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Braverman's woes worsen?
I'm not sure she can weather this storm.
Sunak has got off to a good start, and he might just have to grasp the nettle here if he is to maintain his good reputation so far.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63444573
Sunak has got off to a good start, and he might just have to grasp the nettle here if he is to maintain his good reputation so far.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63444573
Comments
1. She has used her personal email for security stuff
2. She has sent an important document to the wrong person
3. She has lied about events afterwards
I say this simply because I have been in a similar position myself. Or at least-number 2. Mistakes happen. It's what we do afterwards. Let me give an example.
About 10 years ago, I was making about 200 people redundant. 1 of those 200 had a very similar name to the CEO. And a Member of my Team sent a highly confidential email about the Redundancies to 1 of the 200 rather than the CEO.
It's easily done. You send an email to the CEO the day before. You forget you sent a trivial email to the other person just after. And as you start to type the recipient's name, the wrong one comes up, and you hit send.
It's wrong. But it happens. Negligent? Yes. But we are all Negligent sometimes.
But this is more than that. It was sent from the wrong email address. And it doesn't look like a one-off. This looks like it happens a lot.
And, worst of all, she is trying to cover it up. She has only come forward after she has realised that the recipient has forwarded her email. Not simultaneously.
And that last bit is why she should go.
What is less clear is the following,
She is not allowed to use her personal account for work emails.
So why did she initially transfer the work email to her personal account?
Or were there 2 accidents?
The accidental initial transfer, followed by the sending on to the wrong person from the wrong account.
We have Boris ( who obviously broke it) still in a job in parliament, with some saying “ He’s apologised, let’s just move on”, and putting him forward for Leader.
Now Braverman, who allegedly apologises , and gets a high ranking position in parliament. SMH.
@tomgoodun
The irony is she is The Home Secretary, so is responsible for law & order.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/yesterday-s-metro-front-page-showed-an-image-that-shames-britain/ar-AA13Dl3N?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=268ae31640364eee926b42c5bd7de4cf
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/homeless-london-sadiq-khan-cost-of-living-city-hall-b1036237.html
Source:
https://www.bigissue.com/news/housing/britains-homelessness-shame-cold-hard-facts/
Perhaps you should start a thread on homelessness as it doesn't really sit under the remit of the Home Secretary.
Repeated security breaches and a wilful disregard for the law where it does not back up her political views should see her nowhere her current position.
@Phantom66
Wonderful to see you back on here, hope all is well with you & yours.
xx
The first thing we need to do is stop treating the Court system as a supposed "money-making" system. Sometimes it is necessary to spend money to avoid far bigger losses elsewhere. We wouldn't have so many people in centres if we actually got on with processing them.
Here is a simple system to show a possible way forward. It would not be my preferred way forward-I am mixing my wishes with something that would be palatable to the unelected Right that is failing to run our country. How about:-
1. Are they fleeing genuine persecution, as opposed to being an economic migrant? If yes, have we not yet met an agreed quarterly figure for genuine asylum seekers?
2. Do they have genuine ties to this country, for example close family members who can support them financially?
3. Are they trained in a job that would be on a list of jobs that we cannot currently fill?
Applicants would need to meet at least 2 of those 3 criteria. If it is 2/3 and not 1, only to be given temporary leave to remain.
Rejected applicants who satisfy 1 above to be repatriated at our cost.
All other rejected applicants to be given a choice. Pay the cost of repatriation themselves, or be repatriated to Rwanda or some such.
Not so difficult, is it? And the Majority of economic migrants stop coming here. Because they can easily see that they have no chance here.
The Modern Slavery Act was introduced by Theresa May, then home secretary in 2015, as a way of protecting victims of people trafficking gangs, but it has since become the “biggest loophole” in the immigration system, according to ministers.
Young Albanian men have become particularly adept at playing the system to avoid being sent home when they illegally cross the Channel to arrive in the UK. Albanians now account for the single biggest nationality claiming to be victims of modern slavery.
By paying people-smuggling gangs to get them to Britain, up to two per cent of all Albanian men have either attempted the Channel crossing or are thinking of doing so.
Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, controversially referred to the small boats crisis as an “invasion”, as MPs pointed out that the 12,000 Albanians who have arrived in the UK so far this year have not come from a war-torn country, but from one which is awaiting EU membership.
Here we detail how the migrants get to the UK, and how the Modern Slavery Act has opened the door to Albanian migrants.
Leaving Albania.
The north eastern Albanian cities of Kukes, Diber and Shkoder are prime hunting grounds for the people-smuggling gangs making fortunes out of the promise of safe passage to the UK for jobless young men in the country’s poorer areas.
Using TikTok and other social media sites, the gangs advertise Channel crossings, often with videos and photographs of boats making the journey, with hashtags like #makeyourmove, along with journey times, details of routes and promises of life jackets.
Depending on the route, the gangs charge between £3,500 and £15,000 per person.
To appeal to young people tempted to make the journey, the gangs have even advertised “Black Friday” sales with 50 per cent off the cost of a crossing, and some posts have urged Albanians to make the crossings as soon as possible before the Rwanda policy takes full effect.
