Protests and counter-protests expected at asylum hotels across England
Dozens of protests outside hotels used as temporary accommodation for asylum seekers are expected over the weekend across England amid mounting tensions over the issue.
Figures released on Thursday showed there were more than 32,000 asylum seekers in hotels, marking a rise of 8% during Labour’s first year in office.
Anti-migrant protests and counter-demonstrations held by Stand Up to Racism are expected on Friday outside hotels believed to be used to house asylum seekers, including in Bournemouth, Cardiff and Leeds, with more expected on Saturday.
Meanwhile, councils across the country controlled by Labour, the Conservatives and Reform UK are investigating whether they could pursue legal challenges against asylum hotels.
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said on Thursday that people had “every right” to protest over asylum hotels in their areas. While the number of asylum seekers rose in Labour’s first year, the new data shows they are still far below the 2023 peak, when the Conservatives were in government.
Labour has pledged to end the use of hotels to house asylum seekers by the end of this parliament in 2029.
The home secretary, Yvette Cooper, insisted Labour had taken “crucial steps” in the past year towards this by cutting the asylum backlog and money spent on the asylum system, increasing returns of asylum seekers whose applications had failed, and overhauling appeals.
We will update this blog with any news from the protests and counter-protests. Elsewhere, shadow home office minister Katie Lam has been on the morning media round for Conservatives and Labour mayor Oliver Coppard has been speaking to reporters about Speciality Steel, a steelworks that has been taken over by the government in an attempt to save jobs. More on this in a moment.
In other developments:
David Lammy has joined 20 other foreign ministers around the world in condemning Israeli plans to build an illegal settlement on the West Bank, with the Foreign Office summoning the Israeli ambassador to communicate the government’s displeasure. The foreign secretary co-signed a joint statement on Thursday criticising the so-called E1 plan, a 3,400-home settlement that critics say would divide the West Bank in half.
Protesters at the next mass demonstration against the ban on Palestine Action will withhold their details from officers to force en-masse processing at police stations in an effort to make it “practically impossible” to arrest everyone. On Friday, Defend Our Juries, the pressure group behind the protests, will open sign-ups for its next demonstration to be held in London on 6 September.
Elon Musk’s company, Tesla, should have its application to supply energy to UK homes blocked on national security grounds, Ed Davey has told ministers. The Liberal Democrat leader argued that giving the electric car manufacturer a foothold in the British energy market would be “a gravely concerning move considering Elon Musk’s repeated interference in UK politics”.
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Thousands of people living abroad will have their child benefit stopped as the government clamps down on people wrongly claiming the payment, reports the PA news agency.
People who leave the UK for more than eight weeks are no longer eligible for the benefit, other than in exceptional circumstances, but some continue to claim it incorrectly.
According to the PA news agency, ministers have announced that a specialist team scouring international travel data and 200,000 child benefit records to find wrongful payments will be significantly expanded in an attempt to save more money.
It follows a successful trial in which 15 investigators stopped 2,600 people receiving the benefit after moving abroad, saving around £17m over the past year. That team will now be increased to more than 200 investigators, with the Cabinet Office suggesting this could see “tens of thousands” of people lose the benefit and save £350m over the next five years.
Cabinet Office minister Georgia Gould said:
From September, we’ll have 10 times as many investigators saving hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. If you’re claiming benefits you’re not entitled to, your time is up.
Child benefit is the most widely accessed benefit in the UK and is paid to more than 6.9 million families, supporting 11.9 million children.
The government has made cracking down on wrongful benefit payments a significant part of its efforts to cut costs, with overpayments estimated to have cost £9.5bn in the year to March. These efforts include the public authorities (fraud, error and recovery) bill currently making its way through parliament.
Ministers have billed the legislation as delivering the “biggest ever crackdown on fraud against the public purse”, including measures that allow the government to recover money directly from fraudsters’ bank accounts.
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GMB urges government to ‘take a stake’ in the future of Liberty Steel
GMB has urged the government to “take a stake” in the future of Liberty Steel after assuming control of its Speciality Steels UK (SSUK) division.
The PA news agency reports that Charlotte Brumpton-Childs, GMB national officer, told BBC Breakfast that recent developments show why public ownership or greater government control is needed. She said:
What has happened at Liberty Steel is again another example of when the government does not have a stake in these important national assets, they are at the whim of often international owners that have profit above people and don’t have a stake in the UK national infrastructure.
GMB would like to see government take a stake in the ownership of Liberty Steel and ultimately have a say in its future.
Brumpton-Childs said staff faced “huge uncertainty” in the aftermath of the government taking control of the UK’s third-largest steelworks and that court cases meant workers had been left in limbo for months.
She told BBC Breakfast:
It’s been a yo-yo, where we’ve never been really sure what the court decision was going to be.
