No 10 defends Sunak asylum backlog plan after Jenrick says it could increase arrivals – UK politics live

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The government has appointed a trio of external commissioners to, in effect, take control of a Surrey council that has built up debts expected to reach ?2.4bn – 100 times its annual net income – following heavy spending on commercial property.

The current total debt of Woking borough council, which spends ?14m a year and has an annual net income of ?24m, is ?1.9bn, a total which is forecast to hit nearly ?2.4bn by 2024/5, a written statement from Lee Rowley, the junior levelling up minister said.

The council, described by Rowley as “the most indebted council in England compared to its financial size”, risks insolvency following a surge in debt interest costs on its investments including a shopping centre, residential tower blocks and a 23-storey Hilton hotel.

Following a government-commissioned review into the council, Rowley said the three people who carried out the review, all experts on local government, had been made commissioners with wide-ranging powers, including financial and commercial decision-making, and restructuring the authority.

The council, which was Conservative run when the investments were made, but now has Liberal Democrat leadership, said it welcomed the move as the “challenges are so significant that the council and its officers cannot deal with these on its own”.

Iain Livingstone, the chief constable of Police Scotland, said the force was institutionally racist and discriminatory at a meeting of the Scottish Police Authority this morning.

Although these remarks attracted most attention, Livingstone also addressed questions about the handling of the investigation into the SNP’s finances at the same board meeting.

Livingstone said he would “fiercely resist” any political interference in the investigation, after allegations that the inquiry was taking too long and that police and prosecutors were favouring the SNP in their timing of inquiry developments. He said:

I have previously asserted and will reassert today that I would fiercely resist any attempt to bring political pressure to my decision making or upon any police operation. Decisions are and will be based on public safety and the rule of law – not politics or any constitutional position.

At first minister’s questions, Humza Yousaf responded to Livingstone’s remarks about institutional racism, sexism and misogyny, describing them as “monumental and historic”.

He also recalled his own experiences being stopped and searched by police as a young man, and adding it was “so important we now see action”.

The Migration Observatory, a migration thinktank based at Oxford University, has published a good analysis of today’s immigration figures. It says there are “early indications” that the numbers have started to go down. Here is an extract.

New data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show net migration at unusually high levels in 606,000 in 2022, with some are early indications that the numbers may have started the downwards trend after peaking in the year to September …

Net migration is defined as the number of people immigrating minus the number of people emigrating. Today’s data, which are based on a provisional experimental methodology, suggest that the UK saw long-term immigration of 1.2 million and emigration of 557,000 in 2022.

The ONS figures suggest that net migration peaked at 637,000 in the year ending September 2022, before falling to 606,000 in the year ending December 2022.

The previous figure of 504,000, published last year for the year ending June 2022, has been revised up, also to 606,000, due to changes in the methods ONS uses to calculate the figures. In other words, ONS estimates that net migration did not increase between the two periods (the year ending June and the year ending December). Most of the upwards revision to the previous figure (just over 70,000) resulted from the decision to include asylum seekers in the figures for the first time since new methods were introduced post-pandemic. The rest of the increase resulted from technical methods and data changes.

The briefing also says net migration figures have levelled off because more people are leaving the UK.

ONS noted in its statistical release that the numbers have “levelled off” in recent quarters. The main reason that net migration did not increase between the year ending June 2022 and the year ending December is an uptick in emigration, particularly of international students. As the Migration Observatory has previously anticipated, the growing number of international students who have come to the UK since 2021 – most of whom are expected to leave within a few years – means that emigration levels are expected to increase between now and 2025. This is already visible in the data for 2022, with 153,000 former students emigrating long term–up from 61,000 in 2021.

One driver of immigration is people coming to study in the UK. But it is the family members who join these students whom home secretary Suella Braverman has targeted in new curbs announced earlier this week.

Around a third of the 1.2 million people counted by the ONS in this morning’s long-term immigration figures for 2022 are students or their families.

Simultaneously released Home Office figures show that the number of visas issued to students’ dependants doubled in the year to the end of March 2023, from 72,000 to almost 150,000.

The number of total student visas – included dependants – issued went up from 465,000 to 627,000 in the same period.

Close to half of study-dependent visas were granted to Nigerian people (45%), and more than a quarter (28%) went to Indian nationals. Pakistan was the third nationality with the highest number of visas to families of overseas students granted (7%).

The figures come after Braverman, the home secretary, announced on Tuesday that overseas students will no longer be able to bring their family with them, with the exception of those on research programmes (such as PhD students or research-led masters courses).

