recorded against GB News. Since opening these investigations, there has only been one further programme which has raised issues warranting investigation under these rules. We are clear, however, that GB News is put on notice that any repeated breaches of Rules 5.1 and 5.3 may result in the imposition of a statutory sanction.
Continue reading...Scammers claim they can help people go to Rwanda in exchange for £3,000 government payment
The Home Office has condemned scammers who “cruelly attempt” to trick people by pretending they can help them go to Rwanda in exchange for a £3,000 government payment.
The reported scam is the latest blow to government plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Continue reading...