Minister defends using TV footage to promote crackdown on illegal workers as critics call it ‘performative’
Good morning. Politicians like to claim that they are completely different from their opponents, because to win elections they need dividing line issues, but in truth the similarities can be striking too, because they end up facing the same challenges, and the electorate does not change much either. This Labour government is not the same as the last Conservative one. But at times it has sounded like Rishi Sunak (it adopted his signature anti-smoking legislation wholesale), Liz Truss (ministers constantly stress that growth is the number one priority) and even Boris Johnson (after the negativism of last year’s budget, there is a pivot towards more optimism). And today it it is sounding a bit like Theresa May in her “hostile environment” phase as home secretary.
The Home Office has embarked on a publicity blitz to show that it it beefing up efforts to catch people who are working in the UK illegally and to deport people who should not be in the country. This is not just policy; it involves ‘show not tell’ communications. As Pippa Crerar, Diane Taylor and Peter Walker report:
Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, is expected to join an early morning raid this week targeting illegal working, while the government will broadcast footage of deportations, a number of them involving foreign criminals, from detention to removal centres and on to waiting planes …
Downing Street is planning to go beyond simply taking the fight to Reform. “We don’t think it’s enough just to look strong on migration, we actually need to be strong. We’ve done really well on returns but people say they don’t believe it, that if it was true they’d see it on the news,” a source said.
This sort of approach is contentious in liberal circles (which may be part of the appeal in No 10, where Labour figures are worried a lot more at the moment about losing votes to Reform UK than losing votes to the Liberal Democrats and the Greens) and the Refugee Council has criticised the Home Office for the way it is publicising what it is doing. Enver Solomon, its chief executive, told the Independent:
It was not long ago that hate-filled mobs attempted to burn refugees alive in a hotel,. Communities are still healing from the appalling violence last summer, so the government should not risk driving up mistrust by using performative tactics that play into negative and dangerous narratives about immigration.
The public want a system that is orderly and controlled but also compassionate. That includes returning people without a right to be in the UK, but doing so in a dignified way instead of melodramatic television footage that will not build trust in government.
Angela Eagle, the minister for border security and asylum, has been doing an interview round this morning and she defended that the government is doing. Asked whether the policy was line with Keir Starmer’s previous pledge in opposition to create an immigration system “based on compassion and dignity”, Eagle replied:
I don’t believe for one minute that enforcing the law and ensuring that people who break the law face the consequences of doing that, up to and including deportation, arrest, is not compassionate. We have to have a system where the rules are respected and enforced.
She also defended the Home Office releasing pictures and footage of immigration raids and deportations:
It’s important that we show what we are doing and it’s important that we send messages to people who may have been sold lies about what will await them in the UK if they get themselves smuggled in.
They are more likely to be living in squalid conditions, being exploited by vicious gangs.
It’s important that we get those realities across and it’s important that that’s done in imagery as well as words.
There will be more on this as the day goes on. Here is the agenda for the day.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
Afternoon: Farmers hold a rally in Westminster to protest about the extension of inheritance tax to cover farms.
2.30pm: John Healey, the defence secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
After 3.30pm: MPs debate the second reading of the border security, asylum and immigration bill.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
Key events
Home Office crackdown on illegal working unlikely to have big impact on number of small boat crossings, says expert
The Home Office is today highlighting figures showing that the number of raids and arrests aimed at people working in the UK illegally is going up. It says:
Throughout January alone, immigration enforcement teams descended on 828 premises, including nail bars, convenience stores, restaurants and car washes, marking a 48% rise compared to the previous January. Arrests also surged to 609, demonstrating a 73% increase from just 352 the previous year.
More broadly, between 5 July last year and 31 January, both illegal working visits and arrests have soared by around 38% compared to the same 12 months prior. During the same period, the Home Office issued a total of 1,090 civil penalty notices. Employers could face a fine of up to £60,000 per worker if found liable.
In an interview on the Today programme, Peter Walsh, a senior reserarcher at the Migration Observatory, a migration policy thinktank based at the University of Oxford, said that enforcement activity was definitely going up, but that fines were still lower than they were before Covid. He explained:
The Labour statistics released today they show visits to businesses and arrests in January are up, but that’s only one month. So I think we should be somewhat cautious about inferring too much from those data.
More instructive, I think, is the number of civil penalty notices which have been issued to employers of illegal workers in the first seven months of the Labour government. That’s over 1,000. Now, that is more in recent years. They were already trending upwards from historic lows after the pandemic, and they’re still below levels seen a decade ago – about a third fewer civil penalty notices issued than in six-months periods in say, 2015.
Walsh said that that raids like the ones being publicised by the Home Office today do lead to more people being removed from the UK, and do deter people from employing illegal workers. But he said they were unlikely to have much impact on the number of people trying to cross the Channel in small boats. He explained:
I think [the raids] have two general impacts.
They do increase the number of people returned. So raids on businesses are one of the ways that people without status go into the removals process – not necessarily biggest one, but they are one route.
And there is also some evidence as well that they deter employers from employing people who don’t have the right to work. It does make them think twice.
The big question, of course, is, well, will it stop people crossing in small boats?
Now that’s very difficult to say, but to the extent that it prevents employers from employing illegal workers, it could deter people crossing the Channel for work reasons, though, of course, it’s unlikely to deter people seeking protection. And the data suggests actually that latter group make up quite large shares of those [people on small boats].
As we report in our story on this today, between 2018 and September 2023 93% of small boat arrivals claimed asylum, with up to three-quarters granted it and more who were initially refused winning their cases on appeal.