Other posts encouraged migrants to take advantage of the power vacuum after Boris Johnson was forced to resign, and one TikTok video even suggested Albanians could come to the UK to pay their respects to the late Queen.
Each post will only stay online for a matter of days before it is removed, to make it harder for police to track down the source of it.
Since 2014, Albania has been an official candidate for accession to the EU, and since 2010 its citizens have been able to travel visa-free within the EU, meaning they can travel all the way to the Channel coast without breaking any laws or being challenged.
Many migrants already know from friends or relatives who have made it to the UK that by claiming to be 17, or by claiming to have been trafficked, they can avoid being sent home.
One Albanian living in Kukes, whose son travelled illegally to the UK and now lives here, said: “People are leaving here every single day. The people who take them on the boat or put them in a lorry tell them what to say if they get caught. Maybe they say they are a minor or they have been trafficked.
“The people who take them will get information from those who have already arrived and what they have said that has worked and meant they can stay.”
Salaries in Albania – for those who can get work – average £442 a month and the cost of living crisis caused by the war in Ukraine has sent food, fuel and energy prices spiralling.
So many Albanians have left the country that there are not enough workers to bring in the harvests, and at the other end of the pay scale, so many doctors have left to work elsewhere that the country is considering changing the law to withhold medical degrees until doctors have worked for at least three years in their home country.
Albania’s status as a country with visa-free travel in the EU has also made it a key transit country for migrants from other countries that do not have visa-free travel. Migrants from the Balkans, including non-EU countries such as Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, go overland to Albania and, once they are in a van or lorry, can reach France without passport checks.
The idea of claiming to be a victim of slavery is not passed on to the migrants until they board Channel boats.
The route to the Channel.
For those who can afford it, Britain can be less than 48 hours away via a flight to Brussels, putting them within 70 miles of the Channel.
Once they are in Brussels, they will be met by people smugglers who will take them to Nieuwpoort on the Belgian coast, or just over the French border to Dunkirk to await their scheduled small boat crossing.
However, those with criminal records or who have attempted the crossing before will typically choose to go overland, as the Albanian authorities will confiscate the passports of criminals or suspected illegal migrants if they try to board an aircraft. Vans will take them through Serbia, Hungary, Germany and France to Calais, where they set up camp and wait for the next crossing.
If the weather is favourable the migrants can be on a boat within hours of arriving at the coast, usually setting off in the dark to avoid French or Belgian coastal patrols.
Not all migrants use the Channel route, however. Last month the National Crime Agency smashed a people-smuggling gang that was bringing Albanians to the UK on ferries and cargo ships from Bilbao and Santander in Spain to Portsmouth, Southampton and Liverpool to avoid Channel patrols.
More than nine in 10 small boats that avoid being turned back by the French or Belgians will be intercepted by Border Force vessels or RNLI lifeboats.
Those rescued by Border Force are given a wristband when they are brought on board, identifying them with a numerical reference, or migrant number, and a reference linking them to the boat they were rescued from, known as an event number.
Those rescued by the RNLI will be given a wristband on arrival at Dover. Each migrant, accompanied by a Border Force officer using a “guiding hold”, crosses over two moored tugboats at the Port of Dover and across a bridge to the Western Jet Foil arrivals centre.
Arrival in the UK.
Border Force staff inform officers on the desk about any concerns they have about the migrants, and each of them is offered a Covid test, checked for any medical emergencies and asked for their name, age and nationality. A card with numbers is used for them to indicate their age, and they are shown flags they can point to to indicate their nationality if they do not speak English.
Simply arriving in the UK on a small boat does not constitute a crime, but migrants are breaking the law if they fail to present themselves to the immigration authorities or if they do not have suitable ID documents, presuming they have no legal right of entry such as a visa or leave to remain.
The majority of migrants are formally detained, rather than being arrested, though if Border Force officers have concerns about individual migrants they may take their fingerprints at this stage and arrest them if necessary.
Each migrant is searched for weapons and asked if there is anything they want to tell the officials. They are not asked at that stage whether they are claiming asylum, as Western Jet Foil is simply a staging post to ensure their safety before they are processed.
The migrants are photographed with a Polaroid camera, with their wristband data showing, and the photograph is attached to their detention form.
The migrants are given dry clothes, food and warm drinks and taken 20 miles to the Manston reception centre.
Processing at Manston.
Once they arrive at Manston, the process of checking migrants’ names, ages and place of origin is repeated and they are taken to biometric recording stations where their fingerprints and photos are taken.
Any whose details match with criminal records databases are arrested and taken to an immigration removals centre to await deportation, where many will seek legal advice and will claim to have been trafficked or claim that their lives are in danger if they return.
The process of identifying whether migrants have claimed asylum in other countries is more difficult as a result of the EU withdrawing cooperation over the European Asylum Dactyloscopy Database (Eurodac) which is used to identify asylum claims in EU countries.
In July, David Neal, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, said data on migrants was “inexcusably awful”, equipment for carrying out security checks was “unreliable” and biometric data such as fingerprints and photographs “are not always recorded”.
