Early evening summary
The government has acquired two more giant barges to house 1,000 asylum seekers, Rishi Sunak has confirmed, as he claimed his plan to “stop the boats” was working. But some Tories do not seem to believe his plan is working. In a development that should worry Sunak, even the Daily Express, which is normally ultra-supportive of the government, is reporting that Conservative MPs are highly sceptical.
Jeremy Quin, the Cabinet Office minister, has told MPs that the judicial review of the Covid inquiry’s decision to demand unredacted WhatsApp messages from the government will start on or soon after 30 June. (See 5.33pm.) He said the government was only trying to ensure that “unambiguously irrelevant” material would not have to be handed over. This was so that, in future, ministers would be able to continue to have policy discussions in private without having to worry about those messages being submitted to an inquiry on a wholly different topic. Quin also said that, if the courts agreed that “unambiguously irrelevant” material did not have to be handed over, it would be lawyers, not politicians, who would decide what counted as unambiguously irrelevant. (See 5.50pm.) The inquiry also accepts that unambiguously irrelevant material should be kept secret. But it says its lawyers, not the government’s lawyers, should have the final say as to what counts as irrelevant.
Updated
Lawyers, not politicians, would decide what should be held back from Covid inquiry on grounds of irrelevance, MPs told
Back in the Commons, in response to a question from the SNP’s Kirsty Blackman, Jeremy Quin, the Cabinet Office minister, said ministers were not involved at all in deciding what messages and documents would be handed over to the Covid inquiry and what might be held back by the government because it was deemed “unambiguously irrelevant”. He said:
I want to give [Blackman] an absolute assurance that there’s absolutely no political involvement in this process of going through what is and is not relevant information, and unambiguously irrelevant. That is a process undertaken by lawyers, by the counsel team, with a KC involved.
Updated
Starmer says Labour would give Covid inquiry whatever documents it wanted
Keir Starmer told reporters this morning that, if Labour were in office, it would hand over to the Covid inquiry whatever documents it wanted. He said:
I’ll be very clear. If you had a Labour government, and we set up an inquiry of this importance, of course we would cooperate and hand over whatever is required by the chair of the inquiry.
And I’ll tell you for why – because many people lost relatives in Covid, many people lost their jobs and their livelihoods and they deserve answers and so I’ll be very clear – we would hand over whatever is required by the chair and we would do it having a mind for those that lost so much during Covid.
Here is a question from a reader.
Is there any reliable, authoritative, recent data on how significant an issue ‘small boats’ immigration is amongst population?
Polling consistently shows that small boats and illegal immigration is an important issue to some voters, but not as important as matters like the cost of living. Ipsos has published some polling today relevant to this and, as Keiran Pedley from the polling firm reports, 29% of people say they view removing migrants who arrived illegally as important.
2/ First on importance then. As we saw in January, the most important aspects of Sunak's pledges to the public are easing the cost of living and reducing NHS wait times. pic.twitter.com/wqXJjqwTMH
— Keiran Pedley (@keiranpedley) June 5, 2023
But the Ipsos polling also shows that Tory voters care about illegal immigration a lot more than Labour voters.
3/ Although when we look at priorities by 2019 vote we can see that for 2019 Cons the boats pledges and pledges around growth are also as important (though this group still prioritises cost of living / NHS too) pic.twitter.com/X7M1H4VxiZ
— Keiran Pedley (@keiranpedley) June 5, 2023
Jeremy Quin, the Cabinet Office minister, subsequently told MPs that the judicial review hearing would start on or shortly after 30 June, Cat Neilan from Tortoise reports.
The Judicial review hearing, regarding the Covid inquiry, could be "on or shortly after 30th June", Cabinet Office minister Jeremy Quin tells MPs
— Cat Neilan (@CatNeilan) June 5, 2023
Judicial review of Covid inquiry's demand for disclosure of unredacted messages to be heard 'very soon', MPs told
Quin is responding to Anderson.
He says he cannot say how much the judicial review will cost.
But he says he is glad the courts have indicated that the case will be “heard very soon”, and dealt with in a “timely fashion”.
He says there is a long tradition of former ministers getting help with legal costs in cases like this.
Updated
Fleur Anderson, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, is responding to Quin. She focuses on a series of questions.
How much will the judicial review cost? And what are the chances of the government winning?
