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Sunak ‘confident’ he can get Rwanda scheme up and running
The prime minister has said again that he is “confident” his government can get its plan to deport to Rwanda asylum seekers who have reached the UK.
Rishi Sunak told reporters: “I’m committed to stopping the boats, we need to have a deterrent so that if people come here illegally, they can’t stay, they’ll be removed.
“That’s why Rwanda is so important. That’s why I’m determined to see it through. Once it’s up and running, I’m confident we’ll be able to operationalise the scheme, get people on flights.
“Because that’s how we’ll set up a deterrent and ultimately end the unfairness of people jumping the queue, coming here illegally putting pressure on local services, and risking their own lives.
“None of that’s right. None of it’s fair. None of it’s compassionate either, to do nothing, and our plan is the right one.”
The government’s attempt to get the scheme running has repeatedly failed in the courts and the latest legislation has been opposed by the House of Lords. Sunak said “First of all, we need to get it through parliament where the Labour party has been blocking it for a long time.”
A Labour spokesperson yesterday described the scheme as a “farce” that was costing taxpayers huge sums of money with no results.
The Financial Times has reported that Rwanda’s state-owned airline turned down a UK government proposal to transport asylum seekers, with reports that it considered it “brand damaging.”
Under the scheme, successful asylum seekers would remain in Rwanda. However, media reports yesterday suggested that some accommodation which was previously said to have been built to receive asylum seekers via the scheme had instead been sold to local residents in Rwanda.
Appearing on LBC radio this morning, Sunak again threatened to pull the UK out of the European convention on human rights, which would see the UK join Russia, Belarus and Vatican City as the only European states outside it. He told listeners:
I can be very clear – and I have been repeatedly – I am determined to see this policy through, because I think it’s really important for the country, for the security of our borders, for fairness.
I won’t let a foreign court block our ability to put people on planes and send them to Rwanda. We are a reasonable people trying to do a reasonable thing.
Key events
Anthony Hooper tells Horizon IT inquiry he wishes he’d spoken directly to Post Office board about ‘fundamental implausibility’ of its case
At the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, Sir Anthony Hooper has praised forensic auditors Second Sight, saying they had “a difficult path to tread”, but also that they only had two or three people working on it, and were dealing with 150 cases that had come forward. Hooper was chair of the mediation process investigating the affair between 2013 and 2015.
“These were very complex and difficult cases that we were looking at, they that they were looking at,” he says. “And throughout the whole of the time of the mediation scheme, the Post Office would maintain over and over again that the Horizon system was robust, there was nothing wrong with it.”
We now know that they were aware of multiple bugs in the system.
Hooper said the Post Office case “didn’t make sense.”
He said:
I tried to make it clear to Paula Vennells and to the chairman that the Post Office case didn’t make sense. And I felt that throughout. It didn’t make sense that reputable SPMs, appointed by the Post Office after examination of their characters, would be stealing these sums of money. It didn’t make sense.
He pointed out earlier that when he took on the role he knew very little about the background, and that we only know about what is called the Post Office Horizon scandal because of reporting by Computer Weekly, Private Eye, and the work of MPs like Jmaes Arbuthnot, who gave evidence earlier today.
Julian Blake, questioning him, observes that he is “more animated” today than the words in his written submission appear. “I mean, I’m not always very measured,” Hooper says, to laughter in the room.
Hooper says now he wished he’d spoken directly to the Post Office board about “The fundamental implausibility of the Post Office case.”
Here is an exchange from the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry evidence from earlier today, when former Conservative MP Lord Arbuthnot was appearing, in which he said he felt that Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells was “ashamed” when he called her out in a meeting for breaking her word.
PA Media has pulled the section out in its coverage, quoting Arbuthnot saying:
They said that the Post Office should exclude altogether from the mediation scheme people who had pleaded guilty – a different proposition from their being put to the back of the queue.
I asked them how they thought I would have supported a scheme which excluded my constituent, Jo Hamilton, to which they had no answer.
This, for me, was the final straw. Paula Vennells seemed almost cowed by their stronger personalities and said little. I told her she was breaking her word.
I sensed, rightly or wrongly, that she felt ashamed. The meeting broke up in acrimony.”
He said the meeting had also featured Angela Van Den Bogerd, the then-head of network services, and former general counsel Chris Aujard.
Sir Anthony Hooper, the former Lord Justice of Appeal and former Chair of the Working Group for the Initial Complaint Review and Mediation Scheme in the Post Office Horizon IT scandal is appearing now at the inquiry. He is being question by Julian Blake.
Hooper is appearing remotely, and essentially has opened by saying that if he knew then what he knew know, he wouldn’t have taken on the job because the Post Office’s attitude made it “undoable”.
Talking of opinions about Rishi Sunak, social media has been excited today by a bit of polling that pits Sunak against Keir Starmer in a range of everyday scenarios and finds that the public would back Sunak in an escape room, and negotiating a discount, but would slightly prefer it if Starmer were putting up their shelves or chatting to them down the pub.
