Five-point plan to cut UK immigration raises fears of more NHS staff shortages

Care workers banned from bringing over relatives, and minimum salary threshold increased in other sectors

The home secretary, James Cleverly, has announced a five-point plan aimed at delivering the biggest ever cut in net migration to the UK, prompting fears of heightened staff shortages in the NHS and social care.

Cleverly announced that the minimum salary requirement for a skilled worker visa would rise to £38,700, while a rule that allows for people in professions with the greatest need to be hired at 20% below the going rate will be scrapped.

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James Cleverly travels to Kigali to sign new treaty with Rwanda

Domestic legislation also planned so parliament can assert country is a safe destination for asylum seekers

James Cleverly is travelling to Kigali to sign a new treaty with Rwanda, as Rishi Sunak responds to the UK supreme court’s ruling against the policy to send people there.

Domestic legislation is also planned so parliament could assert Rwanda is a safe destination for asylum seekers who arrive in Britain.

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UK and Rwanda ‘still committed’ to deal after reports Kigali is cooling

Officials in the east African country are frustrated by delays in migrants arriving and negative attention scheme has engendered

The UK and Rwanda remain committed to their controversial migrant deportation deal, sources have said, after reports emerged that support in Kigali for the agreement had cooled because of the continual delays.

Westminster has already paid the Rwandan government more than £140m but nobody has been sent to the east African country yet. The first flight was scheduled for June 2022 but was cancelled after legal challenges.

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Home Office ‘loses’ 17,000 people whose asylum claims were withdrawn

Tory MP queries claims marked withdrawn as government tries to clear backlog by end of year

Rishi Sunak has been accused of losing control of the UK’s borders after the Home Office admitted that it does not know the whereabouts of 17,000 people whose asylum claims have been withdrawn.

Amid a stalled Rwanda deportation scheme and rising costs for housing people seeking refuge in hotels, senior civil servants in the department were told by the Conservative MP and deputy party chair Lee Anderson they “hadn’t got a clue” after failing to provide answers on people seeking refuge in the UK or foreign offender removals.

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Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer clash over immigration and Parthenon marbles at PMQs – UK politics live

Prime minister’s record shows he has the ‘reverse Midas touch’, Keir Starmer says

Back at the home affairs committee, Tim Loughton (Con) has just had another go at getting answers about the number of asylum applications that have been withdrawn. (See 10.38am.)

He said, when he said earlier 95% of withdrawn applications were categorised as withdrawn for “other” reasons (and not because the claims were not substantiated), he was quoting figures for the last quarter.

Whilst the prospect is perhaps what none of us would wish to plan for, I believe the reality will be that we will need to discharge Covid-19 positive patients into residential care settings for the reason you have noted.

This will be entirely clinically appropriate because the NHS will triage those to retain in acute settings who can benefit from that sector’s care.

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Thousands of refugees in England and Wales ‘face homeless Christmas’

Government push to clear asylum backlog is not giving people granted refugee status enough time to find new home, say councils

Tens of thousands of refugees are at risk of sleeping rough this Christmas after a Home Office drive to hit Rishi Sunak’s asylum case target, the umbrella body for local councils has said.

The Local Government Association said councils across England and Wales were facing a “perfect storm” as the government worked to clear 92,327 asylum cases by the end of the year.

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Cleverly says he hopes to close Wethersfield asylum centre as soon as he can

Discontent among people housed at Essex site is growing, with residents complaining about conditions

James Cleverly has said he hopes to close down the controversial mass accommodation centre in Wethersfield “as soon as practicable”, in a departure from government policy to move asylum seekers out of hotels and on to sites like the Essex military base.

Wethersfield, most recently used by Ministry of Defence police, is the Home Office’s largest mass accommodation site in the UK for people seeking asylum, with several hundred people accommodated there.

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Families criticise UK government’s repatriation guidance in Gaza conflict

Relative ‘shocked’ by advice for family members who crossed into Egypt to split temporarily and apply for reunification from Britain

Relatives of British citizens recently evacuated from Gaza and those waiting to return to the UK have criticised the government’s repatriation guidance, as UK officials continue to support nationals crossing into Egypt.

Ahmad Abou-Foul’s family safely crossed from Gaza into Egypt on 3 November. He said they were “shocked” after arriving in Cairo when UK immigration officers advised the individuals with British passports to return to the UK with their children, and once there, start a reunification process for their Palestinian spouses.

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Rishi Sunak ‘working on new Rwanda treaty’ after deportation policy ruled unlawful – UK politics live

Prime minister says he is prepared to ‘revisit legal frameworks’ to stop the boats as supreme court says policy is unlawful

Reed says the court has had to decide whether the Rwanda policy breaches the non-refoulement rule.

The policy is in the Home Office’s immigration rules, he says.

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Sunak pins hopes on a new Rwanda asylum pact after supreme court defeat

Whitehall sources say it could take more than a year for any treaty to be passed, with next election looming

Rishi Sunak is attempting to finalise a new pact with Rwanda after a central plank of the British government’s immigration plans was ripped up by the supreme court.

A treaty, which would have to be ratified by the UK parliament, was being drawn up with the government in Kigali, the prime minister said.

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David Cameron returns; Victoria Atkins promoted to health secretary; Suella Braverman and Thérèse Coffey out – UK reshuffle live

Former PM will take seat in House of Lords; former Treasury minister moves to health; Braverman replaced as home secretary by James Cleverly

ITV’s Paul Brand says he has had a text with the word “Rejoice” from a Tory MP celebrating the sacking of Suella Braverman.

James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, has been seen going into No 10, PA Media reports.

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Afghan former interpreter with British army resettles in UK after legal battle

Ahmad* was approved for relocation to UK before Home Office refusal meant he missed evacuation from Afghanistan in 2021

An Afghan former interpreter with the British army has resettled in the UK with his family after a lengthy legal battle with the government, more than two years after being initially approved for relocation.