Would not time be better spent complying with the inquiry’s requests?
Is it right that Boris Johnson has been threatened with the withdrawal of legal support?
Has Johnson already handed over material to the inquiry? And how many devices has he handed over?
The Suella Braverman statement is now over, and in the Commons Jeremy Quin, the Cabinet Office minister, is now making a statement explaining why the government is challenging the Covid inquiry’s demand to see unredacted WhatsApp messages from Boris Johnson, and other material, as part of its investigation.
Quin says the government is cooperating with the inquiry, and has submitted material to the inquiry. But the government takes the view that it should not have to submit material that is “clearly and unambiguously irrelevant” to the inquiry.
He says the government is going to court to clarify whether it has the right to do this.
He says no decision about what counts as “unambiguously irrelevant” would be taken by a witness alone. Lawyers would be involved in this decision, he says.
He says the government is going to court on this matter because it believes that people in government should be able to debate decisions in private “unclouded” by the worry that in future that information could be disclosed to a public inquiry on a wholly different topic.
Updated
The Conservative MP Bob Stewart will not lose the Tory whip, despite being charged with a racially aggravated public order offence, according to HuffPost’s Kevin Schofield.
Understand Bob Stewart will not be losing the Tory whip at the moment. Sources say he regrets the comments and plans to fight the charges against him in court.https://t.co/yaqZfefrDi
— Kevin Schofield (@KevinASchofield) June 5, 2023
Tory deputy chair Lee Anderson tells Braverman Rwanda flights need to start because other policies 'not the answer'
Lee Anderson, the Conservative party deputy chair, is the first backbencher to ask a question. He tells Braverman that getting asylum seekers to share rooms, using barges, and “relying on the French” is “not the answer”. He asks when the first deportations to Rwanda will start.
Braverman says she has “huge confidence” in the Rwanda plan, but says it is still being challenged in the courts. She says she hopes flights will start “as soon as possible”.
Updated
Braverman is replying to Cooper. She accuses her of just offering theatrics and words, and not having a plan.
Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, is responding to Braverman.
She says Rishi Sunak flew to Dover this morning “to congratulate himself and to tell us that his plan is working”.
But, says Cooper, the asylum application backlog is at a record high, the number of caseworkers employed is down, hotel use is up, and returns are down. And only 1% of last year’s applications have been processed, she says.
She says the “massive gap” between the government’s rhetoric and reality shows that Braverman has no grip on the system.
And she says that although small boat arrivals have been down over the winter, they are still three times higher than two years ago, and eight times higher than before the pandemic.
'The asylum system is broken, they broke it and there is still no plan to sort it out'@YvetteCooper attacks @SuellaBraverman over Tory policies on illegal immigration but the home secretary says Labour has no plan to cut it https://t.co/y4ArykgErD pic.twitter.com/qNMhpMZGty
— ITV News Politics (@ITVNewsPolitics) June 5, 2023
Updated
Suella Braverman's statement to MPs on small boats
Suella Braverman, the home secretary, starts by saying that Rishi Sunak, unlike Labour, has made stopping the boats a priority.
She says raids on illegal workers increased by 50% between January and March, compared with the previous year.
She says immigration enforcement arrests have doubled.
The asylum initial decision backlog is down by 17,000, she says. And she claims the government is on track to clear that legacy backlog by the end of the year.
She says a more “cost-effective” accommodation system is being introduced for asylum seekers, and the barge will arrive in Portland to house them within a fortnight. Migrants are also being housed in Wethersfield and Scampton, she says.
She highlights the deals with France and Albania, repeating the figures cited by Rishi Sunak this morning. (See 12.55pm.)
She says the government remains committed to the Rwanda policy. And she says the government is legislating, through the illegal migration bill, to break the business model of people smugglers.
And she ends by apologising to Yvette Cooper for the latedelivery of her statement. (See 4.08pm.)
Updated
Suella Braverman, the home secretary, is about to make a statement to MPs about illegal immigration. We are expecting it to largely or wholly echo what Rishi Sunak said this morning.
She was due to start at about 4pm, because the urgent question wrapped up early, but Yvette Cooper, her Labour shadow, complained that she had not received a copy of what Braverman was going to say in time to allow her to prepare, and so, in an unusual move, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker, suspended the sitting for 10 minutes to allow Cooper to read the statement.
