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Labour says Rishi Sunak should be “honest” with the public by publishing documents which appear to show he had doubts about the Rwanda scheme to stop small boats from crossing the Channel.

Documents seen by Sky News suggest the prime minister was sceptical about government plans to send illegal migrants to the African country.

Mr Sunak expressed his doubts while he was chancellor in March 2022, shortly before the Rwanda scheme was first announced by Boris Johnson’s government.

The existence of the Number 10 briefing papers was widely reported on Saturday.

Now the Labour Party is urging Mr Sunak to “come clean”.

Watch Wilfred Frost’s live interview with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer on the Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips show on Sky News from 8.30am on Sunday.

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The papers revealed this weekend suggest the now prime minister had particular concerns about the costs of the scheme.

It has since been made public that the government has committed at least £400m to the Rwandan government, despite not a single person being removed to Rwanda.

The papers also appear to show Mr Sunak doubted the effectiveness of his now flagship policy, saying the then chancellor believed the “deterrent won’t work”.

A government source said Mr Sunak has put the Rwanda policy at the heart of his plan for government, and as chancellor, funded the scheme.

The government’s Rwanda Bill will return to the House of Commons this month.

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper speaking during the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool
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Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper

Yvette Cooper, Labour’s shadow home secretary, said: “The more we hear about the government’s Rwanda scheme, the more obvious it becomes that this is an extortionate con that won’t fix the Tory chaos in our immigration system.

“The home secretary, the former immigration minister and now the prime minister clearly don’t believe the government’s plans will work.

“It’s time the Tory government was honest with the public, and publish both the papers outlining Rishi Sunak’s concerns and the full details of the cost of the scheme.

“In a few weeks’ time, the prime minister will ask his divided and sceptical backbench MPs to vote for a Rwanda scheme he clearly doesn’t believe in and which he refuses to set out the costs for.

“They should stop wasting time on this costly charade and adopt Labour’s plan to go after the criminal smuggling gangs, negotiating new security arrangements with Europe to better protect our borders and set up a new returns unit to ensure those with no right to be in the UK are swiftly removed.”

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After the reports about Mr Sunak’s doubts on Saturday, a government source said: “As chancellor, Rishi funded the Rwanda scheme and put it at the heart of his 10-point plan the month after becoming PM.

“Now he is passing the Rwanda Bill following the Supreme Court judgment to get flights off the ground.

“He is the first prime minister ever to oversee a reduction in small boat crossings, which were down by 36% last year.”

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Open border immigration ‘not pragmatic right now’, says Green Party leader

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Open border immigration 'not pragmatic right now', says Green Party leader

Greens leader Zack Polanski has rejected claims his party would push for open borders on immigration, telling Sky News it is “not a pragmatic” solution for a world in “turmoil”.

Mr Polanski distanced himself from his party’s “long-range vision” for open borders, saying it was not in his party’s manifesto and was an “attack line used by opponents” to question his credibility.

It came as Mr Polanski, who has overseen a spike in support in the polls to double figures, refused to apologise over controversial comments he made about care workers on BBC Question Time that were criticised across the political spectrum.

Mr Polanski was speaking to Sky News earlier this week while in Calais, where he joined volunteers and charities to witness how French police handle the arrival of migrants in the town that is used as a departure point for those wanting to make the journey to the UK.

He told Sky News he had made the journey to the French town – once home to the “Jungle” refugee camp before it was demolished in 2016 – to tackle “misinformation” about migration and to make the case for a “compassionate, fair and managed response” to the small boats crisis.

He said that “no manifesto ever said anything about open borders” and that the Greens had never stood at a general election advocating for them.

“Clearly when the world is in political turmoil and we have deep inequality, that is not a situation we can move to right now,” he said.

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“That would also involve massive international agreements and cooperation. That clearly is not a pragmatic conversation to have right now. And very often the government try to push that attack line to make us look not pragmatic.”

The party’s manifesto last year did not mention open borders, but it did call for an end to the “hostile environment”, more safe and legal routes and for the Home Office to be abolished and replaced with a department of migration.

Asked why the policy of minimal restrictions on migration had been attributed to his party, Mr Polanski said open borders was part of a “long-range vision of what society could look like if there was a Green government and if we’d had a long time to fix some of the systemic problems”.

