Justin Welby proposes amendments to ‘morally unacceptable’ illegal migration bill

Archbishop of Canterbury calls on ministers to implement strategies on human trafficking and the refugee crisis

The archbishop of Canterbury has proposed two amendments to the government’s flagship illegal migration bill that he had earlier deemed “morally unacceptable”.

With the controversial plans to enter the committee stage in the House of Lords on Wednesday, Justin Welby called on ministers to implement 10-year strategies for tackling human trafficking and for an international collaboration to solving the refugee crises.

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Chelsea flower show garden built with asylum seekers brings ‘message of hope’

Choose Love garden uses materials found in refugee camps and plants that grow on migration routes

A centrepiece garden at this year’s Chelsea flower show has been built with the help of a team of asylum seekers with a design that recreates Europe’s migration routes and uses materials found in refugee camps.

The Choose Love garden, named after a charity working with displaced people, uses the sustainable “superadobe” building technique found in camp architecture.

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UN denied access to Rohingya refugee camps after Cyclone Mocha

UNHCR says Myanmar government has refused to allow it to distribute health supplies in Sittwe, where an estimated 90% of Rohingya homes have been destroyed

UN staff say they have been denied access to help thousands of Rohingya living in displacement camps in Myanmar who are in urgent need of food, medicine and shelter in the aftermath of Cyclone Mocha, which struck the west of the country on Sunday.

People living in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state, said they estimated that about 90% of homes of Rohingya people had been destroyed and more than 100 people killed when winds of more than 150 miles an hour hit the region. However, the refugee agency UNHCR said the Myanmar government has refused access to the camps in Sittwe, home to about 100,000 people. “As yet, UNHCR has not been granted access to carry out needs assessments.”

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UK will end up like Russia if it ignores European court of human rights obligations, Sunak told – as it happened

President of Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly says UK faces exclusion if it choses to ignore its obligations. This live blog is now closed

Today the BBC is reporting that Javad Marandi, a businessman whose foreign companies were part of a global money laundering investigation, is a major donor to the Conservative party. Marandi, who strongly denies wrongdoing and who is not subject to criminal sanctions, has been named after losing a legal battle with the BBC to protect his anonymity.

There will be an urgent question on the case at 12.30pm, tabled by the SNP MP Alison Thewliss. According to the Commons authorities, she has tabled a question asking a Home Office minister to make a statement “on the implications of the National Crime Agency’s investigation into Mr Javad Marandi”.

Rishi Sunak’s food summit is little more than a stunt to hide years of inaction from his government.

The Tories’ shambolic handling of food security has resulted in huge vegetable price increases across the country.

No ifs, no buts, supermarkets must cut these basic prices now.

Rishi Sunak needs to grow a spine and stand up for struggling families and pensioners by demanding supermarkets slash prices. They have no excuses, wholesale prices are down, yet food prices are up, with their profits soaring.

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Recreate UK’s Homes for Ukraine scheme for Sudan refugees, urges one of plan’s architects

Exclusive: Krish Kandiah wants same help given to Ukrainians offered to Sudanese families fleeing civil war

One of the architects of Britain’s Homes for Ukraine scheme is calling on the government to replicate the programme for refugees from Sudan.

Dr Krish Kandiah, the director of the Sanctuary Foundation, which was instrumental in matching many British hosts with Ukrainian refugees, said he wanted the country to show the “same generosity of spirit” to those fleeing war in Sudan as it did to Ukrainians.

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Cyclone Mocha threatens world’s largest refugee camp on Myanmar-Bangladesh border

Predicted to make landfall on Sunday, preparations are under way for a partial evacuation of the camp in Cox’s Bazar

Tropical cyclone Mocha intensified to become “very dangerous”, the World Meteorological Organisation has said, warning of violent winds, floods and possible landslides in Bangladesh which could hit the world’s biggest refugee camp in Cox’s bazar.

Cyclone Mocha is predicted to make landfall on Sunday near the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, according to India’s meteorological office, packing winds of up to 175km/h (108mph).

