Category Archives: Immigration and asylum

Starmer says welfare concessions are ‘common sense’ but dodges funding question – UK politics live

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No 10 has offered significant concessions to the rebels, estimated to cost around £3bn a year, amid fears over Tuesday’s vote

Stephen Kinnock, the care minister, was the government voice on the airwaves this morning. Here are the main points he made about the welfare bill U-turn.

Kinnock rejected claims that the U-turn was a sign of weakness. When it was put to him on the Today programme that this move, coming after the U-turns on winter fuel payments and a national inquiry into grooming gangs, showed that if Keir Starmer was pushed, he would give in, Kinnock replied:

I think if you talk to people out there in the country, they respond very positively to politicians listening, engaging, recognising that you don’t get everything right from day one every time, and making the adjustments and the changes that are needed.

And this prime minister will always put the country first. He puts country before party, and he does the right thing for the country.

He defended having a “staggered” approach to changing benefit rules. Asked about the Tory claim that the government was creating a “two-tier benefits system” (see 8.30am), he replied:

Whenever you bring forward change to a complex system, you always have to decide between do you make the change for everybody that’s in that system, in one big move, or do you do it in a more staggered way? What’s clear from the announcement today is that it’s going to be a more staggered process.

He declined to say how much the U-turn would cost. He told Times Radio:

The full details around what we are laying out, what I’ve summarised really today, is going to be laid out in parliament, and then the chancellor will set out the budget in the autumn the whole of the fiscal position and this will be an important part of that.

He said he was now confident that the UC and Pip bill will pass its second reading on Tuesday.

All of the MPs I’ve spoken to who signed the reasoned amendment – MPs from across the party, not just on the left – are sticking to their position because we understand that we are answerable to our constituents.

If the government doesn’t pull the bill, doesn’t consult properly with disabled people and come back to MPs with a serious proposal that protects the dignity of disabled people, I will vote against and I will be far from the only one.

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Keir Starmer says he ‘deeply regrets’ island of strangers speech

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Immigration speech was criticised for echoing Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ rhetoric

Keir Starmer has said he “deeply regrets” a speech in which he described the UK as being in danger of becoming an island of strangers without tough curbs on immigration.

The prime minister made the remarks in an interview with the Observer, saying he should have read the speech more carefully and “held it up to the light a bit more”.

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Students in England now graduate with average debt of £53,000, data shows

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Student Loans Company figures show 10% jump in a year as individuals increase borrowing to meet cost of living

Students in England are finishing their degrees with government loans averaging £53,000, a jump of 10% in a year, as they increase their borrowing to meet the rising cost of living.

The Student Loans Company (SLC) has released figures showing individual loan balances were £5,000 higher in 2024-25 than a year earlier, when the average in England was £48,270.

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Remove decisions on lone child asylum seekers from Home Office, report says

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Call for root-and-branch reform of treatment of children, many of whom are wrongly classified as adults

Decisions relating to lone child asylum seekers should be removed from Home Office officials because of fundamental problems with the way they treat this vulnerable group, a report has found.

The report calls for root-and-branch reform of the treatment of thousands of children who have fled persecution in their home countries and made hazardous journeys in search of safety, often crossing the Channel in a dinghy or concealing themselves in the back of a lorry.

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MPs back bill to end criminal penalties for abortion in key vote – as it happened

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Parliament votes on biggest shake-up to reproductive rights in England and Wales in 60 years

Casey says in the past government has talked relentlessly about the need for better data sharing between departments.

But she says there is a need to consider making this mandatory.

I was there when the tragedy of Soham happened. We knew at that point that if we had had better data sharing there’s a possibility that we might have saved those girls’ lives. There’s certaintly an absolute clarity that intelligence would have been much faster in either avoiding it or or actually finding that dreadful human being earlier.

And we’ve known that forever onwards. And so I think there is also an issue that the Home Office can’t drag their feet on, looking at police intelligence systems, given we’ve living in the 21st century. Probably everbody in this room can connect within seconds. Yet we had Befordshire police finding a young boy that was being, in my mind trafficked to London. But the data intelligence system did not make it easy for them to find that he was in Deptford and being circled and dealt with by predators.

I feel very strongly on issues that are as searing as people’s race, when we know the prejudice and racism that people of colour experience in this country, to not get how you treat that data right is a different level of public irresponsibility.

Sorry, to put it so bluntly, I didn’t put it that bluntly yesterday, but I think it’s particularly important if you are collecting those sorts of issues to get them 100% right.

When we asked the good people of Greater Manchester Police to help us look at the data we also collected – I think it’s in the report – what was happening with child abuse more generally, and of course … if you look at the data on child sexual exploitation, suspects and offenders, it’s disproportionately Asian heritage. If you look at the data for child abuse, it is not disproportionate, and it is white men.