Updated
Covid inquiry chair ‘may have to quit’ if denied access to Johnson WhatsApps
Heather Hallett, the chair of the UK Covid-19 public inquiry, may have to resign if the government succeeds in its high court attempt to block the unredacted disclosure of ministers’ WhatsApp messages, the lawyer representing thousands of bereaved families has said. Robert Booth has the story here.
Tory MP Bob Stewart charged with racially aggravated public order offence
The Conservative MP Bob Stewart has been charged with a racially aggravated public order offence after an incident outside the Foreign Office’s Lancaster House on 14 December last year, PA Media reports. Police opened a case after the complaint from activist Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, who says he is living in exile after being tortured in the Gulf state of Bahrain.
In a statement, the Metropolitan police said:
Robert Alexander Stewart, 73, a Member of Parliament, of Beckenham, Bromley, was charged by postal requisition on Monday June 5 with:
-Using threatening or abusive words or behaviour or disorderly behaviour and the offence was racially aggravated. (Contrary to section 31 (1) (c) and (5) of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998.)
-Using threatening or abusive words or behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress. (Contrary to section 5 (1) and (6) of the Public Order Act 1986.)
Both offences are alleged to have occurred on Wednesday, 14 December 2022 in Belgravia, London, SW1.
Stewart will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday, 5 July.
The Met said both charges related to the same incident and that the “second offence is an alternative charge to allow the court discretion on the racial element”.
Hancock apologises to MPs for 'minor' breach of code of conduct
Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, has apologised to the Commons having been found to have broken the rule that says MPs should not lobby the parliamentary commissioner for standards. (See 11.55am.) In a very brief statement in the chamber, he said the commissioner had found that he “inadvertently” committed a “minor” breach of the code. The Commons standards committee said he should apologise to the house, he said. “I am happy to do so,” he added.
Updated
In her World at World interview, Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, was also asked if she agreed that Jamie Driscoll should be given a second chance to apply to be Labour’s candidate for the new north-east mayor. (See 2.37pm.) She dodged the question entirely, claiming that she did not know the details of this case, and that she would not comment on individual cases like this anyway.
Updated
Yvette Cooper rejects Sunak's claim that getting asylum seekers to share hotel rooms is new policy
Last week some asylum seekers allocated to a hotel in London refused to enter after being told they would have to sleep four to a room. The protest reportedly ended after they were offered sharing on a two-people-per-room basis.
In his speech this morning Rishi Sunak claimed this was a new policy that could save taxpayers £250m a year. He said:
By asking people to share rooms, where it’s appropriate to do so we’ve found an additional 11,500 places which will save taxpayers an extra £250m a year. And I say to those migrants who are objecting: this is more than fair.
In an interview on the World at One Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, was asked if Labour was in favour of asylum seekers sharing rooms in hotels. She insisted this policy had “always been part of the asylum system” and was “not new”, adding: “Of course it will continue.”
She said the government needed more hotel rooms for refugees because it was failing to clear the backlog of unprocessed applications.
Starmer tries to calm rift with GMB over energy policy
Keir Starmer has moved to calm a growing rift with the GMB union over Labour’s energy policy, even as its leader renewed his attack on the party’s plan to prohibit new North Sea oil and gas developments, Alex Lawson reports,
Richard Drax is the Conservative MP for South Dorset. Portland is in his constituency and he told LBC that he was opposed to the decision to put asylum seekers on a barge there. In his speech this morning Rishi Sunak said the first occupants would arrive within a fortnight.
As LBC’s Henry Riley reports, Drax said in his interview the barge would be a “quasi prison”.
NEW
— Henry Riley (@HenryRiley1) June 5, 2023
Conservative MP Richard Drax is furious with the barge at Portland Harbour coming into force "within a fortnight"
Tells me "I'm against it. It is designed for 222 ensuite, it will have 506 on board. Some rooms will have 3 or 4 inhabitants. It's a quasi prison"@LBC
Updated
Jamie Driscoll hints he may take legal action against Labour's decision not to let him stand to be north-east mayor
Jamie Driscoll, the Labour North of Tyne mayor who has been blocked by the party from standing to be its candidate for the new north-east mayor (which takes in the North of Tyne mayoralty, but covers a wider area), has hinted that he might take legal action to contest the decision.
