Yvette Cooper says first migrants have been detained under ‘one in, one out’ deal, prior to being sent back to France
Migrants who arrived in the UK after crossing the English Channel have been detained under the new “one in, one out” deal, PA Media reports. PA says:
The first detentions came as people arrived in Dover on Wednesday, the first day the pilot scheme came into force.
Pictures showed the migrants wearing life jackets disembarking from Border Force boats.
The Home Office said detentions began for those who arrived on Wednesday afternoon and they will be held in immigration removal centres until they are returned to France.
Home secretary Yvette Cooper said: “Yesterday, under the terms of this groundbreaking new treaty, the first group of people to cross the Channel were detained after their arrival at Western Jet Foil and will now be held in detention until they can be returned to France.
“That sends a message to every migrant currently thinking of paying organised crime gangs to go to the UK that they will be risking their lives and throwing away their money if they get into a small boat.”
Key events
Brown suggests review should consider future of pension triple lock
In his Today programme interview, Gordon Brown was repeatedly asked by Amol Rajan if he favoured keeping the pension triple lock (which is widely seen by experts as overly-generous to pensioners – although the main political parties are terrified of the electoral consequences of saying they will get rid of it). Brown largely avoided the question, saying that it would not be reasonable to comment on one welfare measure without reviewing the whole system, but he end up saying a review would be a good idea. Responding to Rajan’s question, Brown said:
You’re now asking me to go into the whole area of welfare expenditure. And if I were to do that, I would have a complete review of that …
I‘m not going to say, look, let’s take this one measure at the expense of others. Let’s look at it as a whole …
If you want to look at the future of pensions, then I think you’ve got other review on it, as we did about 20 years ago, and came up with some conclusions. It probably is right to have that kind of review for the future, but not to cherry pick one measure against another.
Brown also refused to say whether he thought it was sensible for Labour to rule out raising income tax, national insurance or VAT in its election manifesto last year. When first asked if this was a good idea, he just said it was a manifesto commitment. When asked if it was a “wise” commitment, he laughed briefly, and said that the plan he was proposing, for gambling taxes to fund the abolition of the two-child benefit cap (see 9.14am), did not break the manifesto commitments.
Keir Starmer has also issued a statement about the detention of small boat arrivals (see 9.58am) on his social media feed. He says:
We have detained the first illegal migrants under our new deal before returning them to France. No gimmicks, just results.
If you break the law to enter this country, you will face being sent back.
When I say I will stop at nothing to secure our borders, I mean it.
Cooper says she expects first migrant returns to France under ‘one in, one out’ deal to happen within weeks
Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, declined to say how many migrants arriving on small boats had been detained as she spoke to reporters about the launch of the “one in, one out” returns deal with France today. (See 9.58am.) She said:
The transfers to immigration removal centres are under way as we speak, so we won’t provide operational details at this point that criminal gangs can simply use and exploit.
But no-one should be in any doubt: anyone who arrives from now on is eligible for immediate detention and return.
She said the first migrants could be sent back within weeks.
The pilot has now begun, so the first migrants who have arrived on the small boats are now in detention. We will then swiftly make the referrals to France and that process will now start to be able to return people to France.
It’s the beginning of the pilot and it will build as well over time, but we’re also clear that France is a safe country, so we will robustly defend against any legal challenge that people try.
We do expect for people to start being returned in a matter of weeks.
Yvette Cooper says first migrants have been detained under ‘one in, one out’ deal, prior to being sent back to France
Migrants who arrived in the UK after crossing the English Channel have been detained under the new “one in, one out” deal, PA Media reports. PA says:
The first detentions came as people arrived in Dover on Wednesday, the first day the pilot scheme came into force.
Pictures showed the migrants wearing life jackets disembarking from Border Force boats.
The Home Office said detentions began for those who arrived on Wednesday afternoon and they will be held in immigration removal centres until they are returned to France.
Home secretary Yvette Cooper said: “Yesterday, under the terms of this groundbreaking new treaty, the first group of people to cross the Channel were detained after their arrival at Western Jet Foil and will now be held in detention until they can be returned to France.
“That sends a message to every migrant currently thinking of paying organised crime gangs to go to the UK that they will be risking their lives and throwing away their money if they get into a small boat.”
