Suella Braverman criticised by Labour over ‘deeply divisive’ migration speech – UK politics live | Politics

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, has issued a statement about Suella Braverman’s speech on X (Twitter) which is stronger than the statement about it she issued overnight, before we had seen the text. (See 10.13am.) She says it was “deeply divisive” and unworthy of Braverman’s office.

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Suella Braverman has so lost grip of Tory asylum chaos, she is targeting & scapegoating LGBT people. Deeply divisive, damaging political game playing – unworthy of her office. Instead of blaming people persecuted in places like Uganda for who they love, she shd sort chaos at home

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Suella Braverman has so lost grip of Tory asylum chaos, she is targeting & scapegoating LGBT people. Deeply divisive, damaging political game playing – unworthy of her office. Instead of blaming people persecuted in places like Uganda for who they love, she shd sort chaos at home

— Yvette Cooper (@YvetteCooperMP) September 26, 2023

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Charities that work with migrants have strongly condemned Suella Braverman for her speech calling for an overhaul of the UN refugee convention.

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Amnesty International UK said the speech was xenophobic. This is from Sacha Deshmukh, the charity’s chief executive.

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The refugee convention is a cornerstone of the international legal system and we need to call out this assault on the convention for what it is: a display of cynicism and xenophobia.

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The refugee convention is just as relevant today as it was when it was created, and verbal assaults from the home secretary don’t alter the harsh realities that cause people from countries such as Sudan, Afghanistan and Iran to flee from conflict and persecution.

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What urgently needs to be addressed on the world stage is the glaring inequality of countries sharing responsibility for refugees, a matter in which the UK is severely lagging.

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Halima Begum, CEO of ActionAid, criticised Braverman’s suggestion that she wanted to limit opportunities for women to claim asylum. (See 4.03pm.) She said:

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We know from our work across the world that for many women and girls, seeking asylum is the only lifeline left when fleeing persecution. Denying this fundamental right is not just a policy choice; it’s a direct affront to gender equality and human rights. Upholding the humanitarian duty to provide refuge and safety to women in need is not just an option; it’s an imperative.

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And Josie Naughton, CEO of Choose Love, which funds refugee charities, said Braverman was the person out of touch.

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It is the home secretary, not the global refugee convention, that is out of touch with the modern age.

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In a world marred by conflicts and displacement, more and more people are fleeing war zones and persecution in search of safety. On top of natural disasters, and rising climate concern, we all know that the number of people being displaced will only increase globally.

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Braverman claimed many countries, either publicly or privately, support the UK government’s Rwanda policy for migrants (sending them to a safe third country if they arrive “illegally”). She said:

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While our political opponents, NGOs, and others dismissed the partnership as an immoral gimmick when it was first announced, it is striking how many countries – run by governments of varying political hues – have now expressed in public, and in private conversations, their support for this model. Many are now pursuing variations of their own.

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Braverman claimed there were two reasons why the UN refugee convention had not been renegotiated.

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The first is simply that it is very hard to renegotiate these instruments. If you think getting 27 EU member states to agree is difficult, try getting agreement at the UN.

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The second is much more cynical. The fear of being branded a racist or illiberal.

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Any attempt to reform the refugee convention will see you smeared as anti-refugee.

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After setting out her four reasons why uncontrolled or illegal immigration was unacceptable, Braverman turned to the UN refugee convention, arguing that it now offered protection to almost 800 million people.

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She said it was now protecting people who should not be thought of as refugees.

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Article 1 of the convention defines that the term “refugee” as applying to those who, “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion” cannot safely reside in the country of their nationality.

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Elsewhere the convention speaks of “life or freedom” being threatened.

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I think most members of the public would recognise those fleeing a real risk of death, torture, oppression or violence, as being in need of protection.

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However, as case law has developed, what we have seen in practice, is an interpretive shift away from “persecution”, in favour of something more akin to a definition of “discrimination”.