In an interview on the World at One, Driscoll said there was no process in the Labour party rules allowing him to appeal against the decision not to let him be a candidate. But asked if he was considering legal action, he replied:
Obviously I’m taking advice on that. And I would absolutely prefer not to go down that route if it’s possible.
Driscoll said Labour should just restart the process. He explained:
What I think should happen is incidentally in 2019, when we went through this process of selection last time, the party stopped the process and restarted it again a month later, because they weren’t happy that any women had applied.
So there’s a precedent that you can stop these processes and start them again. And all I really want is to let the people of the north-east choose who is their mayor and not let London Labour choose who is their mayor.
Labour has said Driscoll was blocked because he shared a platform with Ken Loach, the film director who has strongly defended Jeremy Corbyn against the claims that Corbyn tolerated antisemitism in the party. Loach was expelled from Labour in 2021.
In his World at One interview, Driscoll said that he was just talking to Loach at an arts event about his films, and particularly those set in the north-east, and that Labour was in “a dark place” if that made him unacceptable as a candidate. He said:
If talking to someone about films, because they may have controversial views elsewhere, is grounds for denying members the chance to make their own judgment on that, then I think we’ve gone to quite a dark place indeed when it comes to democracy.
Driscoll implied that he had been assured by the party that he was not being accused himself of being antisemitic. He said:
I’ve asked very clearly in the selection process, ‘Is that any suggestion that I’m antisemitic?’. And it was quite clearly, ‘No, you are not.’
But he suggested his leftwing politics probably made him unacceptable to the party. While he laughed at the claim that he was the “last Corbynista in power”, he said:
I think there’s a pattern of behaviour. I was talking to a journalist this morning who was saying that: ‘You must be about the fourth candidate from your part of the world who’s been blocked from getting on to a long list who is on the left of the party.’ I do support common ownership of the utilities. I do believe in a wealth tax. I don’t believe in increasing privatisation in the NHS. And those are things that, for whatever reason, is not what Keir Starmer is now saying. Obviously, it’s the platform he ran on.
Updated
The Refugee Council has condemned Rishi Sunak’s speech this morning. In a statement, Enver Solomon, its CEO, said:
The British people want those fleeing horror to be treated with dignity and humanity. The prime minister’s approach fails that test to a shocking degree. His claim that the system is “overwhelmed” by people from safe countries is misleading, wrong and harmful. Most of those who arrive here on boats are refugees fleeing places like Afghanistan and Sudan.
Updated
Keir Starmer has issued a statement in response to Rishi Sunak’s small boats speech, linking it (rather creatively) to his visit to the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant in Somerset this morning. Starmer claimed small boats and nuclear power were both examples of “dither and delay” by the government. He said:
We need to stop the boats. We’re clear we don’t want anyone making that dangerous journey. But all we’ve had from the government is policies that aren’t working, then the re-announcement of the same policy, with a self-congratulatory pat on the back. It feels like groundhog day and it’s costing the taxpayer a fortune.
There’s a growing sense of frustration about the government’s dither and delay. I’m at Hinkley Point C today, a fantastic project showcasing the talent and skills our country has, but it’s behind schedule and there’s a frustration that there’s no real plan from the government to drive it forward. Whether it’s small boats or nuclear, there’s a pattern of behaviour here and it’s holding our country back.
Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA
Updated
Colin Yeo, a prominent immigration barrister, has published a good analysis of Rishi Sunak’s small boat claims (see 12.55pm) on his Free Movement website. He accepts that the number of people crossing the Channel in small boats does seem to be down by around 20% so far this year (the latest figures are here), but he says there is no evidence this has anything do with the illegal migration bill.
Yeo’s article is worth reading in full, but here is an extract.
It is conceivable [the fall in numbers] might be related to the Rwanda plan. However, there are three other potential explanations which are also plausible.
One is that people are shifting route again in order to try and enter by clandestine means. So far, those arriving in small boats have wanted to be detected. The whole idea was to claim asylum, which involves making yourself known to the authorities. As I’ve previously suggested, if being detected (a) has no benefits (because your asylum claim will never be considered) and (b) actually carries risks (because you might be detained and then removed to Rwanda) then migrants might either decide not to come or decide to avoid detection.
Another is that the weather has been worse this year than last. Small boat crossings are heavily dependent on the weather.
Another is that the efforts to prevent departures from the French coast have been more effective. Sunak says they have. That’s got nothing to do with the Rwanda plan or how migrants are treated once they reach the UK, though.