Brown says having Europe-wide borrowing plan for extra defence spending would give markets assurance they need
This is what Gordon Brown said in his Today programme interview when asked to give more details of his plan to exempt from extra defence spending from the fiscal rules. He said other European countries were already looking at this, and that having a European-wide initiative would persuade the bond markets that in this case the rise in borrowing was justified. He said:
If you look around Europe at the moment, you’ll see that the Germans are looking at what they can do outside the fiscal rules. The European stability and growth pact is exempting a lot of defence money from the normal fiscal rules. The French are looking at other ways of doing it. The Polish have already done that.
What I’m actually asking for is a European-wide initiative where individual countries will come together and say, Look, we all have to do this. We all have to find, let’s say, an extra 1%, because 5% of course is building on some of what’s already been spent.
So let’s say we’ve got to find another 1% – that’s £30bn in Britain’s case. Let’s do it jointly – either jointly issued bonds or individually issued bonds that are simultaneous and therefore seen by the markets as an extraordinary issue.
Remember, if we can prevent war by defence expenditure, we’re not actually only preventing war, we’re preventing damage to the economy. This is a long-term risk. It has to be deal with differently.
Bank of England poised to cut interest rates
The Bank of England is poised to cut interest rates today despite a growing divide between its policymakers over the dangers to the economy from high inflation and rising unemployment, Richard Partington reports.
Gordon Brown urges Reeves to create budget ‘headroom’ by making rise in defence spending exempt from fiscal rules
Good morning. In every era in politics there are claims that the current generation of politicians aren’t as impressive as the ones that came before. A lot of this is just false memory warped by nostalgia, but in the UK at the moment there are eight former prime ministers and they provide a sub-set that does, sort of, stand up the theory.
Five of them were in office after 2010 – David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak – and their contribution to public life at the moment is, frankly, minimal, or negative. But the three who were in office before 2010 – John Major, Tony Blair, and Gordon Brown – remain serious voices. Major is 82, he does not speak out much, but when he does, he is always worth hearing. Blair is running a thinktank actively trying to shape policy in the UK and around the world. And Brown is perpetually engaged in trying to implement change for social justice, as he has been for most of his life.
Today Brown is renewing his call for the government to abandon the two-child benefit cap. As usual with Brown, there is always a plan, and the former PM is promoting a report from the IPPR thinktank explaining how fairer gambling taxes could raise £3.2bn that would pay for the two-child benefit cap to be scrapped. He has written about this in an article in today’s Guardian.
And he was promoting this in an interview in the 8.10 slot on the Today programme.
Brown was chancellor for 10 years and Amol Rajan, the presenter, was keen to get him to talk, not just about gambling and child poverty, but the government’s wider fiscal problems. Mostly Brown tried to avoid being sucked into this debate. But at one point he could not hold back, and he suggested that some parts of defence spending should be exempt from the fiscal rules, to ensure the security budget could rise without cuts having to be made elsewhere. This was interesting not just as a stand-alone policy idea, but as an example out-of-the-box thinking could help Rachel Reeves dig herself out of the hole she is currently in.
Brown said:
Look, there’s one thing that’s happened over the last few months that has been quite unprecedented – to spend 5% on defence expenditure, as we want to spend [into the] 2030s.
But this is a Nato initiative. This is a European initiative. We should be doing this jointly.
We should have either jointly issued bonds or a Nato defence fund, and we should be sharing the cost across the continent, and that should be regarded as something extraordinary and exceptional, outside the fiscal rules, and that would create the kind of headroom that Rachel Reeves needs.
We should be negotiating with our Nato partners to do this at the moment. And I believe these are the kind of things that we can do to sort out some of the problems that we have for the future.
Reeves is on a visit where she is due to speak to the media later. Presumably, we will get her response then.
I will post more from Brown’s interview shortly.
The main event in the diary today is the interest rate announcement from the Bank of England at noon, followed by Andrew Bailey, the governor, holding a press conference at 12.30pm. Graeme Wearden will be covering this on his business live blog.
Reeves is on a visit in south Wales, and she is due to speak to the media around lunchtime. There may also be some politics coming out of the Edinburgh fringe, where Ian Murray, the Scottish secretary, and Kate Forbes, the Scottish deputy first minister, are both due to be speaking at events.
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