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And there has been a similar shift away from a “well-founded fear” toward a “credible” or “plausible fear”.

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The practical consequence of which has been to expand the number of those who may qualify for asylum, and to lower the threshold for doing so.

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Let me be clear, there are vast swathes of the world where it is extremely difficult to be gay, or to be a woman.

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Where individuals are being persecuted, it is right that we offer sanctuary.

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But we will not be able to sustain an asylum system if in effect, simply being gay, or a woman, and fearful of discrimination in your country of origin, is sufficient to qualify for protection.

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Article 31 of the refugee convention makes clear that it is intended to apply to individuals “coming directly from a territory where their life was threatened”.

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It also states that where people are crossing borders without permission, they should “present themselves without delay to the authorities” and must show “good cause” for any illegal entry.

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The UK along with many others, including America, interpret this to mean that people should seek refuge and claim asylum in the first safe country that they reach. But NGOs and others, including the UN Refugee Agency, contest this.

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The status quo, where people are able to travel through multiple safe countries, and even reside in safe countries for years, while they pick their preferred destination to claim asylum, is absurd and unsustainable.

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Nobody entering the UK by boat from France is fleeing imminent peril.

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None of them have “good cause” for illegal entry.

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The vast majority have passed through multiple other safe countries, and in some instances have resided in safe countries for several years.

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There is a strong argument that they should cease to be treated as refugees during their onward movement.

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Braverman claimed the third argument against uncontrolled and illegal immigration was a security one.

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UK police chiefs have warned me of heightened levels of criminality connected to some small boat arrivals, particularly in relation to drug crime, exploitation and prostitution.

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People who choose to come across the Channel illegally from another safe country have already showed contempt for our laws.

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President Macron claimed that illegal migrants or those waiting for a residence permit accounted for more than half of crime in Paris.

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Illegal migration is increasingly a tool exploited by hostile states and those acting on their behalf.

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Vladimir Putin weaponised migration in 2021, sending thousands of asylum seekers via Belarus to try to cross into Poland and Lithuania.

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Braverman started her speech by claiming uncontrolled and illegal migration poses an “existential challenge” to the institutions of the west.

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She said:

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I’m here in America to talk about a critical and shared global challenge: uncontrolled and illegal migration.

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It is an existential challenge for the political and cultural institutions of the west.

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To defend this point, she cited what happened in Lampedusa recently.

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To understand the future, cast your mind back a couple of weeks, and a few thousand miles south-east of here, to the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, population then 6,000.

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Lampedusa, where in a 24-hour period beginning on 12 September, over 120 hundred boats, carrying more than 5,000 illegal migrants, made the hundred-mile crossing from Tunisia, in Africa, to Italy.

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Within 48 hours illegal arrivals outnumbered the local population and a state of emergency had been declared. By 20 September, at least 11,000 had landed, with migrants sleeping in the street, stealing food, and clashing with police.

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And she implied that whole countries were at risk of being overwhelmed.

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Illegal migration to the US has in recent years gone from just under 2 million in 2021 to more than 2.8 million this year.

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Illegal migration is not merely an event-driven, or cyclical problem.

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It is a permanent and structural challenge for the developed nations in general, and the west in particular …

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As the American economist Michael Clemens has found: ‘Emigration from a country tends to rise until it reaches a level of income of about $10,000 per person, before declining.’

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World Bank data show that more than 3 billion people live in countries where the average income is below this threshold. The potential for migration to increase yet further is truly colossal.

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The raw numbers show how demand for migration, legal or otherwise, is likely to surge in the coming years.

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So too does personal testimony.

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A 2021 Gallup poll found that 16% of adults worldwide – around 900 million people – would like permanently to leave their own country.

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And those numbers are not evenly distributed around the world.

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Thirty-seven per cent of people living in sub-Saharan Africa – some 481 million people – and 27% of those living in the Middle East and north Africa – around 156 million – say they’d like to migrate.

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The ease with which some of them might reach Europe poses a unique and deepening challenge.

