Rule that small boat arrivals can’t claim citizenship just ‘new guidance on old policy’, says minister – UK politics live

On Radio 4’s the World at One, Chris Bryant, a minister in the culture and science departments, said that he backed the Home Office guidance saying that people who arrive in the UK on small boats should not normally be allowed to get British citizenship. (See 9.22am.) He claimed this was just

Asked if he was in favour, he replied:

To be precise, it’s a new guidance on an old policy.

The law already says, quite rightly and obviously, that if you’ve arrived and you’ve arrived illegally, and you have acted illegally as part of your arrival, then you may well not get citizenship. That’s always been a provision that’s been available in law, and we’re simply clarifying.

When it was put to him that stopping people being granted asylum from being able to acquire citizenship would be bad for integration, and he was asked how he could justify that, Bryant replied:

Because what I want to do is I want to get these numbers down.

Whether it’s people coming in on small boats, or previously we had different versions of people get illegally into this country, and we need to get those numbers down.

Ali Harbi Ali, who killed the Conservative MP David Amess in 2021, was referred to the Prevent programme for two years, security minister Dan Jarvis has told MPs.

In a Commons statement, Jarvis said:

The perpetrator had previously been referred to the Prevent programme and subsequently to the specialist Channel programme between 2014 and 2016, between five and seven years before the attack took place.

The minister said publishing the Prevent learning review into the case, completed in February 2022, would “enable public scrutiny of Prevent”.

Jarvis told MP:

The perpetrator of the attack on Sir David became known to Prevent in October 2014, when he was referred by his school after teachers identified a change in his behaviour.

The case was adopted by the Channel Mutli-Agency Early Intervention Programme in November of 2014. An intervention provider who specialised in tackling Islamist extremism was assigned to work with him. The perpetrator was exited from Channel in April 2015 after his terrorism risk was assessed as low.

A 12-month post-exit police review in 2016 also found no terrorism concerns. The case was closed to Prevent at that point. There were no further Prevent referrals in the five years between the case being closed and the attack.

The Ministry of Justice sent Kim Leadbeater an impact assessment warning about the effect of the assisted dying bill on the criminal justice system if each case had to be signed off by a high court judge.

Officials have pointed out that the MoJ has previously expressed concerns about the shortage of judges, and hinted that any advice to Leadbeater would have pointed out that it could add to the backlog of cases in Egland and Wales’ highest courts. The MoJ has previously expressed concern about the low number of high court judges, an insider said.

This week, in response to these concerns, and similar points made by witnesses giving evidence to the committee looking at the bill, Leadbeater announced that she was dropping the plan in the bill for all assisted dying applications to be signed off by a judge.

Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, told journalists:

It is my job and that of my ministers and my officials to engage with the substance of the bill after the second reading and to make recommendations and to put options in front of the person who owns a bill, Kim Leadbetter, about what is and what is not operable.

There were a number of options that she could have taken. It remains a decision for her about what options she chooses, what amendments she thinks she wants to make to the bill. And our job was to give dispassionate, neutral advice about what the thought could work in practice and what the ramifications of those options would be.

It is always good to be charitable in life and so, for reasons to be explained in a moment, it is worth pointing out that that was not quite as bad for Kemi Badenoch as it looked. But that’s little consolation, because it looked dire. Possibly her worst yet.

As expected, Badenoch started by asking about the Telegraph splash. This is what she said:

The Conservative government established the Ukraine family scheme, and in total over 200,000 Ukrainians, mostly women, children and the elderly, have found sanctuary in the UK from Putin’s war. However, a family-of-six from Gaza have applied to live in Britain using this scheme, and a judge has now ruled in their favour.

This is not what the scheme was designed to do. This decision is completely wrong. It cannot be allowed to stand. Is the government planning to appeal on any points of law, and if so, which ones?

And this is how Keir Starmer replied:

I do not agree with the decision. She’s right, it’s the wrong decision. She hasn’t quite done her homework, because the decision in question was taken under the last government according to the legal framework for the last government.

But let me be clear, it should be parliament that makes the rules on immigration. It should be the government that makes the policy, that is the principle, and the Home Secretary is already looking at the legal loophole which we need to close in this particular case.

Badenoch picked up on the point that Starmer had not specifically answered her question about an appeal, and she kept pursuing this. She also asked if it was possible to stop people, like the Palestinian family mentioned in the Telegraph story, from using the right to family life to make a case for coming to the UK, without leaving the European convention on human rights. Just now CCHQ has been tweeting about Starmer dodging the appeal question. And that says it all. Because if you have to start spinning your messsage to the media after a debate, or after a PMQs, it is a giveaway that you failed to land it at the time. Badenoch’s mistake was that she would not take yes for an answer. The intricacies of whether or not the government is appealing are far less important than the main point, which was whether or not Starmer was willing to condemn the decision, and once he did Badenoch should probably have moved on.

But she didn’t, and that allowed Starmer to deploy this answer in response to her third question.

She complains about scripted answers and questions, her script doesn’t allow her to listen to the answer.

She asked me if we’re going to change the law and close the loophole in question one, I said yes. She asked me again in question two, and I said yes. She asked me again in question three, it’s still yes.

It was not entirely fair, and there was some straw man reasoning taking place here. Badenoch’s first question was about an appeal, not about changing law. But that did not matter because, rhetorically, it was brutally effective.

You might have thought it could not have got any worse for the Tory leader. But it did. In response to the final, Finland question, Starmer blew her out of the water. (See 12.13pm.).

So, overall, it was a wretched exchange for Badenoch.

But there were some faint positives. As opposition leader, you cannot make policy, but you can set the agenda, and Badenoch can plausibly argue that the citizenship policy that she announced last week (and which she referenced today in relation to the Gaza story – see 12.09pm) is having an impact on government. The Home Office does seem to be shifting in response. (See 9.22am.) And, although Starmer won a clear victory at PMQs today, he did so by adopting a relatively rightwing stance on an asylum application story that suggests he is a bit worried about Tory policy in this area (although, to be fair, it may be Nigel Farage that is worrying him more).

And Starmer also promised to close the “loophole” that allowed the family from Gaza to come to the UK. (See 12.06pm where I have posted the full quotes – but you may need to refresh the page to get them to show.) He sounded confident about being able to do that. But, if the experience of the last government in this area is anything to go by, it will turn out to be harder than he implies.

Harriet Cross (Con) asks if Daniel Zeichner, the farming minister, was right to say yesterday farming was not a priority for the government.

Starmer says farming is as priority for him.

Saqib Bhatti (Con) asks about Lord Hermer, and whether he represents value of money.

Starmer says people used to believe in the principle that lawyers don’t necessarily agree with their clients. If we abandon that, then the only people able to defend sex offenders would be people who support them, and so you would have “victims cross-examined by perpetrators”.