Given there has never been any evidence that deterrent policies actually work, I’d guess that the three alternative explanations have more to do with the reduction compared to last year. If it’s all about the weather, I suppose we’d soon see crossings increase to comparable or higher numbers than last year. There’s no good way I can think of to test the other hypotheses. By their nature we can’t count clandestine arrivals.
Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, says Rishi Sunak’s claims today (see 12.55pm) do not match reality.
Huge gap between Tory rhetoric & reality.
— Yvette Cooper (@YvetteCooperMP) June 5, 2023
PM claims his plan is working yet asylum backlog he promised to clear is at record high, 7,600 people arrived by boat in last few months, just 1% of last yr’s cases decided, enforcement lower than pre-pandemic & costs rising to £6bn.
Summary of Sunak's speech and Q&A on small boats
The text of Rishi Sunak’s speech in Dover on illegal migration is here. And here are the highlights from what he said in his opening remarks, and in the Q&A.
Sunak claimed that his plan to stop small boats was “starting to work”, saying crossings were down 20% this year. He said:
My message is this – our plan is starting to work.
Before I launched my plan in December, the number entering the UK illegally in small boats had more than quadrupled in two years.
Some said this problem was insoluble or just a fact of 21st century life.
They’d lost faith in politicians to put in the hard yards to do something about it.
And, of course, we have a long way still to go.
But in the five months since I launched the plan, crossings are now down 20 per cent compared to last year.
That’s right: crossings are down 20 per cent.
This is the first time since this problem began that arrivals between January and May have actually fallen compared to the year before.
He brushed aside suggestions that the fall in numbers was partly due to bad weather. Asked how he could be sure his policies were a factor, he said that the 20% fall in UK arrivals coincided with illegal immigration into the rest of Europe going up by 30%. And asked specifically about the strong winds in the Channel in recent days, which are said to explain why the recent arrival numbers have been very low, he just said weather was not something he could control. Nigel Farage, the former leader of Ukip and the Brexit party, claimed the weather was the key factor.
Sunak is deluded. Stop the Boats is not working, it’s just windy!
— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) June 5, 2023
Sunak said the government has acquired two new barges to house asylum seekers. He said:
To reduce pressures on local communities, we’ll also house people on ships.
The first will arrive in Portland in the next fortnight.
And we’ve secured another two today that will accommodate another 1,000.
He also said the camps for asylum seekers at the former military bases at Wethersfield and Scampton would open soon, with “hundreds” moving in over the summer and almost 3,000 being housed on those sites by the autumn.
He said that the French stopped 33,000 people crossing the Channel last year, up 40% on the previous year, and that interceptions this year by the French are “up considerably”.
He said that small boat arrivals from Albania were down 90% as a result of the returns agreement he signed. He said:
In December I reached a deal with Albania because last year nearly a third of all those arriving in small boats were from that safe European country.
That’s delivering too.
We’ve now returned 1800 to Albania in just six months.
We’ve gone from accepting around 1 in 5 Albanian asylum cases to now just 1 in 50 – in line with our European partners.
And what is the result of all of this?
So far this year, the number of Albanian small boat arrivals has fallen by almost 90 per cent.
This is proof that our deterrence strategy can work. When people know that if they come here illegally, they won’t get to stay - they stop coming.
He said that the refusal rate for asylum seekers claiming to be victims of modern slavery has tripled since the evidence requirements were tightened.
He claimed he was still on track to clear the backlog of legacy asylum applications awaiting decisions. He said:
I promised to clear through the backlog of people waiting for initial decision.
Numbers published today show the initial decision legacy backlog is down by over 17,000.
And we’re on track to clear it entirely by the end of the year.
Mark Easton, the BBC’s home affairs correspondent, says Sunak is wrong about this.
“We're on track to clear it entirely by the end of the year,” @RishiSunak said today (he means the pre-July asylum backlog). But they are not. With 74,400 claims stuck in the system, @ukhomeoffice needs to quadruple its processing rate to eradicate the backlog by Dec 31st.
— Mark Easton (@BBCMarkEaston) June 5, 2023
He defended the plan to hold child migrants in detention, saying that exempting them would risk creating an “incentive” for people to put more young people on small boats. He said:
On detention, the reason that’s in place is because we don’t want to create an incentive for people to put children on these boats.
