Rishi Sunak says two more barges will be used to house about 1,000 asylum seekers
Two more barges will be used to house asylum seekers as part of continued efforts to reduce Channel crossings, Rishi Sunak has announced.
The prime minister declined to say where they will be moored, but said they will have the capacity for an extra 1,000 migrants who enter the UK illegally.
Speaking from Kent, he also announced that another ship for 500 asylum seekers, which the government acquired in May, will arrive in Portland off the coast of Dorset within the next two weeks.
This was met with a furious reaction from the local Conservative MP Richard Drax, who claimed it will be “nothing more than a quasi-prison”.
He told LBC: “They’ve got £9 a week to spend – which isn’t much money – what happens if they disappear? None of these questions have been answered.”
Charities and opposition MPs also condemned the expansion of the plan and urged the government to concentrate on reducing the asylum seeker backlog rather than putting out “cynical spin”.
Mr Sunak also said thousands of extra spaces for migrants had been found in hotels by making people share rooms
Politics latest – Braverman says she ‘will not stop the boats’
Mr Sunak said Channel crossings were down by a fifth compared to last year and “our plan [to stop the boats] is starting to work”.
He said there was more to be done, adding: “To reduce pressures on local communities we will also house people on ships. The first will arrive in Portland in the next fortnight and we’ve secured another two today.”
On top of this measure, Mr Sunak said thousands of extra spaces for migrants had been found in hotels by making people share rooms.
The prime minister insisted this was “more than fair” following protests outside accommodation in Pimlico, south London.
He said: “If you’re coming here illegally claiming sanctuary from death, torture or persecution, then you should be willing to share a taxpayer-funded hotel room in central London.”
The Home Office later said the move will save £250m a year and could reduce the need to source an additional 90 hotels.
However, Yvette Cooper, Labour’s shadow home secretary, said this measure is “not new”.
She told BBC Radio 4’s World At One programme: “The real problem is that they’re still increasing the number of hotels, increasing the number of hotel rooms that they’re using in the first place, and that reflects this failure to just take basic decisions to actually clear the backlog, to make decisions and get the system properly working rather than this chaos.”
Crossings ‘down by a fifth’
Some 172,758 people were waiting for an initial decision on asylum applications at the end of March, up 57% from a year earlier and the highest figure since comparable records began in 2010, according to Home Office figures.
Mr Sunak said numbers published on Monday show the backlog is down by more than 17,000 and insisted the government was “on track” to clear it by the end of the year.
He also said that Channel crossings were down by 20% and his returns deal with Albania had led to 1,800 people being sent back, and was having a deterrent effect.
Mr Sunak said: “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 still have a long way to go. But in the five months since I launched the plan, crossings are now down 20% compared to last year.”
He went on to defend the inclusion of children in new detention rules, claiming that to exempt them would create an “incentive” for smugglers to put more young people on boats.
Read more:
Hundreds of Albanian migrants sent back under ‘gold-standard’ deal
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And he said preparations are being put in place so that once legal challenges are complete “we have more detention capacity to hold those who arrive illegally, enough court capacity to process their cases and the planes to remove them”.
“With grit and determination, the government can fix this and we are using every tool at our disposal,” he said.
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The speech comes after polling found the majority of the British public think that the prime minister is failing on his five priorities, which include stopping small boat crossings.
Mr Sunak has staked his premiership on reducing illegal immigration and has previously announced plans to house asylum seekers in former military barracks to reduce reliance on hotels, which the government says is costing the taxpayer £6m a day.
The Home Office said sites at Wethersfield and Scampton – which have faced objection from local Tories – will open this summer and house 3,700 people.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the promise of further measures to tackle the crisis was “like Groundhog Day” and the government should focus on securing more returns agreements.
He told reporters in Somerset: “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.”
Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats dismissed Mr Sunak’s speech as “cynical spin” to cover up the fact they “have broken our asylum system”.
Charities also condemned the plan.
Amnesty International UK said the barges plan was “potentially unlawful” and a “terrible idea” designed to distract the public from the government’s failure to tackle the asylum claims backlog.
The Refugee Council branded Mr Sunak’s rhetoric on migrant crossings “misleading, wrong and harmful” and said his policies fail to treat people fleeing their home country with dignity and humanity.
There is much that is still not known about the US strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Reports are coming in about which sites were hit and what military elements were involved, as President Donald Trump hails the attack on social media.
Here’s what we know so far.
Follow latest: US bombers strike three Iranian nuclear sites
Which sites were hit?
America appears to have hit the three key locations in Iran’s nuclear programme.
They include Isfahan, the location of a significant research base, as well as uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow.
Natanz was believed to have been previously damaged in Israeli strikes after bombs disrupted power to the centrifuge hall, possibly destroying the machines indirectly.
However the facility at Fordow, which is buried around 80 metres below a mountain, had previously escaped major damage.
Details about the damage in the US strikes is not yet known, although Mr Trump said the three sites had been “obliterated”.
Read more:
Fordow: What we know about Iran’s secretive ‘nuclear mountain’
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Sky’s Mark Stone explains how Iran might respond to the US strike on Tehran’s nuclear sites.
What weapons were used in the attacks?
The White House and Pentagon did not immediately elaborate on the operation, but a US official said B-2 heavy bombers were involved.
Fox News host Sean Hannity said he had spoken with the president and that six bunker buster bombs were used on the Fordow facility.
Bunker buster bombs are designed to explode twice. Once to breach the ground surface and again once the bomb has burrowed down to a certain depth.