Prior to the Taliban takeover, Ahmad* worked as an interpreter in Helmand province. In late 2020 he was approved for relocation to the UK before later facing a Home Office refusal, and missing the opportunity to evacuate as Britain and international allies withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021.

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Revealed: plan to brand anyone ‘undermining’ UK as extremist

Leaked documents spark furious backlash from groups who fear freedom of expression could be suppressed

Government officials have drawn up deeply controversial proposals to broaden the definition of extremism to include anyone who “undermines” the country’s institutions and its values, according to documents seen by the Observer.

The new definition, prepared by civil servants working for cabinet minister Michael Gove, is fiercely opposed by a cohort of officials who fear legitimate groups and individuals will be branded extremists.

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Afghans who fled Taliban to UK ‘set to be made homeless at Christmas’

Home Office has imposed a 15 December deadline to eject people who worked for UK in Afghanistan from hotels, say councils

More than 1,000 Afghans in the UK face being made homeless days before Christmas after the Home Office imposed a fresh deadline to eject them from hotels.

The Local Government Association (LGA) revealed the number of at-risk Afghans, which includes families, after the Home Office last week imposed the new deadline of 15 December.

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Overseas students and workers targeted in illicit UK visa trade

Brokers in south Asia charging up to £800 for appointments that should be free

UK visa appointments are being booked up by brokers and sold on for hundreds of pounds in an illicit trade targeting overseas workers and students.

An Observer investigation has found brokers in some parts of south Asia charging up to £800 for the biometric appointments, which are widely advertised on Facebook and the Telegram messaging service.

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Fury at year-long Home Office delay over protest buffer zones at UK abortion clinics

Suella Braverman accused by MP Stella Creasy of denying will of parliament in passing safe access law

Pro-choice MPs and activists have expressed their frustration at the government’s failure to implement a law on buffer zones around abortion clinics one year after 297 MPs voted in favour of the zones and as women face a new wave of protests when accessing reproductive care.

A Home Office spokesperson told the Observer that timelines would be confirmed “in due course” but refused to explain why the law was not yet in force and failed to confirm if a consultation on safe-access zones legislation had been launched.

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Labour accuses new anti-slavery watchdog of being ‘Conservative patsy’

Commissioner role was vacant for 18 months and is now set to be filled by former Boris Johnson adviser

Labour has accused Suella Braverman of employing an inexperienced “Conservative patsy” as the UK’s independent anti-slavery watchdog following 18 months when the statutory role remained unfilled.

Eleanor Lyons, who was a special adviser to Boris Johnson, will take up the role of anti-slavery commissioner in December, the home secretary announced on Wednesday.

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Tuesday briefing: The global impact of UK supreme court’s ruling on Rwanda deportation plan

In today’s newsletter: A complicated legal battle over whether the UK government plan to send thousands of migrants to Rwanda could cause a fundamental shift in how asylum seekers are treated

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Good morning. Five supreme court judges are this week deciding whether the UK government plan to deport tens of thousands of asylum seekers to Rwanda should go ahead.

The decision of the UK’s highest court will be life-changing for more than 24,000 asylum seekers issued with letters warning them that they are being considered for forcible removal. It will also either make home secretary Suella Braverman’s “dream” come true or poleaxe a key part of Rishi Sunak’s pledge to “stop the boats”.

Israel | The leaders of the UK, US, France, Germany and Italy have released a joint statement expressing “steadfast and united support” for the state of Israel and “unequivocal condemnation” of Hamas. Earlier, Israel declared a “complete siege” of Gaza, cutting off water, food and power supplies.

Environment | The damage caused by the climate crisis through extreme weather has cost $16m (£13m) an hour for the past 20 years, according to a new estimate.

Transport | A list of transport projects to be funded using HS2 money, which included schemes that had already been built or were swiftly deleted, was intended only to be “illustrative”, the prime minister has said.

Labour | A new Labour government would give all towns and cities in England new powers and funding to boost local economies, Keir Starmer will announce, in the biggest expansion of devolution since Labour was last in power.

Scotland | A hoard of coins linked to a Highland chief – which may have been stashed away as he tried in vain to escape the Glen Coe massacre – has been discovered underneath a fireplace.

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UK outspends rest of Europe on housing asylum seekers by at least 40% a person

Exclusive: Report by aid campaign One finds costs now take up nearly a third of the official aid budget

The UK is spending 40% a person more than any other European country on housing asylum seekers with the costs taking up nearly a third of the official aid budget, which forced a 16.4% cut in the amount of aid spent overseas in 2022.

The findings come in a report by One, the aid campaign, which argues the proportion of the aid budget being spent on housing refugees in the UK is totally out of sync with its neighbours and is making the British aid budget both unpredictable and unmanageable

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HS2 may end up as ‘total waste of money’, warns IFS thinktank – UK politics live

Comments from Paul Johnson of Institute of Fiscal Studies come as Downing Street hints at delay to work on second phase of rail link

Around 20,000 university workers are out on strike this week at more than 50 universities across the UK, despite a dramatic last-minute scaling back of industrial action.

Strikes had been set to go ahead at 142 UK universities this week as part of a long-running dispute over pay and working conditions, but it emerged last week that two thirds of branches of the University and College Union (UCU) had declined to take part.

Davey said the Lib Dem commitment – dating back to 1992 – to raise income tax by 1p to improve public services is unsustainable in the current economic climate. Originally the money raised was earmarked for education, but at the last election the party said it would use it to fund the NHS.

Speaking from Bournemouth to broadcast studios, Davey suggested the burden should instead fall on companies making “huge profits” while people struggle with the cost of living.

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