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
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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.
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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.
World
Egypt: Two Britons believed to be among 16 missing as tourist boat sinks after being ‘hit by large wave’
Two Britons are believed to be among more than a dozen people missing after a boat sank in the Red Sea off the Egyptian coast.
The yacht, called Sea Story, had 44 people on board, including 31 tourists of varying nationalities and 13 crew.
Authorities are searching for 16 people, including 12 foreign nationals and four Egyptians, the governor of the Red Sea region said, adding that 28 other people had been rescued.
Preliminary reports suggested a sudden large wave struck the vessel, capsizing it within about five minutes, governor Amr Hanafi said.
“Some passengers were in their cabins, which is why they were unable to escape,” he added in a statement.
Survivors rescued from the Sea Story in Marsa Alam. Pic: STR/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
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Passengers rescued from sunken tourist boat
The people who were rescued only suffered minor injuries such as bruises and scrapes with none needing hospital treatment.
A Foreign, Commonwealth and Development office spokesperson said: “We are providing consular support to a number of British nationals and their families following an incident in Egypt and are in contact with the local authorities.”
The foreign nationals aboard the 34-metre-long vessel, owned by an Egyptian national, included Americans, Belgians, British, Chinese, Finns, Germans, Irish, Poles, Slovakians, Spanish, and Swiss.
Sea Story had no technical problems, obtained all required permits before the trip, and was last checked for naval safety in March, according to officials.
The four-deck, wooden-hulled motor yacht was part of a multi-day diving trip when it went down near the coastal town of Marsa Alam following warnings about rough weather.
Officials said a distress call was received at 5.30am local time on Monday.
The boat had left Port Ghalib in Marsa Alam on Sunday and was scheduled to reach its destination of Hurghada Marina on 29 November.
The Sea Story had 44 people on board. File pic: Dive Pro Liveaboard
Some survivors had been airlifted to safety on a helicopter, officials said.
The firm that operates the yacht, Dive Pro Liveaboard in Hurghada, said it has no information on the matter.
According to its maker’s website, the Sea Story was built in 2022.
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The incident comes after the Egyptian Meteorological Authority issued a warning on Saturday about turbulence and high waves on the Red Sea.
The organisation had advised against maritime activity for Sunday and Monday.
Some tourist companies have stopped or limited operations on the Red Sea due to the potential dangers from conflicts in the region.
A motion has been filed to drop the charges against Donald Trump of plotting to overturn the 2020 US presidential election result.
Mr Trump was first indicted on four felonies in August 2023: Conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and an attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.
The president-elect pleaded not guilty to all charges and the case was then put on hold for months as Mr Trump’s team argued he could not be prosecuted.
Special Counsel Jack Smith. Pic: Reuters
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On Monday, prosecutors working with special counsel Jack Smith, who had led the investigation, asked a federal judge to dismiss the case over long-standing US justice department policy, dating back to the 1970s, that presidents cannot be prosecuted while in office.
It marks the end of the department’s landmark effort to hold Mr Trump accountable for the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 when thousands of Trump supporters assaulted police, broke through barricades, and swarmed the Capitol in a bid to prevent the US Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Mr Smith’s team had been assessing how to wind down both the election interference case and the separate classified documents case in the wake of Mr Trump’s election victory over vice president Kamala Harris earlier this month, effectively killing any chance of success for the case.
In court papers, prosecutors said “the [US] Constitution requires that this case be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated”.
They said the ban [on prosecuting sitting presidents] “is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the government stands fully behind”.
Mr Trump, who has said he would sack Mr Smith as soon as he takes office in January, and promised to pardon some convicted rioters, has long dismissed both the 2020 election interference case and the separate classified documents case as politically motivated.
Trump supporters try to break through a police barrier at the Capitol in Washington. Pic: AP
He was accused of illegally keeping classified papers after leaving office in 2021, some of which were allegedly found in his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.
The election interference case stalled after the US Supreme Court ruled in July that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution, which Mr Trump’s lawyers exploited to demand the charges against him be dismissed.
Mr Smith’s request to drop the case still needs to be approved by US District Judge Tanya Chutkan.
No date had been set for a trial.
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At least 1,500 cases have been brought against those accused of trying to overthrow the election result on 6 January 2021, resulting in more than 1,100 convictions, the Associated Press said.
More than 950 defendants have been sentenced and 600 of them jailed for terms ranging from a few days to 22 years.
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