So again, just note to everybody, really outside here rather than in here. Let’s just keep calm here about how you interrogate data and what you draw from it.

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France plans to begin intercepting small boats at sea, says UK Home Office

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Officials have agreed to begin offshore interceptions, it is claimed, in change of policy that NGOs say will risk lives

The French government plans to begin intercepting small boats carrying asylum seekers even if they are already at sea, a Home Office source has said.

In a move that NGOs claim will endanger lives, it was claimed that French officials agreed this week to draw up plans to begin intervening in waters close to beaches and inland canals.

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Home Office accused of ‘racist crackdown’ on Nigerians after denial of visit visa

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Officials refused entry to man who runs top security firm in Nigeria and his family to spend holiday with his sister

The Home Office has been accused of a “racist crackdown on Nigerians” after refusing a visa to a man who runs one of the west African country’s top security firms for a holiday to see his family.

Samuel Onyekachi Ibeawuchi runs BKay Security Ltd, which provides close protection for high-profile people in Nigeria and abroad. He and his wife, a successful businesswoman, had applied to come to the UK with their 18-month-old child for three weeks in the summer so they could spend time with his sister, Hope Ibeawuchi-Beales, and her husband, Nick Beales, who is head of campaigning at Ramfel, which supports vulnerable migrants.

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Yvette Cooper quizzed over immigration and prisons crisis – UK politics live

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Home secretary appears to accept early release proposals will put more pressure on police as she is questioned at select committee

Defence sources believe that Britain will be forced to sign up to a target of lifting defence spending to 3.5% of GDP by 2035 at this month’s Nato summit after a campaign by the alliance’s secretary general to keep Donald Trump onboard, Dan Sabbagh reports.

Later today the data (use and access) bill will return to the Commons from the Lords in the third round of “ping pong” between the two houses. It is not unusual for “ping pong” to go on for a round or two, as bills which are almost ready for royal assent shuttle between the elected and unelected chamber while they try to resolve matters of dispute. But, in this case, the Lords are digging in a bit more than usual.

The government has been accused of “supporting thieves”, as it suffered a further heavy defeat at the hands of peers pressing their demand for steps to safeguard the creative industries against artificial intelligence.

The fourth and latest setback for the Labour frontbench over the issue in the House of Lords was inflicted despite pleas by a minister for the upper chamber to end its prolonged stand-off over the data (use and access) bill.

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Manston staff asked to work overtime amid record number of small boat arrivals

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More than 1,100 migrants arrived on Saturday, the highest number on a single day so far this year

Staff at the Manston migrant processing centre in Kent have been asked to work overtime to deal with the record number of small boat arrivals, the Guardian has learned.

The 11th-hour appeal to staff on Saturday evening to work was circulated by Management And Training Corporation (MTC), one of the Home Office’s contractors on the site near Ramsgate, due to concerns about not having enough staff on duty.

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Record number of Americans are seeking residency in UK, according to Home Office

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Nearly 2,000 applications for British citizenship submitted since since January, when Donald Trump took office

During the 12 months leading up to March, more than 6,000 US citizens have applied to either become British subjects or to live and work in the country indefinitely – the highest number since comparable records began in 2004, according to data released on Thursday by the UK’s Home Office.

Over the period, 6,618 Americans applied for British citizenship – with more than 1,900 of the applications received between January and March, most of which has been during the beginning of Donald Trump’s second US presidency.

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Chemical castration can lead to 60% fewer crimes by sex offenders, says justice secretary – UK politics live

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Shabana Mahmood is making a statement to MPs now about the findings of the sentencing review

The Conservatives are taking the credit for the near-50% fall in net migration. They say it is the changes to visa rules that they introduced that brought the numbers down.

This is from Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary.

Net migration has halved - dropped by 430,000 - in 2024 compared to 2023

This is thanks to measures put in place by the last Conservative Government

This drop is because of the visa rule changes that I put in place.

Labour will try to claim credit for these figures but they criticised me at the time, and have failed to fully implement the changes.

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Net migration to UK down by half in 2024 compared with year before

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Office for National Statistics estimate shows fall from 860,000 in 2023 to 431,000 last year

Net migration to the UK has nearly halved over the year to 431,000, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has said, publishing figures that will bring some relief to Keir Starmer.

The drop from 860,000 in the year to December 2024 follows a series of policies implemented by the last Conservative government that have been continued by the present Labour government.

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‘It feels like we never left’: resentment builds in one of UK’s firmest Brexit-backing areas

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Keir Starmer says Britons have moved on but many in Thurrock think they were lied to in debate about leaving EU

When Keir Starmer was asked last week whether he thought Britons had finally moved on from the issue of Brexit, his answer was a definitive yes.

