Minister admits Ukrainian refugees arriving in UK illegally would risk jail under nationality bill plan – politics live

MPs have been debating the Lords amendments to the nationality and borders bill (see 12.28pm) for more than two hours now. The first round of votes will start at about 4.15pm. Here are the highlights from the debate so far.

• Tom Pursglove, the Home Office minister, denied reports claiming asylum seekers hoping to reach the UK could be sent to Ascension Island under new immigration reforms. The government wants the bill to include provisions allowing people seeking asylum to have their applications processed offshore, but Pursglove said reports that people meant to be sent to the Ascension Island for this purpose were untrue. He was responding to Stephen Kinnock, the shadow Home Office minister, who said: “The latest ludicrous suggestion is to use the Ascension Island, 4,500 miles away in the South Atlantic Sea. This is utter nonsense.” The Lords amended the bill to remove the clause allowing offshore processing, but Pursglove said the government would reinstate it. He said:

We have said repeatedly that while people are dying making dangerous and unnecessary journeys to the UK we must consider every option to discourage people from funding criminal gangs and putting their lives at risk crossing the Channel. That includes the option of processing asylum claims overseas. We must ensure we have the flexibility to do everything we can to disincentivise people from putting themselves and others at risk and lining the pockets of the people smugglers. That is the clear rationale for this policy.

• Pursglove conceded that, under the government’s plans, Ukrainain refugees arriving in the UK illegally could face jail. This is from my colleague Peter Walker.

Kinnock said this was a particularly worrying feature of the bill. He said:

A particularly disturbing aspect of this legislation is that it seeks to criminalise a person seeking asylum if they arrive into the UK without clearance.

This means that if a Ukrainian person had brought their elderly parents to our country in the early days of the war then under this legislation they would have been criminalised. Does the government not comprehend the horrors that refugees are fleeing from?

• Pursglove refused to say how much it would cost to process asylum claims offshore. The former Tory chief whip, Andrew Mitchell, who is one of the government MPs opposed to this aspect of the bill, said it would be cheaper to put asylum seekers up in the Ritz than send them abroad for offshore processing.

• David Davis, the Tory former Brexit secretary, said processing people seeking asylum offshore would mark a moral failure. He said in Australia this policy had led to people suffering abuse in offshore processing centres.

• Pursglove claimed that allowing the Lords amendment to the bill saying asylum workers could work after waiting six months for their claim to be process (not 12 months, as now) would “would undermine our economic migration scheme”.

• Tim Farron, the former Lib Dem leader, described the bill as the worst piece of legislation he had seen in his 17 years as an MP.

None of Boris Johnson’s mobile phone messages prior to April 2021 are available to be searched, the Cabinet Office has told the Good Law Project, the organisation that uses litigation to challenge what it sees as abuses of power by the government.

Commenting on this disclosure, in a witness statement from Sarah Harrison, chief operating officer at the Cabinet Office, the Good Law Project said:

While instances of the prime minister refusing to make some of his Whatsapp communications available have previously been disclosed, such as during the investigation into the redecoration of his Downing Street apartment, this is the first time that the government has admitted none of his messages prior to April 2021 are available to be searched …

Given the current ‘Partygate’ investigation, as well as the future inquiry into the government’s response to the pandemic, this has serious implications for transparency and holding the prime minister and his government to account.

Covid-19 may have indirectly accelerated mortality in certain causes of death including dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, with more deaths than usual in the early stage of the pandemic but fewer in more recent months, PA Media reports. PA says:

Most leading causes of mortality, including liver disease, diabetes and old age, saw a similar proportion of deaths that were above the pre-pandemic average – known as “excess deaths” – in both 2020 and 2021.

But deaths due to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease showed a “notably different trend”, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

From March to December 2020, deaths in England and Wales due to these causes were 9.7% higher than usual, with a total of 4,990 excess deaths.

By contrast, in 2021, deaths due to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease were 4,417 below average, representing a 6.7% decrease.

There was a “similar trend” in deaths due to prostate cancer, with 352 extra deaths from March to December 2020 (a 4.0% increase) followed by 312 deaths below average in 2021 (a 2.9% decrease).

The figures offer “cautious evidence that the indirect effects of the coronavirus pandemic may have accelerated mortality in certain causes of death, thereby causing deaths to be below average later in the pandemic”, the ONS said.