If you exempted children from the policy then it would give every incentive for people to bring children on with them and you put more children at risk actually so I don’t think that’s the right thing to do.
Obviously there are appropriate facilities for families so they’re not separated, they’re kept together. We need to make sure that that’s done properly and fairly as it always has been and will continue to do so. I think it would be a mistake to exclude children because it would create an incentive for people to put more children on the boats and that would be awful.
Updated
There will be one urgent question in the Commons today, on Kosovo, followed by statements on illegal migration and on the Covid inquiry.
AFTER 1530 TODAY:
— Labour Whips (@labourwhips) June 5, 2023
1 UQ – @aliciakearns - Asking for a statement on the situation in Kosovo.
2 Statement - @SuellaBraverman - Illegal Migration Update
3 Statement - Minister for Cabinet Office - U.K. Covid 19: Judicial Review
Rishi Sunak took a helicopter to Dover today, instead of taking the train, Peter Walker reports. This is something that has happened a lot before; Sunak uses helicopters, for government trips (funded by the taxpayer) and for party/personal trips (paid for by himself, or by donors) probably more than any of his predecessors.
We're told Rishi Sunak took *another* helicopter from London to Dover this morning, a journey of about 70 miles.
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) June 5, 2023
Man doesn't like trains.
Matt Hancock ordered to apologise for breaking rule saying MPs should not seek to influence inquiries by standards watchdog
Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, should apologise for breaking Commons rules that say MPs should not try to influence an inquiry by the parliamentary commissioner for standards, the Commons standards committee said in a report this morning.
It said that although Hancock’s offence was relatively minor, he has still not acknowledged that he made a mistake. The committee said:
This was a minor breach of the code; however, Mr Hancock has still not acknowledged his mistake. We recommend that he should apologise to the house and to the commissioner by means of a personal statement, the terms of which should be agreed in advance by Mr Speaker and the chair of the committee. We also recommend that Mr Hancock attends a briefing on his obligations under the code with the commissioner.
Daniel Greenberg, the commissioner, opened an investigation earlier this year into a claim that Steve Brine, the Conservative chair of the Commons health committee, broke Commons lobbying rules by contacting a cabinet minister on behalf of a firm that was paying him.
When he heard about the inquiry, Hancock sent Greenberg an unsolicited letter saying that he thought Brine had acted in the national interest during the Covid inquiry and that Brine “did nothing improper and should be cleared from any accusation given his actions were in line with his duties as a member of parliament”.
Greenberg then launched an inquiry into Hancock because his letter appeared to be a breach of a rule for MPs saying:
Members must not lobby a member of the committee on standards, the independent expert panel or the parliamentary commissioner for standards, or their staff, in a manner calculated or intended to influence their consideration of whether a breach of the code of conduct has occurred, or in relation to the imposition of a sanction.
Greenberg said Hancock had broken this rule, and the committee agreed. It said:
This case underlines that respect for the code and the processes for investigating potential breaches of the code, which were voted for by the house, is an important and necessary part of the code. We expect Mr Hancock to reflect his understanding of this in his apology.
Updated
Sunak says small boat interceptions in France 'up considerably' this year
Q: Are you satisfied that the French are doing enough to stop the boats. What is their interception rate? Is that good value for money for the £500m being spent by the British taxpayer?
Sunak says the French stopped 33,000 people crossing the Channel last year. That was 40% up on the previous year, he says.
And he says this year, whether you look at the figures for the first quarter, or for the first five months, the interception rate in France is “up considerably”, he says.
Q: How long will you allow children to be detained for?
Sunak says, if children were excluded from the detention policy, that would provide an incentive for children to be put on boats.
And that’s it. The Q&A is over.
I’ll post a summary shortly.
Updated
Q: What are you doing to help reduce the pressure on public services in Kent?
Sunak says the government is trying to ensure Kent gets the support it needs. He pays tribute to the lobbying done by Natalie Elphicke, the Dover MP.
He says the best way to relieve the pressure on Kent is to stop people coming in the first place. That is why the illegal migration bill is so important, he says.
Q: It has been very windy on the Channel in recent days, which is why there have been few crossings. Is that why you are here today?
Sunak says there are many things he can control, but not the weather. But it is important for him to visit Dover and see what is being done to stop the crossings. He has been before, he says.