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Greek PM hails ‘tough but fair’ migration policy on election trail

Kyriakos Mitsotakis says on visit to Lesbos he has kept his promise to protect land and sea borders

Less than 10 days before Greeks go to the polls, the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has sought to emphasise the impact of his centre-right government’s “tough but fair” migration policy.

In a campaign trip to Lesbos, the Aegean island bearing the brunt of Europe-bound migratory flows, the leader claimed he had kept his promise to protect land and sea borders, with the arrival of asylum seekers radically reduced.

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Archbishop of Canterbury’s attack on illegal migration bill ‘wrong on both counts’, says minister – as it happened

Justin Welby says bill is ‘morally unacceptable’ and rules on protection of refugees are not ‘inconvenient obstructions’. This live blog is closed

In the House of Lords peers are just starting to debate the second reading of the illegal migration bill.

Simon Murray, aka Lord Murray of Blidworth, is opening the debate. He is a lawyer who was made a Home Office minister, and a peer, when Liz Truss was PM.

We now face a perfect storm of factors driving more people into homelessness while giving us fewer good options to help them when they do. These factors include soaring private rents (above the benefit cap), private landlords leaving the sector, a national shortage of affordable housing, and a backlog of court cases after Covid-relating housing support was removed. At the same time, we have a cost-of-living crisis which is reducing real-term incomes and putting further strain on relationships.

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Archbishop of Canterbury to criticise small boats bill in House of Lords

Justin Welby to join peers condemning measures that seek to criminalise people seeking refuge in UK

The archbishop of Canterbury will make a rare intervention in the House of Lords to join dozens of peers condemning the government’s flagship asylum bill.

Justin Welby will argue against measures championed by Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman that seek to criminalise people seeking refuge in the UK if they arrive on small boats.

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Germany’s regional leaders demand more financial support for refugees

Leaders of country’s 16 states will call on Chancellor Scholz to increase daily rate for feeding, housing and schooling asylum seekers

German lawmakers are at loggerheads over how to manage the number of refugees coming into the country, with regional leaders calling on the government to provide more financial support.

On Wednesday, the leaders of Germany’s 16 states will meet Olaf Scholz, the chancellor, in Berlin, and call on him to ensure that the federal government takes on more responsibility for immigration, including increasing the daily rate allocated to cover the costs of individuals.

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Lone child refugees stranded in Sudan may ‘risk travelling to UK on small boats’

Charities say British government not doing enough to facilitate family reunions through available safe and legal route

Lone child refugees stranded in Sudan could be forced to travel to the UK in small boats because British ministers are not helping those entitled to family reunion to escape the fighting, charities have warned.

Asylum seekers granted refugee status in the UK are able to apply to bring their spouse, children or younger siblings – one of the few safe and legal routes open to refugees.

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Home Office accused of being ‘unashamedly racist’ towards Sudanese

Experts believe the UK has adopted a segregated immigration policy which favours those fleeing Ukraine

The Home Office has been accused of operating an “unashamedly racist” refugee system after refusing to offer people fleeing fighting in Sudan a safe and legal route to the UK, in stark contrast to the schemes offered to those escaping the war in Ukraine.

With the final evacuation flight from Khartoum to the UK having left last week, a lack of options from the UK government has crystallised concern that it has adopted a segregated immigration policy. No safe and legal routes have been made available to help Sudanese refugees flee and there is no sign of an announcement outlining a new scheme to deal with the fallout of the conflict.

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Sudan’s neighbours have little to offer refugees, warns UN

Thousands of Sudanese are crossing borders into countries already severely stressed by drought, conflicts and food insecurity, say UN officials

The UN is in a race against time to get food supplies to Sudanese refugees crossing the border into Chad before the rainy season begins, as neighbouring countries struggle to cope with the numbers of people fleeing the civil war.

More than 110,000 people are now estimated to have crossed into other countries as patchy ceasefires fail to stop deadly clashes between Sudanese army troops and a paramilitary rival that have killed hundreds and forced more than 330,000 from their homes.