A file picture of a GBU-57 bunker buster bomb, which was possibly used in the attack on Fordow. Pic: AP
Israel has some in its arsenal but does not have the much more powerful GBU-57, which can only be launched from the B-2 bomber and was believed to be the only bomb capable of breaching Fordow.
Hannity said 30 Tomahawk missiles fired by US submarines 400 miles away struck the Iranian nuclear sites of Natanz and Isfahan.
The US has carried out a “very successful attack” on three nuclear sites on Iran, President Donald Trump has said.
The strikes, which the US leader announced on social media, reportedly include a hit on the heavily-protected Fordow enrichment plant which is buried deep under a mountain.
The other sites hit were at Natanz and Isfahan. It brings the US into direct involvement in the war between Israel and Iran.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the “bold decision” by Mr Trump, saying it would “change history”.
Iran has repeatedly denied that it is seeking a nuclear weapon and the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog said in June that it has no proof of a “systematic effort to move into a nuclear weapon”.
Follow latest: US bombers strike three Iranian nuclear sites
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Trump: Iran strikes ‘spectacular success’
Addressing the nation in the hours after the strikes, Mr Trump said that Iran must now make peace or “we will
go after” other targets in Iran.
Commenting on the operation, he said that the three Iranian sites had been “obliterated”.
“There will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight
days,” he said.
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Benjamin Netanyahu said Donald Trump and the US have acted with strength following strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
In a posting on Truth Social earlier, Mr Trump said, “All planes are safely on their way home” and he congratulated “our great American Warriors”. He added: “Fordow is gone.”
He also threatened further strikes on Iran unless it doesn’t “stop immediately”, adding: “Now is the time for peace.”
It is not yet clear if the UK was directly involved in the attack.
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‘Iranians have to repond’
Read more:
Analysis: If Israel breaks Iran it will end up owning the chaos
Fordow: What we know about Iran’s secretive ‘nuclear mountain’
Among the sites hit was Fordow, a secretive nuclear facility buried around 80 metres below a mountain and one of two key uranium enrichment plants in Iran.
“A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow,” Mr Trump said. “Fordow is gone.”
There had been a lot of discussion in recent days about possible American involvement in the Iran-Israel conflict, and much centred around the US possibly being best placed to destroy Fordow.
Meanwhile, Natanz and Isfahan were the other two sites hit in the US attack.
Natanz is the other major uranium enrichment plant in Iran and was believed to have possibly already suffered extensive damage in Israel’s strikes earlier this week.
Isfahan features a large nuclear technology centre and enriched uranium is also stored there, diplomats say.
Map showing the Fordow enrichment plant
US media reported that six ‘bunker buster’ bombs were used to strike Fordow.
Mr Trump said no further strikes were planned and that he hoped diplomacy would now take over.
It’s not yet known what Iran’s response will be – particularly as the government was already struggling to repel Israel.
However a commentator on Iranian state TV said every US citizen or military in the region was now a legitimate target.
World
Like George W Bush did in Iraq, if Israel breaks Iran it will end up owning the chaos that could ensue
Israelis are good at tactics, poor at strategic vision, it has been observed.
Their campaign against Iran may be a case in point.
Short termism is understandable in a region that is so unpredictable. Why make elaborate plans if they are generally undone by unexpected events? It is a mindset that is familiar to anyone who has lived or worked there.
And it informs policy-making. The Israeli offensive in Gaza is no exception. The Israeli government has never been clear how it will end or what happens the day after that in what remains of the coastal strip. Pressed privately, even senior advisers will admit they simply do not know.
It may seem unfair to call a military operation against Iran that literally took decades of planning short-termist or purely tactical. There was clearly a strategy of astonishing sophistication behind a devastating campaign that has dismantled so much of the enemy’s capability.
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How close is Iran to producing a nuclear weapon?
But is there a strategic vision beyond that? That is what worries Israel’s allies.
It’s not as if we’ve not been here before, time and time again. From Libya to Afghanistan and all points in between we have seen the chaos and carnage that follows governments being changed.
Hundreds of thousands have died. Vast swathes of territory remain mired in turmoil or instability.
Which is where a famous warning sign to American shoppers in the 80s and 90s comes in.
Ahead of the disastrous invasion that would tear Iraq apart, America’s defence secretary, Colin Powell, is said to have warned US president George W Bush of the “Pottery Barn rule”.
The Pottery Barn was an American furnishings store. Signs among its wares told clumsy customers: “You break it, you own it.”
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Iran and Israel exchange attacks
Bush did not listen to Powell hard enough. His administration would end up breaking Iraq and owning the aftermath in a bloody debacle lasting years.
Israel is not invading Iran, but it is bombing it back to the 80s, or even the 70s, because it is calling for the fall of the government that came to power at the end of that decade.
Iran’s leadership is proving resilient so far but we are just a week in. It is a country of 90 million, already riven with social and political discontent. Its system of government is based on factional competition, in which paranoia, suspicion and intense rivalries are the order of the day.
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After half a century of authoritarian theocratic rule there are no opposition groups ready to replace the ayatollahs. There may be a powerful sense of social cohesion and a patriotic resentment of outside interference, for plenty of good historic reasons.
But if that is not enough to keep the country together then chaos could ensue. One of the biggest and most consequential nations in the region could descend into violent instability.
That will have been on Israel’s watch. If it breaks Iran it will own it even more than America owned the disaster in Iraq.
Iran and Israel are, after all, in the same neighbourhood.
Has Israel thought through the consequences? What is the strategic vision beyond victory?
And if America joins in, as Donald Trump is threatening, is it prepared to share that legacy?
At the very least, is his administration asking its allies whether they have a plan for what could come next?
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