Starmer pledges to ‘rebuild Britain’s broken asylum system’
Keir Starmer has pledged that Labour would “rebuild Britain’s broken asylum system” if elected at the next general election.
Speaking at a press conference in Dover, the Labour leader said:
I believe in a rules based asylum system. I believe that a system that processes claims quickly and humanely, that finds ways without squeamishness or cruelty to detain and remove people who have no right to be, is essential for security, fairness and justice. It is a form of deterrence in itself.
Because until we are seen around the world as a country that has a firm grip of the processes at our border. Until we’re busting the Home Office backlog, arriving at decisions quickly without a fuss, so we can return people who have no right to be here then yes, Britain will be seen as a soft touch.
And it goes without saying we do not have that effective deterrence of our borders at the moment. Our rules based asylum system isn’t working. Ask anyone in this part of the world, that much is obvious.
He says Labour will “save taxpayers billions” by setting up “a new fast track returns and enforcement unit that will make sure the courts can process claims quickly.”
He says “I have no doubt that the British people fully support a rules-based asylum system. No doubt that the fair-minded majority want a system that secures Britain’s borders, and uphold this country’s fine tradition of providing sanctuary to people fleeing persecution.”
Starmer adds “We have to restore integrity and rules to our asylum system. We have to clear the backlog so we can return people swiftly.
Key events
Severin Carrell
Scottish Labour appears to have benefited from the Scottish National party’s leadership turmoil, with a new poll putting Labour four points ahead in a Westminster vote.
The Savanta poll, published today by the Scotsman, will puncture the SNP’s buoyant mood after it managed to replace Humza Yousaf seamlessly with John Swinney this week after Yousaf’s crisis with the Scottish Greens.
The fieldwork for the poll was carried out from 3 to 8 May, after Swinney emerged as the clear frontrunner and his only serious rival, Kate Forbes, stepped aside. SNP officials believe his appointment will arrest the party’s steady decline in the polls.
The first to be released after Swinney’s confirmation as first minister, Savanta puts Scottish Labour on 37% and the SNP on 33%, with the Scottish Conservatives trailing on 17%.
🚨NEW Scottish Westminster VI for @TheScotsman
📈Labour lead the SNP for first time in a Savanta poll.
🌹LAB 37% (+2)
🎗️SNP 33% (-2)
🌳CON 17% (-2)
🔶LD 7% (+1)
⬜️Other 6% (+1)1,080 Scottish adults, 3-8 May
(change from 6-11 Oct ’23) pic.twitter.com/DW2TSzve9m
— Savanta UK (@Savanta_UK) May 10, 2024
Savanta calculates that would hand Labour 28 Scottish seats – a dramatic improvement after winning just one at the last election, and see the SNP’s fall heavily from 43 to 18 seats.
Scottish Labour, which announced on Friday it has selected the chief executive of Medical Aid for Palestinians, Melanie Ward, to stand in Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy at the election, is also celebrating after beating the SNP in a council byelection.
A Labour gain from the Conservatives, Mary Hume won in Kilwinning, Ayrshire, on first preference votes with a 20-point lead over the SNP.
Jackie Baillie, Scottish Labour’s deputy leader, said: “Scotland is being let down by chaotic and dysfunctional SNP and Tory governments. After years of division and decline, Scotland needs change – and Scottish Labour is ready to deliver it.”
PA Media has spoken to first minister of Wales, Vaughan Gething, who says he asked Tata to delay closing the blast furnaces at Port Talbot and to wait until a Labour government is in place in Westminster before making a final decision. He said:
I made clear [to Tata] the case that the Welsh government’s prime position is we don’t want to see the final blast furnace turned off with the significant numbers of job losses that will entail.
I spoke to Keir Starmer before I came out, and the person who is the likely next prime minister made clear that he sees a manifesto offer that we’ll need more steel not less.
And just as I do, he does not want there to be an irreversible choice made just before a general election, that is only months away.
Education secretary Gillian Keegan has told the Times that parents working from home have contributed to a rise in students missing school days.
Keegan, the fifth different Tory education secretary since September 2021, told the paper “The Covid pandemic has had a major impact on school attendance” and that “still too many children whose attendance hasn’t recovered.”
“Every day a child is absent they will miss on average five to six lessons, time they never get back. It is unacceptable to take a deliberate decision to take your child out of school,” she said, adding:
There are still major challenges with data showing unauthorised holiday absence increasing by 25% and that there are regularly 50,000 more pupil absences on a Friday compared with Monday, which could be linked with many parents working from home.
The Times quotes Beth Prescott, a researcher at the Centre for Social Justice, saying “The main drivers of the school attendance crisis is mental health and anxiety in children. Despite the education secretary saying absence is a top priority, the actual response has not reflected that at all.”