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The fact is that our countries are exceptionally attractive.

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Four per cent of those polled by Gallup – approximately 40 million people – named Britain as their preferred destination.

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Ed Davey has finished his speech. And after a dose of liberalism we’ve got – Suella Braverman. She is about to deliver her speech about asylum and immigration. She is addressing the American Enterprise Institute, a thinktank in Washington.

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There is a live feed here.

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At the heart of Davey’s speech is a policy proposal on cancer. It is embedded in a deeply personal passage about Davey’s parents both dying of cancer. One of the problems he has is that people do not know much about him. A conference speech is an opportunity to address this, and this is Davey’s first speech to an in-person autumn party conference. (His first two as leader were online, because of Covid, and last year’s was cancelled after the death of the queen.)

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As many of you know, my brothers and I lost both our parents to cancer when we were young.

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My dad died aged 38, just a few months after being diagnosed with a cancer called Hodgkin lymphoma.

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I was only four, so I don’t remember it very well.

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What I do remember is my mum’s grief. And her incredible strength in the months and years that followed, after being widowed so young, with three boys under ten.

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Then, when I was nine, cancer came for mum too.

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She was diagnosed with breast cancer, and I do remember how that felt.

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She had treatment, including a mastectomy. But three years later, they found secondary breast cancer – metastatic cancer – in her bones.

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And they told her it was incurable.

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Yet mum refused to accept that it was incurable. She battled it for three years. For her boys.

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She tried everything – including a naturopath – while we looked after her.

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It was hardest of course in the last 18 months or so, as she became bed-ridden and the pain became excruciating.

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For me, caring for her became my life. Before school and after school.

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I’d sit for hours on her bed, talking to her. Telling her about my day, listening to her stories. Trying to make the most of every minute.

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When she was fighting the cancer with the naturopath, my top task was mashing up carrots and apples for the healthy juice drinks she lived on.

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Then there was helping her with the pain. Pouring out doses of morphine from this big bell jar we had in the kitchen. I don’t think they’d allow that now.

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Putting pads on her legs and sides so she could give herself small electric shocks when the pain got really bad.

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That was a tough period as a teenager. But of course it was much tougher for mum.

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Yet those years were also special. They gave me an incredible bond with my mum.

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She was so strong, so resilient. Fighting to be with her boys, even in the face of such a cruel disease.

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I like to think I learnt a lot from her.

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I was 15 when she died.

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They’d put her on a totally unsuitable dementia ward in Nottingham general hospital.

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I was visiting her. On my way to school. In my school uniform. By her bedside.

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When she died.

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Now I don’t tell you all this because I want you to feel sorry for me. It was a long long time ago and I’ve been very lucky since.

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But I do tell you all about it because actually too many families have their cancer stories, like mine, today.

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Ed Davey told the Lib Dem conference that the UK had never been so badly governed.

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Remember at the start of the year, Sunak gave a big speech where he told the country: ‘We’re either delivering for you – or we’re not’?

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Well, in fairness to Rishi, he was telling the truth. It is one of those two things.

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And friends, I think we all know which one.

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His government is failing to deliver, and what’s so horrific is the sheer scale of their failure.

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In so many ways, our country today just isn’t working the way it should.

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It’s not working as it should for the parents forced to travel two hours just to find their kids an NHS dentist. Or skipping meals so their children can eat.

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It’s not working for the couple in my constituency, who fear losing their home of 13 years as their mortgage payments have shot up by more than £400 a month.

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It’s not working for the teaching assistant and her young family, evicted from their home in Ambleside so the landlord could turn it into a holiday let.

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It’s not working for the pensioner going without heat in the winter.

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Or the commuter left on the platform by yet another cancelled train.

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It’s not working for the swimmer who spent 13 days in hospital with cellulitis after swimming in sewage-infested water.

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Conference, I have never known our country so badly governed.

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Here is Peter Walker’s story about Ed Davey’s speech. The party released a copy of the text to journalists in advance, embargoed until the start of the speech, not the end.

