THE latest edition of Worst of Westminster is here from reporters Steph Brawn and Hamish Morrison. Sign up to get it in your inbox for free every week by clicking here.
This week we’ve been pressing the Home Office for answers as a Stirling University student languishes in detention at Dungavel.
Business management student Muhammad Rauf Waris spoke to the press for the first time on Thursday after he was arrested on June 15 for allegedly breaching the terms of his student visa.
The Home Office says he was working more than the legally-permitted 20 hours per week. Waris insists he’s done nothing wrong.
He told The National his detention is damaging both his physical and mental health, and he accused the Home Office of “mental torture”.
A bail hearing has been set for Tuesday, Waris’s lawyers tell us, meaning his hopes of returning to his studies could be fulfilled, if the verdict goes his way. Stay tuned.
Labour in a spin
It seems like hardly a newsletter goes by without having to mention a U-turn by the Labour Party, but here we go again.
It would appear they are rowing back on their commitment to strengthening workers’ rights after running scared from Tories branding them “anti-business”. At Labour’s national policy forum in Nottingham last month, party leaders watered down a promise to boost the protection of gig economy workers, according to sources and documents seen by the Financial Times.
A text agreed last month to be published in the run-up to Labour’s annual conference in October was seen by the FT and reportedly showed that the party is watering down its pledges to both create a single status of “worker” to guarantee “basic rights and protections” for all, including those in the gig economy.
Meanwhile, deputy leader Angela Rayner has refused to support the devolution of employment law to Scotland insisting the country “won’t need it”.
And just for good measure, Scottish leader Anas Sarwar has seemingly refused to say if he would support Holyrood’s gender reforms again despite voting for them in the first place.
He suggested this week on a visit to Glasgow with Rayner that the party should have been more “conditional” in their support for the bill and pushed on the amendments they put forward, many of which they dropped during the stage three process.
Episode 261.4 of Labour U-turns will be coming to you next week.
AOB
- A former aide to UK Health Secretary Steve Barclay has called for the full privatisation of the NHS. Leon Emirali, a media aide in Barclay’s parliamentary office until July 2020, said politicians should make a plan to “rip the whole thing [the NHS] up and start again” during a TalkTV interview.
- Economists have warned that the UK faces a “very real risk” of recession due to higher interest rates despite the Tories gloating about inflation slowing to its lowest level in 17 months. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said Consumer Prices Index inflation was 6.8% in July, down from 7.9% in June, but the IPPR think tank raised concerns that further hikes could force the economy to contract, with other countries having brought inflation under control quicker.
