Ministers delaying inquiry into treatment of migrant carers, RCN says

Exclusive: Nursing union says it continues to receive complaints about low pay, unfit housing and illegal fees

Ministers are dragging their heels on an investigation into the mistreatment of migrant carers, the country’s largest nursing union has said, as it continues to receive complaints about low pay, substandard accommodation and illegal fees.

Nicola Ranger, the general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, has written to Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, to urge her to speed up her promised investigation into the abuse of foreign care workers.

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Starmer announces ‘UK’s largest packet of sanctions’ against Russia since early days of war with Ukraine – UK politics live

​PM says Trump has ‘changed global conversation on Ukraine’ as he pledges more military aid and sanctions

Keir Starmer called for support for Ukraine to be boosed in three ways in his virtual speech to the conference in Kyiv.

First, military support should increase, he said.

The UK is doing that, providing £4.5bn pounds in military aid this year, more than ever before. We’re doing more than ever to train Ukrainian troops helping Ukraine to mobilise even further. And we are proud to have taken on the leadership of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group.

So today, we’re announcing the UK’s largest packet of sanctions since the early days of the war, going after Russia’s shadow fleet and going after companies in China and elsewhere who are sending military component.

Later day, I will be discussing further steps with the G7. But I am clear that the G7 should be ready to take on more risk, including the oil price cap, sanctioning Russia’s oil giants and going off the banks that are enabling the evasion of sanctions.

President Trump has changed the global conversation over the last few weeks, and it has created an opportunity.

Now we must get the fundamentals right if we want peace to endure. Ukraine must have a seat at the table, and any settlement must be based on a sovereign Ukraine backed up with strong security guarantees.

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Home Office contractor collected data on UK citizens while checking migrants’ finances

Official sent email to charity that suggested Home Office had data on ‘hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting Britons’

The Home Office has been accused of collecting data on “hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting British citizens” while conducting financial checks on migrants.

A report by a private contractor for a routine immigration application was mistakenly sent to a charity by a government official, and contained information on more than 260 people including their names, dates of birth and electoral roll data.

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NHS doctor who ‘glorified terrorist violence’ wins deportation challenge

Home Office moved to cancel Menatalla Elwan’s leave to remain over posts on Hamas’s 7 October attack

An Egyptian NHS doctor who “glorified terrorist violence” by mocking Israeli civilians fleeing the Hamas attacks in October 2023 has won a legal challenge against deportation.

In one of three social media posts hours after the attacks began, Dr Menatalla Elwan, 34, who worked at an NHS trust in Liverpool, reposted footage of music festivalgoers running from Hamas terrorists and wrote “if it was your home, you would stay and fight”, accompanied by a smiling face emoji.

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Planned change in British citizenship rules faces first legal challenge

Young Afghan refugee brings case after move to prevent those who arrived on ‘dangerous journey’ from citizenship

Plans to prevent refugees who arrive in the UK on a small boat, lorry or via other “irregular” means from becoming a British citizen are facing their first legal challenge.

The challenge is being brought by a 21-year-old Afghan refugee who arrived in the UK aged 14, after fleeing the Taliban and being smuggled to Britain in the back of a lorry. He was granted refugee status and after five years was granted indefinite leave to remain. He was due to apply for British citizenship on 1 March.

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One dies in attempted Channel crossing after small boat sinks off Calais coast

A further 69 people were rescued in what French authorities called a very busy night for crossings

One person has died trying to cross the Channel in a small boat that sank off the coast of Calais, while 69 were rescued during what French authorities said was a very busy night for crossings.

The small boat began to take in water before French navy ship Abeille Normandie rescued the 70 people on board. Only half of those on board had life jackets. The French navy’s Dauphin helicopter was also involved in the rescue operation.

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Starmer ‘not telling truth’ over Gaza family asylum decision, claims Badenoch, after PMQs clash – as it happened

Opposition leader says PM was wrong when he said that the decision was taken under the last government

After PMQs there will be an urgent question in the Commons, tabled by the Lib Dem MP Christine Jardine, on “the potential security implications of the involvement of Chinese companies including Mingyang in energy infrastructure projects”. After that Dan Jarvis, the security minister, will make a statement to mark the publication of the report into Prevent’s dealings with Ali Harbi Ali, the man who killed the Conservative MP David Amess.

Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan police commissioner, has blamed Home Office foot-dragging for a failure to change the rules to allow forces to sack officers who fail vetting procedures, Matthew Weaver reports.

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Judge who granted Palestinian family asylum made wrong call, says Keir Starmer

Family fleeing Gaza were allowed to join brother in UK after applying through scheme meant for Ukrainian refugees

A judge who granted a Palestinian family the right to live in the UK after they applied through a scheme originally meant for Ukrainian refugees made the wrong decision, Keir Starmer has said.

A family of six seeking to flee Gaza were allowed to join their brother in the UK after an immigration judge ruled that the Home Office’s rejection of their application breached their human rights, it emerged on Tuesday.

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Second Labour MP suspended by Labour amid offensive messages on WhatsApp group – UK politics live

Burnley’s Oliver Ryan suspended as details emerge about Trigger Me Timbers group

Downing Street has announced a mini-reshuffle following the sacking of Andrew Gwynne as a health minister over the weekend.

Ashley Dalton is replacing Gwynne as a health minister. Dalton was a backbencher.

Forcing those whose asylum applications have been rejected or who have overstayed their visas on to planes has never been the most effective way to return people and never will be. Being punitive just scares people into hiding. They lose contact with the authorities, living a life on the margins.

Voluntary returns are far more effective, and the government should know this because it was the last Labour administration that commissioned independent agencies to run a voluntary programme that saw numbers increase. Building trust with refugee and migrant communities and treating people with dignity and humanity was far more successful than an enforcement approach.