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Road congestion charging would be the last resort in Wales if other measures to improve air quality are unsuccessful, Mark Drakeford has told the Senedd (Welsh parliament).

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As PA Media reports, the first minister said the environment (air quality and soundscapes) (Wales) bill would give the Welsh government greater ability to tackle air and noise pollution. The use of clean air zones – like the controversial ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) in London – are included in the bill but only as a last resort.

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Drakeford told the Senedd:

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We know it is a public health issue, we know that there are thousands of people whose lives might be shortened if the air that they breathe is not of the quality that we would like it to be.

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The bill sets out a whole series of ways in which we will aim to improve air quality here in Wales.

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It has, as a residual and fallback position, powers that could in the future lead to road charging – if all those other things do not work.

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But the point of the bill is to make those other things work.

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Those other things that the bill focuses on and those are the measures that we will be focusing on as a government.

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Drakeford was answering a question from Welsh Conservative Senedd leader, Andrew RT Davies.

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The former MP Jared O’Mara, who was jailed for expenses fraud, has lost a court of appeal bid to challenge his four-year prison sentence, PA Media reports. PA says:

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In February, the 41-year-old was convicted of six counts of fraud after trying to claim about £52,000 of taxpayers’ money for constituency work that was never done and jobs that did not exist.

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O’Mara, who represented Sheffield Hallam from 2017 to 2019, first as a Labour MP and then as an independent, went on trial at Leeds crown court for submitting “dishonest” invoices to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) between June and August 2019.

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He was accused of making fraudulent expenses claims to fund an “extensive” cocaine habit, with a judge later saying it had been “cynical, deliberate and dishonest”.

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O’Mara sought permission to appeal his sentence, but Mrs Justice Lambert, sitting with Lord Justice Holroyde and Mr Justice Jeremy Baker, rejected his case at a short hearing in London today.

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Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, will focus on health and care in his speech to the party conference today. (He is a carer for his severely disabled son, as he explained in this excellent interview with Zoe Williams earlier this year.) According to the extracts from the speech released in advance, he will saying that voting Tory is bad for your health. He will say:

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The Conservatives have broken promise after promise on the NHS. From their 40 new hospitals, to 6,000 more GPs and Rishi Sunak’s pledge to bring down waiting lists. All of it a total con.

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Perhaps there should be a warning on the ballot paper, like there are on cigarette packets: voting Conservative is bad for your health.

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We can’t build the economy we need with 7 million people stuck on NHS waiting lists. We can’t grow the economy with 2.5 million people shut out of the labour market by long-term physical and mental illness.

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He will also describe the Conservative government as like a bad soap opera:

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Britain isn’t working, because the Conservatives aren’t working. They’re more like a bad TV soap opera than a functioning government.

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The factions and the feuds. The personal vendettas. The shock exits and unwelcome returns. The total lack of connection to reality. Each episode worse than the last. Well it’s time to change the channel.

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(Feuds, vendettas, surprise plot lines – Davey might have been better describing them as a rather good soap opera, almost riveting.)

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Conservative is bad for for your health,’ Ed Davey to tell Lib Dem conference”,”contributors”:[],”primaryDateLine”:”Tue 26 Sep 2023 12.57 EDT”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Tue 26 Sep 2023 04.22 EDT”},{“id”:”6512b6978f0844f4dfe5339d”,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

Here are comments from lawyers who have been critical of what Suella Braverman is saying about the UN refugee convention in her speech this afternoon.

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Colin Yeo, a barrister specialising in immigration law, has posted a thread on X (Twitter) explaining why he thinks the home secretary’s views are “fantasy”. It starts here.

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1. When Braverman (and many others) claims that refugees who passed through safe countries aren’t real refugees, she is arguing those safe countries should do more than they do already. Think about it in the real world for a moment.

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1. When Braverman (and many others) claims that refugees who passed through safe countries aren’t real refugees, she is arguing those safe countries should do more than they do already. Think about it in the real world for a moment.