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), told PA Media “it is misleading to suggest that current rates of absence can simply be explained by parents allowing time off school on a whim. The issues we are seeing are the result of not just the pandemic, but a decade of Government austerity in which support for families has effectively been rationed.”
Rishi Sunak has tried to reiterate his “pragmatic” approach to net zero targets during a visit to Oxfordshire.
He said he had received a lot of “flak” for his environmental policies, but said “I’m not going to force you to spend £5,000, £10,000, £15,000 prematurely ripping out stuff, changing things, changing cars and boilers. Instead, we’ll get there in a more pragmatic way. That will be my approach to companies as well.”
Earlier this week the Guardian reported that a large number of climate scientist now believe the world is heading to global temperatures that reach at least 2.5C above preindustrial levels.
Sunak on economy: ‘things are starting to feel better’
The prime minister has said “things are starting to feel better” after the latest GDP figures indicated a meagre growth in the economy of 0.6%. It meant the country exited recession.
While visiting a business in Oxfordshire alongside chancellor Jeremy Hunt, Rishi Sunak said:
After undoubtedly a difficult couple of years that the country has had, actually now things are starting to feel better. Confidence is returning to the economy and the country, and I hope that you’re starting to feel that too.
Larry Elliott
Our economics editor Larry Elliott offers this analysis of the latest GDP figures:
When you are in as deep a political hole as the current government you seize on any good news and there was plenty for Jeremy Hunt to choose from in the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics. The figures were proof that the economy was returning to “full health for the first time since the pandemic”, the chancellor said.
Yet when people look back on the early months of 2024 they will probably remember the relentlessly awful weather rather than a time when the economy was cooking with gas. Boom-boom Britain it certainly isn’t.
Britain’s growth performance during the current parliament has been extremely weak. National output as measured by gross domestic product is only 1.7% above pre-pandemic levels and adjusted for a rising population per capita, growth has actually fallen – by 1.2%. As things stand, this is on course to be the first parliament in living memory to have seen falling living standards over the term.
Read more of Larry Elliott’s analysis here: Latest GDP figures offer some better news – but boom-boom Britain it ain’t
Starmer has finished his press conference now.
Keir Starmer has been asked about whether providing “safe and legal” routes is part of the plan. He cites schemes for people from Hong Kong and Afghanistan, then continues on to say:
The really most effective way to stop the crossings is to break gangs that are running this in the first place because they are making a huge amount of money exploiting very vulnerable people. And they’re doing that with thinking that they’ve got impunity.
He criticises the government for claiming that international courts are preventing them from deporting people. He says:
I think it’s a mistake to think that it’s the international instruments such as the European convention on human rights that are the problem. By the end of this year, there’ll be 100,000 people who’ve arrived whose claims can’t be processed. That means they can’t be returned. That’s not the European Convention that says that. That’s just the government’s not processing the claim.
He says “Why are people who come here from Bangladesh not being processed? Sitting here, not going back? The government isn’t doing it. This is not difficult territory. It’s actually, get on, roll your sleeves up, process the claims, and get this system functioning properly. We shouldn’t overestimate and talk up the difficulty here. It’s basic competence. Seriousness, not gimmicks.”
Starmer: Labour should be ‘less tribal’ and ‘carry as many people with us as possible’
Keir Starmer has said Labour should be “less tribal” in inviting people into the party who want to undertake the serious work he says needs to be done to renew the country.
He says:
If we’re to renew our country, we do need to ensure that we carry as many people with us as possible. And I genuinely think most reasonably-minded people, who may not be into politics all the time … [want] a better country, for their family for their community, and they want the country to go forward.
I want a decade of national renewal where people say, I may not have always voted Labour, but I actually think this is a good serious proposition about improving outcomes.
He said “I’m very pleased to welcome Natalie [Elphicke] to the Labour party. It’s a very difficult thing to cross the floor of the House of Commons from one party to another. Nobody just does it without a huge amount of thought.”
He says his “changed Labour party ought to be a place where reasonably-minded people, whichever way they voted in the past, feel that they can join with our projects and change the country for the better. It is an invitation that we should be less tribal, in the pursuit to invite people to our party who want to join in our project of national renewal. And I’m very pleased to be able to extend that invitation not just to Labour voters, but people who voted for other parties in the past”
Keir Starmer has launched an attack on the culture war debate that surrounds immigration, and says the character of politics in Westminster has to change.
“I dragged my party away from the allure of gesture politics, and I will do exactly the same to Westminster,” he says, having outlined that he believes the current culture in Westminster “rewards the grand gesture, the big talk, while disregarding that detailed practical action that over time, moves a nation forward step by step.”
He accuses the Tories of saying they want to reform the asylum system when some of them are acting in bad faith, and simply want to shut it down entirely.
Starmer is taking questions now.