It’s not difficult to see why the prime minister would hope to settle the question, before a week in which he hopes to reset the UK’s relationship with the EU, clearing a way for easier access to a marketplace that could help increase the economic growth he badly needs.

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UK asking other countries to host ‘return hubs’ for refused asylum seekers, Starmer confirms – UK politics live

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PM on trip to announce increased cooperation against people smugglers alongside Albania’s prime minister, Edi Rama

All Commons Speakers, at least for the past 30 years, have complained about the government making major announcements to the media first, and not to parliament first. But rarely have any of them sounded quite as furious about this as Lindsay Hoyle, who this morning delivered an extended reprimand to the government about this at the start of an urgent question.

The UQ was about plans to limit the use of prison recall – something announced by the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, at a press conference yesterday, while the Commons was still sitting. After pointing this out, and reminding MPs that details of the immigration white paper were given to the media extensively, long before the ministerial statement about it was delivered in the Commons on Monday, Hoyle went on to imply that, as well as regularly breaking the ministerial code, ministers were also guilty of hypocrisy. He said:

I note that those who now occupy senior ministerial roles were not slow to complain when the previous government made major policy announcements outside this house.

I will continue to uphold and defend the rights of this house, the rights of backbenchers, to be here, and hear it first, the most important announcements of government policy, and the right of honourable members to question ministers on those announcements in person.

When Parliament is in session, the most important announcements of government policy should be made in the first instance in Parliament.

If the government is not going to take the ministerial code seriously, who will?

I’ve got to say, I don’t like this. I believe I am here to represent all backbenchers and backbenchers have the right to ask questions. I’m not interested in Sky News or the BBC or political programmes. I’m here to defend all of you. I will continue to defend. Please do not take MPs for granted. It is not acceptable.

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Diplomat makes history as first refugee to become a UK high commissioner

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Kanbar Hossein-Bor, who says his mother once feared he ‘might not be British enough’, lands Fiji post

“In her mind this was a bastion of the establishment, she was a little worried of rejection,” Kanbar Hossein-Bor said of his mother’s reaction, two decades ago, to the news he was applying to work in the UK Foreign Office.

This week, the fear that “he might not be British enough” was proved wrong, when Hossein-Bor was appointed as the UK’s high commissioner to Fiji – the first refugee to achieve the rank.

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Farage says Starmer ‘learning a great deal from Reform’ as PM defends immigration speech – UK politics live

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Reform leader asks PM to declare a national emergency at the borders

Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question at PMQs, which starts at noon.

In March Reform UK reported Rupert Lowe (at the time one of their five MPs) to the police, claiming he had threatened the party chair, Zia Yusuf, with violence. Reform UK announced the news shortly after Lowe gave a newspaper interview criticising Nigel Farage, the party leader,

Following a thorough and detailed review of the evidence in relation to an allegation of threats, we have decided that no criminal charges should be brought against a sitting MP.

Having considered a number of witness statements, we have concluded that there is insufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction.

If Farage were ever to control the vast power of the British state, I believe he would not hesitate to do to his adversaries what they have tried to do to me. With real power, I fear he would wield that immense responsibility to crush dissent - as he has done time and again over the years …

Please listen when I say this: For the good of our country, Nigel Farage must never be prime minister.

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Starmer ‘completely rejects’ suggestion he echoed Enoch Powell in immigration speech, No 10 says – as it happened

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David Lammy, the foreign secretary, has just started taking questions in the Commons. In response to the first question, Hamish Falconer, minister for the Middle East, said the UK has joined calls for an urgent meeting of the UN security council this afternoon to discuss the situation in Gaza.

After Foreign Office questions, Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, is asking an urgent question about the Mansion House accord – a deal with pension companies intended to get them to invest more in UK firms.

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Starmer faces opposition of Labour MPs and employers over immigration shift

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Some backbenchers already thought PM had moved too far right on issue but aides say aim is to make system ‘fairer’

“We must never accept the Tory or media narrative that often scapegoats and demonises migrants,” Keir Starmer wrote in 2020. “Problems of low pay, housing and public services are not caused by migrants – they are caused by a failed economic model.”

Much has changed since Starmer was running to be leader of the Labour party – not least, that as prime minister he now has a broader electorate to keep on side.

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Starmer defends plans to curb net migration after backlash from MPs

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Prime minister’s ‘island of strangers’ speech was likened to rhetoric of Enoch Powell

Keir Starmer has defended his plans to curb net migration after an angry backlash from MPs, businesses and industry to a speech in which he said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without tough new policies.

The rhetoric was likened by some critics to the language of Enoch Powell, and the prime minister was accused of pandering to the populist right by insisting he intended to “take back control of our borders” and end a “squalid chapter” of rising inward migration.

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