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‘Not safe for us’: Sudanese in north Africa warn fleeing relatives of danger

People who sought route to Europe before fighting erupted in Khartoum speak of police brutality, torture and homelessness

Ever since fighting erupted in his home town of Nyala, the state capital of South Darfur in Sudan, in mid-April, Khaled’s mobile phone has not stopped ringing. Family members, friends and acquaintances want to know how to reach north Africa and which country is best for departing for Europe.

The 17-year-old, currently living in the Tunisian capital, Tunis, wishes he could tell them that the journey is simple and that countries like Tunisia and Libya are welcoming and safe.

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Stricken dinghy was not rescued after it entered UK waters, maritime logs reveal

Boat with 38 people onboard got into difficulty in Channel and left to drift back towards France, FOI request shows

A boat carrying 38 people, including children, that got into difficulty crossing the Channel was not rescued when it reached UK waters but was instead allowed to drift back towards France, according to internal maritime logs.

Ministry of Defence officials, who were managing small boats in the Channel at the time, told the Guardian in January that they disputed that the stricken dinghy had entered UK waters.

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Tunisian cemeteries fill up as hundreds of dead refugees wash up on coast

Hospitals, morgues and burial grounds under pressure, with more than 300 bodies found this year in just one region

Authorities in Tunisia are considering building new cemeteries, as the country runs out of space to bury the dozens of refugees washing up every day on its shores.

The first three months of 2023 were the deadliest for people attempting to cross the central Mediterranean since 2017, according to the UN, with an increasing number of boats carrying asylum seekers wrecked at sea.

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Sudanese army blocks Britons from boarding last rescue flights

Nearly 1,900 have been evacuated, says UK government, but final flight has yet to leave Khartoum

Britons are feared to have been stranded in Sudan following reports that the country’s armed forces had prevented a number of people from reaching the last rescue flights out of the war-torn country on Saturday.

On Saturday night, it was announced that 1,888 people on 21 flights have been evacuated from Sudan – the vast majority of them British nationals and their dependents – but the last flight was yet to leave despite being scheduled to depart at 6pm.

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UK coastguard ‘left Channel migrants adrift’ in lead-up to mass drowning

Investigation reveals that at least 440 people appear to have been abandoned in the weeks before the worst Channel disaster in 30 years

• Read more: ‘Horror beyond words’: how Channel distress calls were ‘ignored’

Hundreds of vulnerable migrants were abandoned to their fates after the UK coastguard “effectively ignored” reports of small boats in distress during the days leading up to the worst Channel disaster in 30 years when at least 27 people died, an Observer investigation suggests.
Around 440 people appear to have been left adrift after the coastguard sent no rescue vessels to 19 reported boats carrying migrants in UK waters, according to an analysis of internal records and marine data seen by the Observer and Liberty Investigates.

Experts said the failure to act appears to breach international law.

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‘A deadly trip’: Sudanese refugees find little welcome at Egyptian border

People fleeing fighting in Khartoum left waiting for days at sparsely staffed crossing after costly and dangerous journeys

Thousands of people have fled fierce street battles in central Khartoum for Sudan’s borders, waiting for days in the open air to enter Egypt or walking hundreds of miles to cross into South Sudan.

Rana Ameen, a 23-year-old engineering student, said she and five members of her family had paid the equivalent of £475 per person to travel to the border crossing with Egypt, almost 600 miles (1,000km) away.

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Sudan street battles threaten fragile ceasefire as Turkish plane shot

Concerns truce agreement may not hold despite three-day extension as unrest continues

Street battles and gunfire threaten what remains of a fragile ceasefire in Sudan, now hanging by a thread despite a three-day extension of the truce agreement, as a Turkish evacuation plane was shot at as it attempted to land.

The Sudanese Armed Forces, loyal to Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and its rival, the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group, traded blame for the incident at the Wadi Seidna airbase, 12.5 miles (20km) north of Khartoum on the western bank of the Nile

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