We’ve sort of expected this insolvency decision several times over the last couple of months and I think it’s been really hard for everyone because you can’t predict what a judge is going to say.
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The mayor of South Yorkshire said there has been “interest from companies” who may want to “take on” steel sites after the government had to take control of the operation, reports the PA news agency.
The high court confirmed on Thursday that Speciality Steel – previously part of Sanjeev Gupta’s Liberty Steel business – would face a compulsory liquidation. It has plants in Rotherham and Stocksbridge.
Labour mayor Oliver Coppard told BBC Breakfast:
We’ve got a team that we’ve stood up in my office, we’ve been working with the government’s steel team to make sure that we know exactly what’s going on here in terms of the assets that are on the table.
We’ve had interest from companies who we know who want to take on these sites.
There’s other interests besides the ones that have come through my office, so we’re talking to the government all the time.
An aerial photograph taken with a drone of the Liberty Steel works in Rotherham. Photograph: Adam Vaughan/EPA
In a seperate interview on Thursday, Coppard said the government taking control of the UK’s third-largest steelworks was “good news” but that a conclusion should not be rushed.
Speaking in Sheffield, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
The government stepping in to take control now is good news because it just brings to an end the uncertainty that we’ve seen on the sites.
I think that was the thing that was killing the business slowly, we now have that uncertainty brought to an end, that’s a good thing. But I now need the government to make sure that these three sites, two in Rotherham and one here, have the brightest possible future.
So, we have to get a new owner in, the government, I think, should take their time over that process, not a neverending amount of time, but certainly not rush to a conclusion, to give people on the site that future that they deserve.
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MSP Jeremy Balfour resigns from Scottish Conservatives over ‘reactionary politics’
Scottish Conservative MSP Jeremy Balfour has resigned from the party and will sit as an independent, reports the PA news agency.
In his resignation letter to party leader Russell Findlay, Balfour said the Scottish Conservatives have “fallen into the trap of reactionary politics” and that a “positive, proactive agenda for real change” has been rejected.
Balfour said he intends to continue to represent his constituents in the Lothian region for the remainder of the parliamentary session as an independent MSP.
In his letter, also posted on social media, Balfour said he has made the decision to resign with immediate effect with a “heavy heart”. However he said:
I no longer feel that the party has a positive platform to offer the people of Scotland.
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Updated at 04.28 EDT
Protests and counter-protests expected at asylum hotels across England
Dozens of protests outside hotels used as temporary accommodation for asylum seekers are expected over the weekend across England amid mounting tensions over the issue.
Figures released on Thursday showed there were more than 32,000 asylum seekers in hotels, marking a rise of 8% during Labour’s first year in office.
Anti-migrant protests and counter-demonstrations held by Stand Up to Racism are expected on Friday outside hotels believed to be used to house asylum seekers, including in Bournemouth, Cardiff and Leeds, with more expected on Saturday.
Meanwhile, councils across the country controlled by Labour, the Conservatives and Reform UK are investigating whether they could pursue legal challenges against asylum hotels.
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said on Thursday that people had “every right” to protest over asylum hotels in their areas. While the number of asylum seekers rose in Labour’s first year, the new data shows they are still far below the 2023 peak, when the Conservatives were in government.
Labour has pledged to end the use of hotels to house asylum seekers by the end of this parliament in 2029.
The home secretary, Yvette Cooper, insisted Labour had taken “crucial steps” in the past year towards this by cutting the asylum backlog and money spent on the asylum system, increasing returns of asylum seekers whose applications had failed, and overhauling appeals.
We will update this blog with any news from the protests and counter-protests. Elsewhere, shadow home office minister Katie Lam has been on the morning media round for Conservatives and Labour mayor Oliver Coppard has been speaking to reporters about Speciality Steel, a steelworks that has been taken over by the government in an attempt to save jobs. More on this in a moment.
In other developments:
David Lammy has joined 20 other foreign ministers around the world in condemning Israeli plans to build an illegal settlement on the West Bank, with the Foreign Office summoning the Israeli ambassador to communicate the government’s displeasure. The foreign secretary co-signed a joint statement on Thursday criticising the so-called E1 plan, a 3,400-home settlement that critics say would divide the West Bank in half.
Protesters at the next mass demonstration against the ban on Palestine Action will withhold their details from officers to force en-masse processing at police stations in an effort to make it “practically impossible” to arrest everyone. On Friday, Defend Our Juries, the pressure group behind the protests, will open sign-ups for its next demonstration to be held in London on 6 September.
Elon Musk’s company, Tesla, should have its application to supply energy to UK homes blocked on national security grounds, Ed Davey has told ministers. The Liberal Democrat leader argued that giving the electric car manufacturer a foothold in the British energy market would be “a gravely concerning move considering Elon Musk’s repeated interference in UK politics”.
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