Any migrant who claims to be aged under 18 will be transferred to the care of social services, who will then decide whether the individual is telling the truth. Those who are lying are transferred back into the adult system while genuine unaccompanied minors will become the responsibility of social workers.
The migrants have no right to legal representation while they are at Manston, and no lawyers are allowed into the facility.
The migrants can tell immigration officials at this stage why they have come to the UK, and whether they are claiming asylum.
Those that are not arrested are sent to hotels or in some cases to stay with family already in the UK while their applications are processed, but the problems with biometric checks and record-keeping mean that many abscond from hotels without proper checks being done, while the authorities simply lose track of others.
Victims of modern slavery.
Of the 4,171 potential victims of slavery referred to the Home Office in the second quarter of this year, 27 per cent were Albanians, the most of any nationality.
Migrants do not have to claim to be victims of slavery as soon as they enter the UK, and in many cases they only make such claims once they have spoken to lawyers.
Migrants are entitled to consult immigration lawyers once they have been released from Manston into hotels or other accommodation, and under the Modern Slavery Act police, local councils, charities and specified government agencies are required to refer victims to Home Office experts who assess whether their cases merit support. They cannot be deported while their cases are assessed.
Chris Philp, the former immigration minister, said earlier this year that many migrants tell border officials they are not victims of slavery, only to change their tune when they have spoken to immigration lawyers, who sometimes “copy and paste” the same back story into different claims without even bothering to change the details.
Even those who are convicted criminals can use the Modern Slavery Act to avoid being deported. Last year Home Office figures showed that two thirds of all claims of modern slavery by migrants were bogus and Priti Patel, who was home secretary at the time, said the Modern Slavery Act was being “rampantly abused” by criminals including child rapists and criminals who posed a threat to national security.
The Government has promised in the past to clamp down on the problem by introducing an exemption that would prevent anyone who has received a prison sentence of more than a year from using the Modern Slavery Act to avoid deportation.
The Act has a far more open interpretation of what constitutes modern slavery than other European countries, meaning that arrivals can successfully claim asylum simply by saying they are victims of slavery, even if they have no supporting evidence.
France and Germany have much tighter definitions of slavery, meaning they accept only 10 per cent as many claimants as Britain.
The letter, written in broken English and addressed to 'journalists, organisations, everyone' appeared to suggest 50 families had been held at Manston for more than 30 days. It said: 'We are in a difficult life now ... we fill like we're in prison ... Some of us very sick ... ther's some women's that are pregnant they don't do anything for them ... We really need your help. Please help us.' The letter claims there is a disabled child at the site, adding: 'He's really bad, they don't even care about him.' 'It's not easy for someone who has children ... There's a lot of children they shouldn't be here. They should be in a school not prison,' it adds. The letter went on to say, 'our food is very bad like its make us fill sick ... we got no phone no money no smok.' Witnesses said they saw security guards at the site ushering detainees back inside when members of the press were walking by the fence. The young girl was among a group of children who broke past security guards and ran over to the fence to throw the bottle. The letter added: 'We wanna talk to you but they don't even let us go outside.' It comes after council leaders from Kent warned the county is at 'breaking point' because of the burden of accommodating migrants.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11382799/Child-migrants-throws-message-bottle-fence-Manston-processing-centre.html
Thanks for the full summary of the process @lucy4
The whole process has been bungled by HM Government, but to be fair, it's an extremely complex situation and I'm not at all sure that anyone knows the answer.
For now though it's very important that these individuals are treated in a fair & humane manner.
The most important steps we could take would be to agree with France that all those making the channel crossings would be immediately returned.
I wouldnt see that this as being a problem, as they were all in France in the first place, so the French would be no worse off.
This would almost immediately stop the people traffickers, and end the crossings.
Who would pay them thousands of Euros in the knowledge that they would immediately be returned?
We should at the same time open an office in Calais to deal with asylum seeker applications.
The applications should include photographs, fingerprints etc.
This would stop multiple applications from people using false identities, and enable criminal checks to be carried out.
Once a failed application had been made, there should be a reasonable time limit before a second application could be made.
We should then allow our fair share to enter the UK.
The numbers left in France would be reduced by the number of successful applications.
Obviously benefitting the French.
It would also open up a genuine route for genuine asylum seekers.
Priority could be given to those fulfilling your points 2 and 3.
Whilst I feel empathy for genuine asylum seekers, I dont think that £7million per day in hotel bills is an appropriate use of taxpayers money.
This figure is likely to increase substantially because they are now having to book much more expensive hotels.
This figure is in addition to the benefit payments they receive, and all the other costs involved.
There is no doubt that the government is exacerbating the situation.
Last year they only processed 4 or 5% of claims.
The average claim takes over a year to resolve.
Processing in Manston is meant to last 24 hours, yet many people are forced to stay there for over a month.
I appreciate that enforcing the above may involve some changes to current legislation.
We should do this without delay.
What is hard to understand about the fact that as we havent a genuine legal route, that determined people will resort to illegal routes.
Its hardly rocket science.
The whole thing is an absolute shambles.