‘We should recognise the contribution migrants make’

Mr Polanski, who was elected Green Party leader in September and has been compared to Nigel Farage over his populist economic policies, said his position was one of a “fair and managed” migration system – although he did not specify whether that included a cap on numbers.

He acknowledged that there needed to be a “separate conversation” about economic migration but that he did not believe any person who boarded a small boat was in a “good situation”.

While Mr Polanski stressed that he believed asylum seekers should be able to work in Britain and pay taxes, he also said he believed in the need to train British workers in sectors such as care, where one in five are foreign nationals.

Asked what his proposals for a fair and managed migration system looked like, and whether he supported a cap on numbers, Mr Polanski said: “We have 100,000 vacancies in the National Health Service. One in five care workers in the care sector are foreign nationals.

Zack Polanski speaks to Sky News from a warehouse in Calais where charities and organisations provide migrants with essentials.
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Zack Polanski speaks to Sky News from a warehouse in Calais where charities and organisations provide migrants with essentials.

“Now, of course, that is both British workers and we should be training British workers, but we should recognise the contribution that migrants and people who come over here make.”

I’m not going to apologise’

Mr Polanski also responded to the criticism he attracted over his comments about care workers on Question Time last week, where he told the audience: “I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly want to wipe someone’s bum” – before adding: “I’m very grateful for the people who do this work.”

His comments have been criticised by a number of Labour MPs, including Wes Streeting, the health secretary, who said: “Social care isn’t just ‘wiping someone’s bum’. It is a hard, rewarding, skilled professional job.

“This is immigration as exploitation.”

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Asked whether he could understand why some care workers might feel he had talked down to them, the Greens leader replied: “I care deeply about care workers. When I made those comments, it’s important to give a full context. I said ‘I’m very grateful to people who do this important work’ and absolutely repeat that it’s vital work.”

“Of course, it is not part of the whole job, and I never pretended it was part of the whole job.”

Mr Polanski said he “totally” rejected the suggestion that he had denigrated the role of care workers in the eyes of the public and said his remarks were made in the context of a “hostile Question Time” where he had “three right-wing panellists shouting at me”.

Pressed on whether he wanted to apologise, he replied: “I’m not going to apologise for being really clear that I’m really grateful to the people who do this really vital work. And yes, we should be paying them properly, too.”

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Crypto groups slam Citadel for urging tighter DeFi tokenization rules

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Crypto groups slam Citadel for urging tighter DeFi tokenization rules

A group of crypto organizations has pushed back on Citadel Securities’ request that the Securities and Exchange Commission tighten regulations on decentralized finance when it comes to tokenized stocks.

Andreessen Horowitz, the Uniswap Foundation, along with crypto lobby groups the DeFi Education Fund and The Digital Chamber, among others, said they wanted “to correct several factual mischaracterizations and misleading statements” in a letter to the SEC on Friday.

The group was responding to a letter from Citadel earlier this month, which urged the SEC not to give DeFi platforms “broad exemptive relief” for offering trading of tokenized US equities, arguing they could likely be defined as an “exchange” or “broker-dealer” regulated under securities laws.

“Citadel’s letter rests on a flawed analysis of the securities laws that attempts to extend SEC registration requirements to essentially any entity with even the most tangential connection to a DeFi transaction,” the group said.

The group added they shared Citadel’s aims of investor protection and market integrity, but disagreed “that achieving these goals always necessitates registration as traditional SEC intermediaries and cannot, in certain circumstances, be met through thoughtfully designed onchain markets.”

Citadel’s ask would be impractical, group says

The group argued that regulating decentralized platforms under securities laws “would be impracticable given their functions” and could capture a broad range of onchain activities that aren’t usually considered as offering exchange services.

The letter also took aim at Citadel’s characterization that autonomous software was an intermediary, arguing it can’t be a “‘middleman’ in a financial transaction because it is not a person capable of exercising independent discretion or judgment.”

Source: DeFi Education Fund

“DeFi technology is a new innovation that was designed to address market risks and resiliency in a different way than traditional financial systems do, and DeFi protects investors in ways that traditional finance cannot,” the group argued.

Related: SEC’s Crenshaw takes aim at crypto in final weeks at agency

In its letter, Citadel had argued that the SEC giving the green light to tokenized shares on DeFi “would create two separate regulatory regimes for the trading of the same security” and would undermine “the ‘technology-neutral’ approach taken by the Exchange Act.”