Rishi Sunak has been encourage to revive a plan he floated during the Tory leadership contest last summer and consider “fundamental” reform of the way the Home Office operates. The Institute for Government thinktank has published a report saying the the Home Office is “beset by myriad cultural and institutional problems” and that Sunak should consider the case for breaking it up.

Explaining the problem, the report says:

The morale of its civil servants is consistently among the weakest of Whitehall departments. Over the past year this has spilled into the open with leaked opposition to ministers’ controversial asylum policies – with the ‘Paddington posters’ furore of 2022. The Windrush scandal exposed serious problems with the Home Office’s decision making, laying bare its inability to take a compassionate approach and its failure to understand the human impact of its policies, particularly on the grounds of race. Five years on, the Home Office’s fortress mentality persists.

As an example of the problems, the IfG report says the Home Office is in charge of immigration policy, even though this is an area where a cross-government approach is needed.

Some, including the Treasury and Department for Business and Trade, view migration as a ‘positive’ policy lever that can provide skills, secure workforces in key sectors, and promote the UK’s reputation abroad. Others, such as DLUHC and DWP – and devolved and local government – have key roles in the immigration system and support community cohesion and integration. By contrast the Home Office is incentivised to control the system and, usually, to limit as far as plausible the numbers of migrants arriving in the UK.

It is understandable the Home Office’s focus is on controlling numbers. Being able to control the number of people arriving in the UK is seen as a key aspect of its security remit. But the economic levers of migration are an inescapable part of the policy puzzle in response to the slow growth and workforce pressures the UK faces – especially after Brexit and the end of free movement. Deciding how to operate those levers requires the Home Office (and Number 10) to work with, and balance the sometimes competing interests of, other departments.

Steve Barclay, the health secretary, is making a Commons statement on plans announced today to encourage patients in England to get their operations done in hospitals where they can be treated most quickly. In a news release about the plan, the Department of Health and Social Care says:

A letter issued by the NHS today to local areas will require patients to be offered choice when clinically appropriate.

After speaking with their GP, patients will be able to view information for up to five healthcare providers – filtered by distance, waiting times and quality of care. They will then be able to make a choice about where they go for treatment using the NHS App or website, based on their own circumstances.

Currently just one in 10 patients exercise their right to choose but research shows that giving patients choice can cut up to three months off their waiting time by selecting a different hospital in the same region.

Downing Street has defended the plan to cut the backlog for processing asylum applications, despite Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, telling MPs that this could encourage refugees to come to the UK. (See 11.03am and 11.43am.) Here are some of the key points from this morning’s lobby briefing.

No 10 said clearing the backlog was “the right approach”, despite what Jenrick said. The PM’s spokesperson said:

What we are focusing on is reducing the numbers, tackling that backlog is the right approach.

Obviously it is only one part of it and obviously shouldn’t be seen in isolation. So that alongside with our Rwanda partnership, further efforts bilaterally with the French and jointly with the EU, and obviously we’re building on that with the Frontex work we’re starting to put in place now will have a cumulative impact.

The spokesperson said Rishi Sunak was confident that the backlog would come down, despite figures out today showing it getting bigger. (See 10.05am.) The spokesperson said the government was taking steps to address the problem, but said it would take time for these policies to have an effect. He said:

Obviously some of these approaches do take time to bed in.

We are making some progress on specific areas. We’ve doubled the number of caseworkers. The Home Office stats show asylum decisions are up – 35% increase in decisions year-on-year. We’re seeing a 20% decrease in the asylum grant rate for Albanians, for example. And we’re seeing some success with our partnership with Albania.

But obviously there are more to do and we are confident that things like doubling the number of caseworkers will start to have an impact.

Here are the figures from a Home Office report today showing just 1% of applications from the year ending March 2023 have been processed.

Sunak has said he is committed to getting rid of what is described as the legacy backlog, the 92,601 claims made before the Nationality and Borders Act came into force in June 2022, by the end of this year.

The spokesperson declined calls to issue an apology on behalf of Sunak for immigration numbers going up, in a breach of the Tory 2019 manifesto promise. Asked if Sunak would apologise, the spokesperson replied:

We are working to bring those numbers down. We’ve set out a significant package to do that just this week as well as all the work that goes alongside stopping the boats.

It’s also important to understand what sits beneath some of those numbers, 114,000 Ukrainians coming over for example, 52,000 British nationals from Hong Kong. We think that is something the public can be rightly proud of.

There has been a fall in the number of people crossing the Channel in small boats in the first quarter of 2023, compared with the same period last year, according to Home Office figures released today.

The statistics show that almost 3,800 people were detected crossing the Channel on small boats during the first quarter of this year, a decrease of 16% compared with the first quarter of 2022.