He says children are being exposed to these dangerous crossings. “That is completely and utterly wrong,” he says. That is why “the moral thing do to and the compassionate thing to do” is to stop the crossings, he says.
Sunak suggests Ben Wallace well qualified to be next Nato secretary general
Q: When you go to Washington, will you be backing Ben Wallace for the next head of Nato?
Sunak says Wallace is “widely respected” by other defence ministers. He has done a great job, he says. He says the UK has always been a major contribute to Nato. And he says he thinks the Nato secretary general would agree.
Sunak says the government has made more progress on this issue “than anyone has made in a very long time”.
Sunak says government has acquired two new barges to house asylum seekers
Q: Where are the new barges for asylum seekers going?
Sunak says that will be announced in due course. But it is important to him to reduce the number of people staying in hotels, he says.
He says it is reasonable and fair to expect asylum seekers to share rooms if they are in hotels.
Q: Will communities get enough notice of where barges are going?
Sunak says the government does engage with local communities. They get funding to help them with costs, and 24-hour security is in place.
A barge is being installed in Portland. Two more barges are going to be used, he says.
Sunak says number of Albanians crossing Channel in small boats down 90% since he struck returns agreement
Q: Is there any evidence that your policies are responsible for crossings going down by 20%?
Sunak says in the rest of Europe illegal migration arrivals are still going up. That is significant, he says.
And he says last year Albania accounted for a third of small boat arrivals, despite it being a safe country. He says the government struck a deal with Albania, and now the number of Albanians crossing the Channel is down 90%.
Sunak is now taking questions.
Q: Is it credible to say you will stop all the boats?
Sunak says he wants to give people the message that his plan is working. Crossings are down by a fifth. That shows the measures are working.
He says they are obviously “not there yet”. But people should have confidence, he says.
Sunak summarises what he has done over the past six months to make a difference.
The UK has worked on this issue with other countries, he says. As a result of the deal with Albania, 1,800 Albanians have been returned to that country, he says.
He says he has doubled funding for the National Crime Agency to tackle people smuggling.
He says the refusal rate for people claiming to be victims of modern slavery has tripled since requirements were made stricter.
Updated
Sunak claims his small boats plan 'is starting to work', saying crossings down by 20%
Sunak says his message is “our plan is starting to work”.
He says that when he announced his plan, at the end of last year, the number of people entering the UK illegally via small boats had quadrupled over the past two years.
But now crossings are down 20% compared with last year, he says.
And he says this has happened even though the number of migrants entering the rest of Europe illegally has gone up 30% over the same period.
Updated
Rishi Sunak's speech and Q&A on stopping small boats
Rishi Sunak is about to give his speech in Kent. He will be talking about what he has achieved in the last six months in relation to stopping small boats and reducing illegal immigration. He will also be taking questions from journalists.
There is a live feed at the top of the blog.
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Starmer claims small boats 'an ever-growing problem' because government policies failing
Keir Starmer has described the speech Rishi Sunak is due to give later on tackling illegal immigration as “like Groundhog Day”. Speaking on a visit to the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in Somerset, Starmer said:
I think everybody wants to make sure that we stop the boats, we don’t want people making that dangerous journey.
All we’ve really had from the government though is the announcement of a policy that doesn’t work and then the reannouncement of the same policy, essentially.
It often feels, I think, like Groundhog Day and meanwhile that’s costing a fortune for the taxpayer and there’s this growing sense of frustration.
Starmer also claimed that illegal immigration was “an ever-growing problem” because the government did not have enough returns agreements with other countries, it was not doing enough to tackle the criminal gangs, and it was not processing asylum claims quickly enough. He said:
A deal with Albania is, of course, progress but we need many more returns agreements. Because at the moment the government has baked in a problem, which is because they haven’t got returns agreements with other countries, because they’re not tackling this upstream with cross-border criminal activity being absolutely dealt with, and because they are not processing the claims quickly enough, they are building an ever-growing problem.
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The Daily Telegraph has today splashed on what seems like a remarkable story. It quotes research claiming that the lockdown measures imposed during the first wave of Covid in 2020 may have saved just 1,700 lives in England and Wales. The report says:
Lockdown saved as few as 1,700 lives in England and Wales in spring 2020, according to a landmark study which concludes the benefits of the policy were “a drop in the bucket compared to the staggering collateral costs” imposed.
