Border Force is being trained on ‘turn-around’ tactics but France warns plan could endanger lives
Priti Patel is preparing to send back small boats carrying migrants in the Channel despite warnings from the French authorities that it could endanger lives.
Border Force staff are being trained to employ “turn-around” tactics at sea under plans developed for two years, a statement from the Home Office said.
Continue reading...Possession could be criminalised as home secretary vows to ‘take tough action’ on use of laughing gas
Possession of nitrous oxide, one of the most popular drugs among 16- to 24-year-olds, could be criminalised after the home secretary ordered experts to review its effects.
Priti Patel said she was ready to “take tough action” on the widespread use of laughing gas, which is taken mostly through balloons filled from small metal cylinders often seen littering areas around nightclubs and music festivals.
Continue reading...Priti Patel and Dick discussed the commissioner’s future last week, it is understood
Ministers and the Metropolitan police commissioner, Cressida Dick, have begun discussions about whether her turbulent term in charge of Britain’s biggest force will be extended, with a decision said to be “imminent”.
Dick, the first woman in charge of the London force since it was established in 1829, is on a five-year contract that expires in April 2022. She could step down then or have the contract extended for a period.
Continue reading...Peer at odds with Priti Patel over climate activists on eve of more protests
A government extremism adviser has admitted during a private meeting that it is wrong to label Extinction Rebellion (XR) supporters as “extreme”, despite the home secretary, Priti Patel, condemning the group as “criminals” who threaten the nation’s way of life.
John Woodcock, the former Labour MP who was asked by the Home Office this year to examine disruption and violence by extreme political groups, sought to reassure XR activists that he did not regard the movement as uniformly extreme during a Zoom video conference call last month. “You’re worried that I want to label everyone who supports XR as extremists and that is certainly not the case,” he said.
Continue reading...Government’s proposals include more frequent stop and search and making community service street cleaners ‘more visible’
MPs and campaigners have sounded alarm at a series of proposals in the government crime reduction plan, including more frequent stop and search, a trial of “alcohol tags” and criminals undertaking “visible” community service cleaning streets.
Liberty said the permanent relaxation of search powers would “compound discrimination in Britain and divide communities” and the former shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, said it was “alarming and counter-productive.”
Continue reading...Tory MP criticises home secretary over £55m deal with France to double number of patrols off its coast
Handing £55m to French authorities to clamp down on migrants crossing the Channel in small boats is “throwing good money after bad”, the home secretary has been told by a Conservative colleague as she was grilled by MPs.
Priti Patel revealed late on Tuesday that she had agreed to pay the sum as part of a deal with the French interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, to double the number of officers patrolling the French coast.
Continue reading...Bill would give home secretary power to take action against citizens of countries deemed not to be cooperating
The UK will block visas for visitors from countries the home secretary believes are refusing to cooperate in taking back rejected asylum seekers or offenders.
In proposed legislation published on Tuesday, Priti Patel and future home secretaries would have the power to suspend or delay the processing of applications from countries that do no “cooperate with the UK government in relation to the removal from the United Kingdom of nationals of that country who require leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom but do not have it”.
Continue reading...Borders bill will allow for charges against migrants ‘knowingly’ arriving in UK without permission
Ministers are to reveal proposals for a suite of new laws paving the way for offshore centres for asylum seekers and criminal charges for migrants “knowingly” arriving in the UK without permission.
The nationality and borders bill, formerly known as the sovereign borders bill, has been described by the Home Office as containing “the most radical changes to the broken asylum system in decades” making it harder for those who enter illegally to stay in the UK.
Continue reading...Round-the-clock tracking condemned as ‘Trojan horse’ giving government vast surveillance powers that violate human rights
More than 40 human rights organisations have condemned the Home Office’s introduction of 24-hour GPS monitoring of people on immigration bail in an expansion of surveillance powers that has involved no consultation process.
The new policy marks a shift from using radio frequency monitors (which alert authorities if the wearer leaves an assigned area) to round-the-clock GPS trackers (which can track a person’s every move), while also giving the Home Office new powers to collect, store and access this data indefinitely via a private contractor.