This could be an example of “mortality displacement”, which occurs when vulnerable people, such as the elderly or those with pre-existing medical conditions, die sooner than expected.

Because they are not dying in the following days, weeks or months when they would probably have died, this can lead to a lower-than-average period of mortality.

“Further investigation is required to understand this,” the ONS added.

The trend is not evident in other figures, with most causes of death seeing similar proportions of excess deaths in both periods.

For example, excess deaths due to “symptoms, signs and ill-defined conditions” – often linked to old age and frailty – remained high in both March-December 2020 and in 2021.

MPs have been debating the Lords amendments to the nationality and borders bill (see 12.28pm) for more than two hours now. The first round of votes will start at about 4.15pm. Here are the highlights from the debate so far.

• Tom Pursglove, the Home Office minister, denied reports claiming asylum seekers hoping to reach the UK could be sent to Ascension Island under new immigration reforms. The government wants the bill to include provisions allowing people seeking asylum to have their applications processed offshore, but Pursglove said reports that people meant to be sent to the Ascension Island for this purpose were untrue. He was responding to Stephen Kinnock, the shadow Home Office minister, who said: “The latest ludicrous suggestion is to use the Ascension Island, 4,500 miles away in the South Atlantic Sea. This is utter nonsense.” The Lords amended the bill to remove the clause allowing offshore processing, but Pursglove said the government would reinstate it. He said:

We have said repeatedly that while people are dying making dangerous and unnecessary journeys to the UK we must consider every option to discourage people from funding criminal gangs and putting their lives at risk crossing the Channel. That includes the option of processing asylum claims overseas. We must ensure we have the flexibility to do everything we can to disincentivise people from putting themselves and others at risk and lining the pockets of the people smugglers. That is the clear rationale for this policy.

• Pursglove conceded that, under the government’s plans, Ukrainain refugees arriving in the UK illegally could face jail. This is from my colleague Peter Walker.

Kinnock said this was a particularly worrying feature of the bill. He said:

A particularly disturbing aspect of this legislation is that it seeks to criminalise a person seeking asylum if they arrive into the UK without clearance.

This means that if a Ukrainian person had brought their elderly parents to our country in the early days of the war then under this legislation they would have been criminalised. Does the government not comprehend the horrors that refugees are fleeing from?

• Pursglove refused to say how much it would cost to process asylum claims offshore. The former Tory chief whip, Andrew Mitchell, who is one of the government MPs opposed to this aspect of the bill, said it would be cheaper to put asylum seekers up in the Ritz than send them abroad for offshore processing.

• David Davis, the Tory former Brexit secretary, said processing people seeking asylum offshore would mark a moral failure. He said in Australia this policy had led to people suffering abuse in offshore processing centres.

• Pursglove claimed that allowing the Lords amendment to the bill saying asylum workers could work after waiting six months for their claim to be process (not 12 months, as now) would “would undermine our economic migration scheme”.

• Tim Farron, the former Lib Dem leader, described the bill as the worst piece of legislation he had seen in his 17 years as an MP.

Post Office operators who helped uncover the Horizon IT scandal will be able to apply to a new compensation scheme, Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, has announced. My colleague Jamie Grierson has the story here.

And here are some more lines from Keir Starmer’s interview on the World at One.

• Starmer rejected Tory claims that Parygate was a trivial matter, or just “fluff” as Jacob Rees-Mogg put it last week. He said that he was now primarily focused on the war in Ukraine, but he said he had not changed his mind about Boris Johnson, whose resignation he called for earlier this year as the Partygate revelations mounted. Starmer explained:

I don’t think you will ever take away the hurt that so many families felt when they learnt what the prime minister had been up to … Every family, including my own, had elderly relatives who were shielding, where we all complied with the rules. And that meant we didn’t do things which we felt we should have done.

And that’s why it went so deep. That’s why that moral authority has been lost. I know the Conservatives want to wash it all away and pretend it’s all fluff. It’s not fluff. It’s about the emotion of people up and down the country.

• He said the UK should “ramp up” sanctions against Russia, provide more military support and offer a stronger humanitarian response. He said:

Everybody understands why every step has to be taken to prevent this escalating into a direct Nato-on-Russia conflict. That is why we need to provide more military support; that’s why sanctions have to be ramped up again further and faster, and that’s why we need to have a stronger, more compassionate humanitarian response.