— Colin Yeo (@ColinYeo1) September 26, 2023

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Here are two of his points on the convention.

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5. Braverman’s position is a fantasy. The drafters of the Refugee Convention knew more about massive population displacement than we ever will. I hope. But they gave refugees very limited rights.

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5. Braverman’s position is a fantasy. The drafters of the Refugee Convention knew more about massive population displacement than we ever will. I hope. But they gave refugees very limited rights.

— Colin Yeo (@ColinYeo1) September 26, 2023

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6. Refugees have no right of entry. They have no right to stay in a country they reach. Their principal right is not to be sent into a situation of persecution. States can therefore agree to transfer refugees, as the EU has done with the Dublin system.

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6. Refugees have no right of entry. They have no right to stay in a country they reach. Their principal right is not to be sent into a situation of persecution. States can therefore agree to transfer refugees, as the EU has done with the Dublin system.

— Colin Yeo (@ColinYeo1) September 26, 2023

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Yeo also says Braverman is wrong to imply that people can be granted asylum just because they might face discrimination because of their gender or sexuality. (See 9.22am.)

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10. No one gets refugee status because someone called them names or discriminated against them. Look at the list of nationalities claiming asylum: Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Eritrea are properly repressive countries, for example.

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10. No one gets refugee status because someone called them names or discriminated against them. Look at the list of nationalities claiming asylum: Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Eritrea are properly repressive countries, for example.

— Colin Yeo (@ColinYeo1) September 26, 2023

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Yeo has written more on the case for the UN refugee convention here.

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Adam Wagner, a human rights barrister, also says Braverman is wrong when she says people are getting asylum because they face discrimination, not persecution. He has posted a thread starting here, and this is his key post.

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The paper tiger which Braverman seeks to build is that protection against persecution has become protection against discrimination.

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Anyone who has practised in asylum law will tell you that is wrong – I am not a regular practitioner but I have done plenty of appeals over the years relating to protection from persecution of all types, and I can tell you from my experience anyway that it really isn’t the same as discrimination – an area which I also regularly practise in.

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The paper tiger which Braverman seeks to build is that protection against persecution has become protection against discrimination.

Anyone who has practised in asylum law will tell you that is wrong – I am not a regular practitioner but I have done plenty of appeals over the…

— Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) September 26, 2023

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And Sonia Lenegan, an immigration solicitor, has written a post on the Free Movement website (run by Yeo and others) saying that Braverman’s comment will alarm LGBT+ people seeking asylum in the UK. She says:

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Last year 1,334 people came to the UK and claimed asylum based on their sexual orientation, amounting to 2% of all asylum claims. A lot of them are probably feeling quite frightened this morning after the home secretary has chosen to single them out for attack, as being undeserving of safety.

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There are 66 countries in which same-sex sexual activity is illegal. In a large proportion of these countries, the laws are a legacy of British colonialism …

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Only this year, the Ugandan government passed a new law that provides for a 20-year prison sentence for the “promotion of homosexuality” which could include organisations advocating for the rights of LGBT+ people. This law also provides for life imprisonment and even the death penalty to be given in some cases of same-sex activity.

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William Hague, the former Conservative leader and former foreign secretary, has described HS2 as “a national disgrace”. But he has also acknowledged that so much money has been spent on it that it has become hard to cancel. Speaking on Times Radio, he said:

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It should have been cancelled a few years ago when it was clear that the whole thing was out of control, that the costs were out of control, they wouldn’t be able to ever go to Leeds. So I would have cancelled it then.

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Now you’ve got this classic problem if you’re halfway through something and it’s been terribly badly managed, really a national disgrace as a project. Do you say, ‘Well OK that’s it, I’m stopping this’? Or do you say, ‘Well actually now we’re halfway through, we have to at least complete and make sense of the parts that we can still do.’ But that’s just a genuine dilemma.