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Thousands of Syrians in limbo as UK Home Office freezes asylum claims

Two months after the fall of Assad’s regime, Whitehall’s decision to pause asylum applications from Syrians has left more than 6,600 cases stuck on hold in the UK

More than 6,000 Syrians in Britain are stuck in limbo because of an ongoing freeze on their asylum claims, two months after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

The Home Office announced a “pause” on Syrian asylum seekers’ claims on 9 December, the day after rebels swept into Damascus, saying that it needed to “assess the current situation”.

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Home Office wasted nearly £100m on plans to house asylum seekers, watchdog finds

Public Accounts Committee examined series of site purchases and found ‘troubling culture that repeatedly wastes public money’

The Home Office’s plans to house asylum seekers reveal a “dysfunctional culture of repeated mistakes and weak internal challenge” that wasted nearly £100m, parliament’s spending watchdog has concluded.

A Public Accounts Committee report said the department had a “troubling culture that repeatedly wastes public money” after examining the acquisition of the £15.4m HMP Northeye site to house new arrivals.

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Ukrainian refugees face losing jobs and homes due to UK visa extension uncertainty

Home Office process will leave some with eight-week gap when they are unable to prove right to live and work in UK

Ukrainian refugees face losing their jobs and homes due to uncertainty over the Home Office’s visa extension process which will leave some with an eight-week gap in which they are unable to prove their right to live and work in the UK.

Some have already been refused tenancy renewal because their visas are about to expire, while others have been told they will have to stop working during the extension process as landlords and employers fear hefty fines and criminal sanctions.

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Planned UK people-smuggling laws risk ‘criminalising’ asylum seekers, charities say

Bill could mean asylum seekers crossing the Channel who refuse rescue may face five years in prison

Keir Starmer’s planned people-smuggling laws risk “criminalising” hundreds of asylum seekers, refugee charities have said, after it emerged that people who refuse to be rescued by the French authorities could be jailed for five years.

Some parents who bring their children to the UK in small boats could also face prosecution, which could ultimately split their families, a human rights assessment of the border security, asylum and immigration bill has concluded.

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Calls for Home Office to protect asylum seekers after accommodation violence

Exclusive: NGOs say safeguarding policies need improving, as victims tell of multiple assaults and incidents of race hate

NGOs are calling for improvements in UK government safeguarding policies after multiple acts of violence and race hate incidents in Home Office accommodation.

The incidents include 20 assaults of asylum seekers in one small area of Essex and a separate incident where another was attacked and threatened with a knife by a man recently released into shared asylum accommodation from prison on licence. Slices of bacon were also laid over food belonging to Muslim residents stored in a communal kitchen fridge.

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Revealed: Conservatives spent £134m on never-used IT systems for failed Rwanda scheme

Home Office official says data protection laws caused the cost of its forced removal programme to increase

The Conservative government spent more than £130m on IT and data systems for the scheme to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, which will never be used, the Observer can reveal.

Digital tools needed to put the forced removal programme into effect made up the second-largest chunk of the £715m spent in little over two years, behind only the £290m handed directly to Paul Kagame’s government.

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Home Office accused of ‘blocking’ people stuck in war zones from joining family in UK

FoI figures show Home Office apparently refusing to use biometrics waiver for people who have no way to submit them

The UK government’s family reunification policy has been criticised by charities and MPs after data revealed how Home Office bureaucracy was making it impossible for people stranded in war zones, such as Gaza and Sudan, to reunite with family members in the UK.

Existing policy is supposed to allow those in need of resettlement the opportunity to join relatives in the UK. In order to apply for family reunion visas, applicants must submit biometrics – usually a fingerprint and a photograph – at appointments at a visa application centre (VAC) in their country of residence.

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Tory police cuts are only part of the ongoing crisis affecting victims of crime

Austerity affected courts, prisons and public services while rates of poverty surged, creating the conditions for more crime

The period in which clear-up rates for the most serious crimes collapsed coincided with big cuts to police budgets, and the subsequent fall in police officer numbers of about 20,000.

The last Conservative government, responsible for the cuts after 2010 in the name of austerity, spent its time denying they would have any damaging effect on crime fighting in England and Wales. Then, in its final years, it started to reverse the cuts, and pretended “wokery” among law enforcement had diverted officers’ attention.

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Visa-waiver system could overwhelm UK immigration services, law firm warns

There are also fears electronic travel authorisation will threaten post-peace tourism sector in Northern Ireland

The UK Home Office’s already burdened immigration services could be overwhelmed this summer when a new visa-waiver system comes into force for European business travellers and tourists in April, a leading law firm has said.

There have also been fresh warnings that the electronic travel authorisation (ETA) requirements could threaten the post-peace tourism sector in Northern Ireland, with Americans and Europeans travelling to Dublin and beyond deciding not to bother crossing the border because of the red tape.

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Home Office says record number of refused asylum seekers deported since July

Labour’s description of 16,400 ‘immigration offenders and foreign criminals’ angers campaigners

Keir Starmer has boasted of deporting a record number of refused asylum seekers and overseas criminals since scrapping the Rwanda scheme, using language that has dismayed human rights campaigners.

The Home Office said on Thursday it had returned more than 16,400 “immigration offenders and foreign criminals” since the election in July, the highest six-month total since 2018.

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Home Office may reclassify ketamine in response to record levels of use

Illegal use in UK seems to reflect growth of unregulated market in US, where its high-profile users include Elon Musk

Ketamine, the anaesthetic taken by Elon Musk to control his moods, could be reclassified as a class A drug by the Home Office after illegal use reached record levels last year.

Currently controlled as a class B substance, ministers are seeking “expert advice” on reclassification after an estimated 299,000 people reported use of the drug last year.

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