The majority, but not all, of these people will eventually be included in the ONS immigration figures as only those who claim asylum are included: 90% of small boat arrivals (around 40,000) claimed asylum either directly or indirectly, as a dependant.

The Home Office data also shows that between January and March 2023, there were more than 800 detentions of people who were believed to have evaded border control, down by a third a year before.

Another 740 arrived in the UK via air routes without adequate documentation or using fraudulent documentation, a 30% decrease compared with the number recorded during the first quarter of 2022.

The vast majority of the people who arrived via small boats claim asylum but the illegal migration bill – which is being examined in the House of Lords – proposes that those who arrive in the UK without permission will not be able to claim asylum. Instead, they will be detained and sent to either their home nations or a third country, such as Rwanda.

Stopping small boats crossing is one of the five key priorities of Rishi Sunak’s government but this proposed legislation has been already criticised by campaigners, political leaders, the UK representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.

Steve Barclay, the health secretary, is to signal a major delay to one of the headline promises in the last Conservative manifesto by suggesting the delivery of 40 new hospitals in England is likely to be pushed back until after 2030, Aubrey Allegretti and Denis Campbell report.

We will be getting a full Commons statement on this from Barclay later.

In a statement to MPs in December, Rishi Sunak said that he wanted asylum application claims to be processed “in days or weeks, not months or years” and that he wanted “to abolish the backlog of initial asylum decisions” by the end of 2023. So when Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, told MPs that cutting the backlog could increase the number of people coming to the UK (see 11.03am), it sounded like he was veering off script.

Sometimes ministers mess up when they say something that is untrue. But there is another category of gaffe that involves saying something that is true, but that is politically inconvenient, and that is what Jenrick was doing.

At least three Labour MPs subsequently challenged Jenrick over what he had said. At first he tried to backtrack, but he did confirm that he thought clearing the asylum application claim backlog could make Britain a more attractive destination for asylum seekers.

Karin Smyth was the first MP to pick up on what Jenrick said. Asking him to clarify what he had said, she pointed out that his argument implied that the government might want to keep the backlog intentionally high, with thousands of asylum seekers stuck in hotels awaiting a decision. She said:

The Home Office’s inability to progress applications, resulting in many people living in hotels, means that the holding pattern will remain for some time, and that that may be, in fact, a deliberate policy. As the minister said, if they were progressed, there would be more.

Jenrick claimed that Smyth was misrepresenting what he had said, and that he was only referring to Labour’s plan to speed up the processing of claims, which he said would not cut the number of people crossing the Channel illegally.

But when Karen Buck asked again if, in the light of what he said, the government did want to reduce the backlog, Jenrick again restated his argument.

He said that the government was doubling the number of staff dealing with applications, and that it remained confident it would clear the “legacy backlog” by the end of this year. He went on:

The point that I was making is that, the faster the process, the more pull factor there is to the United Kingdom. That is not a reason to maintain an inefficient process. But what we do need to have is a process where deterrence is suffused through every element, or else we will never break the business model of the people smugglers.

When Andrew Slaughter challenged him a third time, and asked him whether the government wanted the backlog to go down or go up, Jenrick again said he was just criticising Labour’s policy.

Faster processing of asylum applications might make the UK a more attractive destination if it meant that people crossing the Channel on small boats did not have to worry about spending a year or more stuck in a hotel unable to work waiting for their claim to be processed.

The government believes that would not happen if faster processing just meant people being put on a flight to Rwanda more quickly (which is what Jenrick was referring to when he mentioned “deterrence”). But it is far from certain that the courts will ever allow these flights to happen, at least in large numbers.

Asked if the government is happy about the number of issued work visas having doubled since the pandemic, Jenrick says the government wants employers to hire British workers where they can. There are a large number of people who have left the workforce, he says. He says the government wants them back.

Clive Efford (Lab) asks why the government has performed so badly in terms of dealing with the backlog of asylum claims.

Jenrick says the government is still committed to clearing the backlog this year.

But he says Labour is wrong to claim that dealing with the backlog will cut the number of people coming to the country. He says:

It is not correct, however, to suggest that if you can process illegal migrants’ claims faster, that that will reduce the number of people coming into the country. In all likelihood, it will lead to an increase.

(This is a remarkable claim. Jenrick seems to be saying that the PM’s policy will make the situation worse.)

Alistair Carmichael (Lib Dem) says Jenrick is making a good case for wage inflation. (See 10.49am.) He wonders what they think of this in the Treasury.

He says the government is adding fishing to the shortage occupation list for work visas. But he says that this will not help the fishing industry because of the rules requiring people to speak English.

Jenrick defends the English language requirements. People coming to work here should be able to speak English, he says. He says the standard required is low. And he says this is necessary for health and safety on fishing boats.