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Water companies in England and Wales have been ordered to return £114m to customers through lower bills next year because progress on leakage and sewage spills has been “too slow”, Julia Kollewe reports.

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Ben Bradshaw, a Labour former cabinet minister, has urged LGBTQ+ Conservatives to condemn Suella Braverman’s speech, in which she will say that Britain should not grant asylum to people who are simply fearful of persecution for being gay. Ben Quinn has the story.

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Good morning. Suella Braverman, the home secretary, is in Washington today where she is going to deliver a speech that marks a significant escalation of her attempts to dismantle current laws protecting refugees. In part this is a personal crusade – Politico this morning says she is firing the starting gun for the next Conservative leadership contest, which is a reasonable take – but it is also government/party policy. What she is saying is consistent with the direction taken by Rishi Sunak.

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The government passed the Illegal Immigration Act because it wants to establish the principle that people who arrive in the UK illegally on small boats have no right to claim asylum. The act has become law, but it has not been implemented yet because arguably it goes beyond what is allowed under international human rights law and and these issues have got to be resolved by the supreme court.

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Braverman today is making a simple counter-proposal; if international law (specifically the United Nations 1951 refugee convention) is the problem, let’s just change it.

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Extracts from the speech have been briefed in advance, and they show that Braverman is making a provocative argument, grounded in the theory that a convention drawn up more than 70 years ago does not work today.

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• Braverman will claim that almost 800 million people could claim the right to move to another country under the convention. She was criticised in March for telling MPs that there were 100 million people in the world who might qualify for asylum in the UK. Today she is using a figure almost eight times as large. She will reportedly say:

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When the refugee convention was signed, it conferred protection on some two million people in Europe.

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According to analysis by Nick Timothy and Karl Williams for the Centre for Policy Studies, it now confers the notional right to move to another country upon at least 780 million people.

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It is therefore incumbent upon politicians and thought leaders to ask whether the refugee convention, and the way it has come to be interpreted through our courts, is fit for our modern age or whether it is in need of reform.

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• She will say that people should not be able to claim asylum just because they face discrimination as women, or for being gay. She will reportedly say:

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I think most members of the public would recognise those fleeing a real risk of death, torture, oppression or violence, as in need of protection.

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However, as case law has developed, what we have seen in practice is an interpretive shift away from ‘persecution’, in favour of something more akin to a definition of ‘discrimination’ …

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Let me be clear, there are vast swathes of the world where it is extremely difficult to be gay, or to be a woman.

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Where individuals are being persecuted, it is right that we offer sanctuary.

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But we will not be able to sustain an asylum system if in effect, simply being gay, or a woman, and fearful of discrimination in your country of origin, is sufficient to qualify for protection.

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Here is Rajeev Syal’s preview of the speech. We wil be covering the speech, and the reaction it is provoking, in full.

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Here is the agenda for the day.

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9am: The Liberal Democrats open the final day of their conference with debates on subjects including child maintenance and the nature crisis.

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2.30pm: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, gives his keynote speech at the end of his party’s conference.

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3.30pm (UK time): Suella Braverman delivers her speech in Washington.

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If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a laptop or a desktop. This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting, too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line; privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate); or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.

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Key events

Libby Brooks

In Scotland last-minute talks over the weekend failed to halt the first day of strikes affecting schools today, with busy picket lines made up of support staff including janitors, canteen workers, classroom assistants and cleaners who said the dispute was about years of under-funding and job cuts.

But the picture is further confused after a renewed offer from the umbrella body for Scotland’s councils, Cosla, was rejected by Unison, which has the largest representation in most areas, while Unite and GMB have suspended strike plans in order to consult with members.

This means the impact of the strikes has been felt unevenly across the country, with some parents waiting to hear from their local authority this morning whether they would have enough staff to re-open schools for the next two days.

Unison said it was still unclear what the in-year value of the new offer was and wanted more assurance that the extra money for the new offer wouldn’t result in cuts to jobs and services elsewhere.