• He refused to say whether as PM he would be prepared to use the nuclear deterrent, saying “that isn’t a question that anybody who wants to be prime minister should answer”. That is the answer that Starmer has given to this question many times before, but it is misleading because in the past prime ministers who have supported the nuclear deterrent have regularly said they would be willing to use it. They just haven’t discussed in detail the circumstances in which they would deploy it. But Starmer did say he believed in the nuclear deterrent, and had voted for it. When it was put to him that the nuclear deterrent would be pointless if a country was not willing to use it, Starmer did not demur.

The Welsh government is mulling extending certain coronavirus restrictions following a surge in cases, Eluned Morgan, the health minister, has said. As PA Media reports, she said that there had been a “marked increase” in Covid-19 numbers driven by the new BA.2 variant of Omicron. PA says:

Speaking on the eve of the second anniversary of the start of the 2020 lockdown, Morgan said the virus was spreading quickly “in all parts of Wales and in all age groups”.

Numbers had been declining steadily since the end of January, and Wales was on the brink of shedding its last remaining Covid-19 restrictions.

Currently, face coverings must be worn in shops, on public transport and in health and care settings, while those who test positive must continue to self-isolate.

Licensed premises must also continue to do coronavirus risk assessments, but all of these conditions are due to be dropped next Monday (28 March).

Morgan said it would be a “finely balanced judgment” as to whether measures continue, but added: “There are no foregone conclusions.”

She said the primary concern was pressure on the NHS, warning that hospitals are already full and increased cases would create knock-on problems for services such as accident and emergency units.

“It may be that we look at keeping some restrictions and forging ahead with ones that we had planned [to drop] already, but there are no decisions that have been made so far,” the minister said.

There are about 1,400 people in Welsh hospitals with Covid-19, although only 19% were admitted because of the disease, and there are very low numbers in intensive care.

Morgan acknowledged people in Wales are experiencing pandemic fatigue, as well as stress from the rise in living costs and anxiety over the war in Ukraine.

But she said people needed to have “perspective” on what they are being asked to do and why certain coronavirus measures might have to continue.

“The measures that are left are actually fairly limited, so I don’t think it’s a huge big deal to ask people to wear a face covering in certain circumstances,” Ms Morgan said.

“I just think we need to get some perspective on this relative to where we have been in the past, where we simply weren’t even allowed to leave our homes.”

Keir Starmer has claimed that the government is raising taxes just so that it can cut them again before the general election. In an interview with Radio 4’s World at One, he argued that the £12bn rise in national insurance contributions (NICs) due to take effect from next month was unnecesary, and that it was being implemented to pave the way for tax cuts later this parliament. Describing the increase as “the wrong tax at the wrong time”, he said:

If ever there was a time not to introduce a new tax, it’s now, when the squeeze is absolutely on …

I’m afraid that is cynical from the chancellor and cynical from the prime minister, because what the chancellor, I think, is doing here is introducing a tax that doesn’t need to be introduced, which is going to really hurt people.

And he’s not doing that for good economic reasons. He’s doing that, he hopes, so that just before the election he can try to cut taxes and claim to be a tax-cutting government. That is cynical. It is not the right economic answer. It is cynicism.

Labour has opposed the national insurance increase since it was announced last year. The Tories claim this stance amounts to opposing extra money for the NHS, but Labour has said that there are fairer ways to raise the money, and that, although the NICs rise is supposed to fix problems with adult social care, the PM’s plan will fail to do this.

I’ll post more from the interview shortly.

These are from my colleague Peter Walker, who has been listening to Tom Pursglove, the minister for tackling illegal immigration, open the debate on the Lords amendments to the nationality and borders bill.

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the Westminster terror attack that saw four civilians, and one police officer, killed by a terrorist who was subsequently shot. The police officer, PC Keith Palmer, was killed within the gates of the Palace of Westminster as he confronted the attacker and sought to stop him getting any further.

Boris Johnson and other MPs commemorated the anniversary at a service at St Margaret’s Church in Westminster. In an address, he paid tribute to the “extraordinary heroism” of Palmer, and said the diversity of the victims – the dead included an American and a Romanian – showed “the truth that an attack on London, like an attack on Manchester, is an attack on the world”.

Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, has also laid a wreath to mark the memorial.