Scientists from Johns Hopkins University and Lund University examined almost 20,000 studies on measures taken to protect populations against Covid across the world.
It is the reference to Johns Hopkins University that makes this sound particularly authoritative. The School of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University is world-renowned, and during the pandemic its Coronavirus Resource Centre was one of the best sources of information about the pandemic.
But the report has not actually been produced by the School of Medicine. It has been published by the Institute of Economic Affairs, the libertarian thinktank best known in the UK for inspiring Liz Truss and some of the ideas in her disastrous mini-budget. The report has been written by three people, one of whom, Steve Hanke, is an academic at Johns Hopkins University. But he is an economics professor, not a public health specialist, and he is described in the IEA report as a well-known currency and commodity trader.
Monday’s Daily TELEGRAPH: “Lockdown benefits ‘a drop in the bucket compared to the costs’ “. #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/JsjLbNe700
— Allie Hodgkins-Brown (@AllieHBNews) June 4, 2023
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When Boris Johnson was prime minister, he regularly attacked Labour for its failure to build new nuclear power stations when it was in office. He claimed this was part of the reason for the country’s problem with energy security.
On his visit to Hinkley Point C in Somerset this morning, the new nuclear power station that is still not operational, Keir Starmer will claim that it is the Conservative government that is to blame. He will point out that Labour announced outline plans for 10 nuclear reactors in 2009, and that none of them are operational.
Here is a Labour list saying what happened to the 10 projects.
And here is Ben Quinn and Kiran Stacey’s story about Starmer’s visit.
Covid WhatsApps used for coffee orders not big decisions, says ex-health minister
Government WhatsApp groups were never used to make important decisions during Covid and instead relayed information and discussed coffee orders, James Bethell, a former health minister, has argued. Peter Walker has the story here.
Sunak to claim he is tackling illegal migration as former Tory leader says more should be done
Good morning. Rishi Sunak is giving a speech in Kent this morning and taking questions from journalists. According to No 10, he will be “deliver an update on his plan to stop the boats and the progress we have made over the last six months” (since he made his statement to MPs in December about his plans to “stop the boats”). But the reporters will have lots of other topics to ask him about, such as his government’s legal action against the Covid inquiry.
According to the Daily Telegraph, Sunak will this morning claim that a sharp fall in the number of Albanians coming to the UK to claim asylum shows his plans are working. In their story, Charles Hymas, Daniel Martin and Amy Gibbons report:
The prime minister will cite a sharp decline in the number of Albanians arriving as evidence that a tough stance on deportations will deter illegal migrants.
The numbers are down from around 30 per cent of Channel arrivals last year to one or two per cent in the first four months of this year.
It is understood that thousands of Albanians are being tracked down and targeted by Home Office immigration enforcement officers for deportation, although immigration minister Robert Jenrick admitted on Sunday that the Government had so far only returned hundreds of Albanians who arrived in small boats.
A 400-strong team of case workers have also been set up to fast-track a backlog of 16,683 asylum applications by Albanians, and immigration and enforcement officials are pursuing thousands more, many of whom have absconded.
Monday’s Daily TELEGRAPH: “Lockdown benefits ‘a drop in the bucket compared to the costs’ “. #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/JsjLbNe700
— Allie Hodgkins-Brown (@AllieHBNews) June 4, 2023
But Sunak may find that even people who support what he is trying to do on illegal immigration are not impressed by his progress update. In its story the Daily Mail said the update is likely to be “underwhelming”, and it quotes Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, asking why so few Albanians (“hundreds”, the immigration minister Robert Jenrick said yesterday) have been removed. Duncan Smith said:
Is the civil service simply failing to do what it is supposed to have done? We need to have a real reason as to why with a full agreement that people are lauding we haven’t got into priority mode and literally kicked these people out.
There needs to be a full explanation from the Home Office as to why this hasn’t happened.
And in the Daily Express, which is the Tory paper normally most reluctant to criticise the government, Martyn Brown, the paper’s deputy political editor, says in an analysis that “none of the new measures [announced by Sunak to deal with illegal immigration] have seemingly made a real impact”.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: Keir Starmer is visiting the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in Somerset.
11am: Rishi Sunak holds a press conference in Kent, where he will outline what he views as the progress made in the last six months on tackling illegal migration.
12.15pm: Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister, gives a speech to business leaders.
2.30pm: Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
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