Angela Eagle dismisses claim UK could exempt US tech firms like X from parts of Online Safety Act to avoid Trump’s tariffs
Today the Telegraph is running a frontpage story claiming that the government may exempt some US tech companies, like Elon Musk’s X, from aspects of the Online Safety Act to ensure the UK avoids President Trump’s tariffs. It says:
The law, which regulates online speech, is thought to be heavily disliked by the president’s administration because it can levy massive fines on US tech companies.
Downing Street is willing to renegotiate elements of the Act in order to strike a trade deal, should it be raised by the US, The Telegraph understands.
In an interview on ITV’s Good Morning Britain this morning, Angela Eagle, the minister for border security and asylum, said that she had not heard anything that made her believe the story was true and that the government would not want to be watering down the law in this area.
She said:
I certainly, from my perch in government, haven’t seen any corroboration that that’s likely to happen …
We know that, since the act was passed, the tech bros in America have got very close to the administration there and are watering down rather than strengthening some of the rules about content.
But I wouldn’t have thought there would be any justification whatsoever for keeping violent videos available across the globe when they can be taken down, and we are working very closely to ensure that we can get that damaging content off the internet so that it is not seen by people who can be radicalised by it.
I can’t imagine that we would be in a situation where we would want to see a weakening rather than a strengthening of safeguards in that area.
The Home Office plans to close nine more asylum hotels by the end of March, Angela Eagle said this morning.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Eagle, the minister for border security and asylum, said:
At the height of the last government, there were 400 hotels in use. We are at 218 now.
Asked if that number would decline next month, Eagle: “Yes. There are nine hotels that are planned for closure by the end of March.”
Quite a lot of government activity at the moment involves waking up in the morning, finding out about the latest eruption from Donald Trump, and then (like the rest of us) trying to work out whether to take it seriously. This morning the news from Washington is about a Trump proposal to put 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports.
In comments on his way to the Super Bowl late on Sunday, the president said he will impose 25% tariffs on “any steel coming into the United States”, adding that aluminum will also be subject to additional duties. According to Politico, about 10% of UK steel exports last year went to America.
Asked about the Trump comments, Angela Eagle, the Home Office minister, said this morning the government would have to “wait and see whether the president gets more specific about what he meant by that comment”. She went on:
We have a very balanced trading relationship with the US – I think £300 billion worth of trade between our countries – and I think it’s in the best interests of both of us, as longstanding allies and neighbours, that we carry on with that balanced trade.
Second Labour MP faces sanctions over offensive WhatsApp group messages
The Labour MP Oliver Ryan is to meet the government chief whip to decide on any sanctions over his membership of a WhatsApp group that featured racist, sexist and other offensive comments, Angela Eagle has said. Peter Walker has the story.
Minister defends using TV footage to promote crackdown on illegal workers as critics call it ‘performative’
Good morning. Politicians like to claim that they are completely different from their opponents, because to win elections they need dividing line issues, but in truth the similarities can be striking too, because they end up facing the same challenges, and the electorate does not change much either. This Labour government is not the same as the last Conservative one. But at times it has sounded like Rishi Sunak (it adopted his signature anti-smoking legislation wholesale), Liz Truss (ministers constantly stress that growth is the number one priority) and even Boris Johnson (after the negativism of last year’s budget, there is a pivot towards more optimism). And today it it is sounding a bit like Theresa May in her “hostile environment” phase as home secretary.
The Home Office has embarked on a publicity blitz to show that it it beefing up efforts to catch people who are working in the UK illegally and to deport people who should not be in the country. This is not just policy; it involves ‘show not tell’ communications. As Pippa Crerar, Diane Taylor and Peter Walker report:
Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, is expected to join an early morning raid this week targeting illegal working, while the government will broadcast footage of deportations, a number of them involving foreign criminals, from detention to removal centres and on to waiting planes …
Downing Street is planning to go beyond simply taking the fight to Reform. “We don’t think it’s enough just to look strong on migration, we actually need to be strong. We’ve done really well on returns but people say they don’t believe it, that if it was true they’d see it on the news,” a source said.
This sort of approach is contentious in liberal circles (which may be part of the appeal in No 10, where Labour figures are worried a lot more at the moment about losing votes to Reform UK than losing votes to the Liberal Democrats and the Greens) and the Refugee Council has criticised the Home Office for the way it is publicising what it is doing. Enver Solomon, its chief executive, told the Independent:
It was not long ago that hate-filled mobs attempted to burn refugees alive in a hotel,. Communities are still healing from the appalling violence last summer, so the government should not risk driving up mistrust by using performative tactics that play into negative and dangerous narratives about immigration.
The public want a system that is orderly and controlled but also compassionate. That includes returning people without a right to be in the UK, but doing so in a dignified way instead of melodramatic television footage that will not build trust in government.
Angela Eagle, the minister for border security and asylum, has been doing an interview round this morning and she defended that the government is doing. Asked whether the policy was line with Keir Starmer’s previous pledge in opposition to create an immigration system “based on compassion and dignity”, Eagle replied:
I don’t believe for one minute that enforcing the law and ensuring that people who break the law face the consequences of doing that, up to and including deportation, arrest, is not compassionate. We have to have a system where the rules are respected and enforced.
She also defended the Home Office releasing pictures and footage of immigration raids and deportations:
It’s important that we show what we are doing and it’s important that we send messages to people who may have been sold lies about what will await them in the UK if they get themselves smuggled in.
They are more likely to be living in squalid conditions, being exploited by vicious gangs.
It’s important that we get those realities across and it’s important that that’s done in imagery as well as words.
There will be more on this as the day goes on. Here is the agenda for the day.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
Afternoon: Farmers hold a rally in Westminster to protest about the extension of inheritance tax to cover farms.
2.30pm: John Healey, the defence secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
After 3.30pm: MPs debate the second reading of the border security, asylum and immigration bill.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