Continue reading...On 12 August 2020 at 7.48am the first of a series of Home Office flights carrying asylum seekers left Stansted. This is the harrowing story of the hours before it took off and the anguish of those on board
At 7.15am, half an hour before charter flight Esparto 11 took off from Stansted airport, a detainee with a documented history of self-harm asked to use the plane’s bathroom. He was taken to the toilet by an escort working for the Home Office who held the door ajar with his foot and, after several minutes, peered inside to discover the detainee had slashed his wrist with a blade.
Pinning the man with his body weight to gain “control”, another officer squeezed into the bathroom and placed a handcuff on the wrist. According to an account written by officers, the handcuff was used to “[give] him pain”, a reference to a restraint technique which involves deliberately inflicting suffering to gain submission. In this case, most likely by twisting the cuff or pushing it into the wrist.
Continue reading...Post-Brexit rules allow travel without visas, but border officials have wide powers to exclude visitors
The number of EU citizens being prevented from entering the UK has soared over the past three months despite a massive reduction in travel because of Covid, according to Home Office figures.
A total of 3,294 EU citizens were prevented from entering the UK, even though post-Brexit rules mean they are allowed to visit the country without visas. That compares with 493 EU citizens in the first quarter of last year, when air traffic was 20 times higher.
Continue reading...Independent panel set up to investigate killing of Daniel Morgan ‘furious’ at home secretary’s move
The home secretary has ordered that an independent report on claims murderers were shielded by police corruption and claims of corruption in Rupert Murdoch’s media empire must be vetted by her department before its publication.
The move triggered fury and follows eight years of work by a special panel to investigate the murder of private detective Daniel Morgan in 1987, who was found dead in a south London car park with an axe embedded in his head.
Continue reading...Howard Beckett, a member of Labour’s National Executive Committee, later apologised and deleted the tweet
Labour has suspended a leadership candidate for the Unite trade union from the party after he called for the home secretary, Priti Patel, to be deported on Twitter.
Howard Beckett, the union’s assistant general secretary and a member of Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC), has since apologised and deleted the message following criticism.
Continue reading...Something is badly wrong at the heart of one of Britain’s most important ministries. How did it become so broken?
For the thousands of people who end up on the wrong side of the Home Office each year, there is often a sudden moment of disbelief. This can’t be happening, people tell themselves. They can’t do this, can they?
For Ruhena Miah, a sales assistant born and raised in the West Midlands, this moment came when she received a letter saying that if she wanted to marry the man she loved, she would have to move to Bangladesh. For Tayjay Thompson, a young man convicted of a drugs offence when he was 17, it was when he was told he would be deported to Jamaica, a country he’d left as a toddler. For Monique Hawkins, a Dutch software engineer, it was when her application for a residency permit was rejected, despite the fact she had lived in the UK for 24 years. For Omar, a refugee from Afghanistan (who asked me not to use his real name), it was when he stepped off the plane at Heathrow and discovered that he was being taken to a building that looked to him very much like a prison.
Continue reading...As the UK pours millions into security measures, migrants say the gangs who control the Channel just get more powerful
“Sorry, my battery’s low because I drained it watching YouTube tutorials on how to assemble dinghies,” Abuzar says. He is speaking on a video call from the abandoned shed in Calais he calls home. “I want to join my brother for asylum in the UK, but I have to work for smugglers because I don’t have enough money to pay for the crossing.
“They hide boat parts on the beaches for me to assemble at night, but I’m so scared– – if I mess it up, children could drown on the boat.”
Continue reading...A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Colombia to China
Continue reading...Rights groups warn many more survivors face being locked up after MPs back Home Office change
More victims of trafficking will be locked up in detention and forcibly removed from the UK after MPs approved a change in Home Office rules relating to this vulnerable group, campaigners have warned.
MPs recently confirmed what is known as a statutory instrument. This change in rules relating to the detention of trafficking victims comes into force on 25 May and will require them to provide a higher standard of proof that they should not be detained.
Continue reading...PM condemns violence at latest protest against police, crime, sentencing and courts bill
Boris Johnson has condemned violent scenes in Bristol as “disgraceful”, after a protest against a new policing bill on Friday night resulted in clashes between demonstrators and police.
The protest was against the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill, which would give police greater powers to restrict protests, and initially attracted around 300 people before the crowd swelled to more than 1,000.
Continue reading...Home secretary says proposals will be biggest overhaul of system in decades
The home secretary, Priti Patel, says her immigration proposals amount to “the biggest overhaul of the UK’s asylum system in decades”.
Here we take a look at the key measures being put out for consultation:
Continue reading...