Human rights campaigners call Suella Braverman’s plan to stop illegal arrivals in UK a ‘shocking new low’ – politics live | Politics

Sir Graham Brady, whose role as chair of the Conservative party’s 1922 Committee saw him usher three prime ministers out of Downing Street in four years, is to step down as an MP at the next election.

Arguably the most powerful backbencher of his political generation, Brady released a statement to his local newspaper saying it was time to “bring this fascinating and fulfilling chapter of my life to a close”.

Brady, the MP for Altrincham and Sale West in Greater Manchester since the constituency was created in 1997, has never held ministerial office but has chaired the committee that represents Tory backbenchers since 2010.

During that time he observed four prime ministerial departures – David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss – and subsequent elections for a successor, and in three of the cases played a pivotal role in their resignations.

As chair of the 1922 Committee, Brady is the custodian of any Tory MPs’ letters of no confidence in the prime minister, and if 15% of their contingent submit one, a confidence vote is held.

As the letters mounted against the four prime ministers, Brady would be pursued around Westminster by TV crews asking for a running tally, which he would never divulge, responding only with inscrutable bonhomie.

In his statement, Brady said colleagues had “given me the unique opportunity of chairing the 1922 Committee for longer than anyone else in its 100-year history”, and that he would remain in the role until the end of the parliament if they wanted him to. He said:

I will continue to do everything I can to support the Conservative cause and Rishi Sunak. He is bringing both stability and vision as prime minister.

I have decided to bring this fascinating and fulfilling chapter of my life to a close while I am young enough to pursue other opportunities and interests, so I will not be standing at the next election.

One aspect of his decision to stand down could be the shrinking majority in his always slightly marginal seat, now less than half of the 13,000 margin at its peak in 2015.

The Green party says it wants safe legal routes for anyone wanting to make an asylum claim in the UK. This is what Adrian Ramsay, the party’s co-leader, said in a statement about the illegal migration bill.

This is the latest attempt by the Tories to stop desperate people finding sanctuary. Last year three-quarters of all asylum claims were granted. Despite this, the government seems determined to clamp down on those fleeing conflict, persecution or extreme poverty in a host of countries by failing to offer legal routes to the UK. This will force people to continue taking their chances arriving in small boats ….

The Green party is the only party taking a strong stand against this cruel legislation and saying proudly that refugees are welcome. We want to see safe legal routes for anyone wanting to claim asylum. That’s the way to stop small boats making perilous journeys across the channel and break the criminal gangs involved in people smuggling.

In the Commons Suella Braverman repeatedly accused Labour of not wanting to put a limit on the number of people it would allow to enter through safe routes for asylum seekers. She said:

The shadow home secretary talks about safe and legal routes; I wonder what number Labour would cap that at. Would it be 500,000? A million? Five million? [Yvette Cooper] should be honest with the house and with the British people: what she really means is unlimited safe and legal routes – open borders by the back door.

But Labour is not saying it would have unlimited safe routes. It says it would change the system to have “a clearer process for refugees with family connections in the UK to be considered for resettlement”.

Lisa O’Carroll

Europe minister Leo Docherty has told a Lords committee the government is considering expanding the Turing programme, the UK’s post-Brexit overseas study scheme.

Asked if the government would consider linking up with Erasmus Plus, the EU scheme which the UK left when Brexit came into force told the House of Lords European affairs committee, Docherty told peers that the government that it was among the moves that was “under consideration”.

He told peers on the European affairs committee he was “delighted” with the “success” of Turing, in which 41,000 students participated in 2021/2022.

But he conceded that second school visits to the UK from EU countries had “dried up” after the government stopped accepting ID cards due to the risk of fraud.

Human rights campaigners have condemned the illegal migration bill.

This is from Amnesty International UK’s refugee and migrant rights director, Steve Valdez-Symonds.

Attempting to disqualify people’s asylum claims en masse regardless of the strength of their case is a shocking new low for the government.

There is nothing fair, humane or even practical in this plan, and it’s frankly chilling to see ministers trying to remove human rights protections for group of people whom they’ve chosen to scapegoat for their own failures …

Ministers need to focus on the real issue – which is the urgent need to fairly and efficiently decide asylum claims while urgently introducing accessible schemes, so people seeking asylum do not have to rely on people smugglers and dangerous journeys.

And this is from Yasmine Ahmed, the UK director at Human Rights Watch.

This proposal is illegal, unworkable, and utterly inhumane. The UK government is sending a clear message that it is happy to play fast and loose with our international commitments, ram through flawed legislation, and risk stoking fear and hatred in our communities, simply to score political points.

Libby Brooks

Away from Westminster, the SNP leadership candidate – and current health secretary – Humza Yousaf has been out campaigning in a frosty Glasgow today with university students, pledging to keep young people “at the heart of the yes movement and that he will always reflect their progressive values”.

This came as all three candidates prepare for their first televised debate on STV this evening and many seasoned activists describe the contest as an existential moment for the party, with Yousaf, his closest rival, finance minister Kate Forbes, and outlier Ash Regan offering competing visions for the future of the SNP and the wider yes movement.

Yousaf was stressing his progressive credentials this morning, unsurprisingly given the warnings that youth and LGBT members will leave the party if the socially conservative Forbes wins. Challenged on his position as continuity candidate, and Sturgeon’s preferred successor, he insisted he is “very much my own man” and underlined that the party’s progressive agenda had won successive elections.

Yousaf was joined by the culture minister, Angus Robertson, who was himself considered likely to stand until he ruled himself out of the contest saying he wanted to be “first dad” for his young children.

Robertson adds his name to a lengthy list of endorsements for Yousaf, but party insiders question have much weight these will carry with the wider membership, a largely unknown quantity.

As Ukip leader, Nigel Farage made himself the most successful non-MP British politician of the postwar era by identifying a cause popular with minority fringe in the Conservative party (Brexit) and making it mainstream. In a video message on YouTube, he says Rishi Sunak’s illegal migration bill won’t work because the UK remains a member of the European court of human rights. He says the UK needs to leave, to “complete Brexit”.

You can read the full text of Suella Braverman’s statement to MPs here. The contents of the bill had been briefed in detail to some papers in advance, and there was no great surprise in what she had to say. (Most of the briefing proved accurate, but there was no mention of the “Strasbourg brake”, the phrase spun to the Sun as a description of the measures in the bill to deal with European court of human rights injunctions under rule 39, doubtless by someone inspired by the “Stormont brake”).

The key question is whether the measures in the bill will prove lawful. Nothing Braverman said helped settle the matter either way. In a rare moment of self-deprecation, she said “some of the nation’s finest legal minds” (by implication – not her) were on the case.

Often what matters most in a Commons statement is how the backbenchers respond, and in this respect the exchanges were revealing. Opposition MPs were outraged (as you would expect), but Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, focused on attacking the practicality of the plans, not their morality.

Much more interesting was the response from Conservative MPs. None of them spoke against the plans. But there was a notable absence from the one nation types, who may feel queasy about this.

And while other Tories were supportive, there were repeated suggestions that the bill on its own won’t work without a commitment to withdraw from the European convention on human rights. Mark Francois, one of the most hardline Brexiters in the last parliament, was the most outspoken (see 1.25pm), but there were other voices too. Today’s exchanges sounded like the opening skirmishes in a Tory war over whether the UK should leave another international body with “European” in its title.