I should add that having agreed to take the survey, I am quite impressed that given this barrage of questions at least a third of the British public then appear to have greeted all the options with a hearty ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Rafael Behr has written for us today in his column that when Rishi Sunak speaks, the nation shrugs and there’s no coming back from that. Here is an excerpt:
Rishi Sunak is not a deep-cover agent of the Labour party, but politics might not look very different if the prime minister were on a secret mission to make life easier for Keir Starmer.
To achieve this feat, special operative Sunak would occupy positions expected of a Conservative leader, but in a way that minimised public enthusiasm and maximised division in his own party.
He would present himself as a unity candidate, then stagger around in the policy no man’s land between rival factions. He would be too soft to satisfy Brexit hardliners but still indulge populist bullies enough to alienate squeamish liberals. He would be close enough to David Cameron to elicit contempt from people who admire Nigel Farage, while aping Faragism enough to demoralise one nation Tories. With precision targeting, his messages would connect with no one.
You can read that here: Rafael Behr – When Rishi Sunak speaks, the nation shrugs. There’s no coming back from that
For time reasons at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, Jason Beer KC has said in the last section that they have galloped through about eight years of narrative in a short time. Lord Arbuthnot has been asked about how the Post Office sacked the forensic accountants Second Sight, and closed down the working group between the Post Office, the justice campaign and MPs supporting them.
Asked if he had anything to add, Arbuthnot said:
I think that with the help of this inquiry, we are moving belatedly to the right place. And so I’d like to say thank you.
Chair Wyn Williams, like yesterday with Alan Bates, has asked people in the room to refrain from showing appreciation to Arbuthnot with applause, as it is not the right place for that.
He extended his own thanks to the witness, and praised him for having also been willing to engage with “a non-statutory review, which was not welcomed by many people, but you thought it appropriate to give it what assistance you could. So throughout my involvement in this process, I have had nothing but help from you for which I thank you very much.”
There is now a short pause in proceedings.
At the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, Chris Aujard has come in for some criticism from Lord Arbuthnot. Aujard was interim general counsel for the Post Office from mid-October 2013 through to late February 2015.
Arbuthnot has said that when he appeared, he felt there was a significant change in attitude from the Post Office, which he has just described as full of “defensiveness, secrecy, legalism” during this period.
He said “it seemed to be blocking information” and personally described Aujard as “unconvincing, defensive, offhand and obstructive.”
He said at this point he thought the forensic auditors Second Sight were “uncovering something really crucial about Horizon”.
Arbuthnot tells the inquiry that he thought the Post Office “were worried that Second Sight [the forensic auditors] was getting too close to the truth, and that if they allowed Second Sight to go on uncovering these things it posed an existential threat to the future of Horizon. And that that in turn posed an existential threat to the future of the Post Office. That’s what I think I thought they were doing, and I still think that that’s what they were doing.”
He said relations between the MPs pursuing the justice campaign and the Post Office essentially broke down.
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With apologies if I’ve made any transcription errors today. For clarity I am using Otter.ai to do the transcription while listening to the hearing, and then tidying up the automatically generated transcript against delivery, but I will inevitably have not captured it perfectly.
Cooper: ‘real, deep, serious concerns’ about Israel’s military action in Gaza
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper has renewed Labour’s calls for the Government to publish its legal advice on Israel’s military action in Gaza, saying there were “real, deep, serious concerns” about the war.
PA Media reports that on a visit to Yarm in Teesside, she was asked whether she agreed with US President Joe Biden that Benjamin Netanyahu’s approach to the conflict was a “mistake,” to which she responded: “There’s real deep, serious concerns. It’s devastating what is happening. We need an immediate ceasefire and also for the hostages to be released.
“But as David Lammy has said they’re in serious allegations about the breaches around international law.
“And that’s why it’s so important that the British Government now publishes its legal advice around our sales and around breaches of international law. We need that to be published. This is so important.”
Josh Halliday, our North of England editor, has another case study today of someone who has been pursued to repay benefits after exceeding the then-earnings limit of £120 a week by only a small amount with a low-paid part-time job pushed her over the DWP’s “cliff edge”. You can read it here.
Prime minister Rishi Sunak has been in Horsham alongside local MP Jeremy Quinn and police and crime commissioner Katy Bourne, where he has been promoting the government’s new shoplifting plans.
The Post Office Horizon IT inquiry hearing has resumed. You can watch it here. And it is Martin Belam back with you on the live blog.
Three people have been charged with public order offences following a pro-Palestine demonstration outside Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s home, the Metropolitan Police have said.
On Tuesday demonstrators hung a banner outside Sir Keir’s house that read: “Starmer stop the killing”, surrounded by red hand prints.
Protesters then laid rows of children’s shoes in front of the Labour leader’s door, a tactic that has been utilised at a number of pro-Palestine protests to signify children killed in Gaza.
The group that carried out the demonstration, known as Youth Demand, describe itself as a “new youth resistance campaign fighting for an end to genocide”.
A Metropolitan Police statement said: “Two women and a man arrested in Kentish Town on Tuesday April 9 have been charged with public order offences and will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
“Leonorah Ward, 21, of Beechwood Mount, Burley, Leeds, Zosia Lewis, 23, of Rokeby Terrace, Newcastle upon Tyne and Daniel Formentin, 24, of Woodside Avenue, Burley, Leeds, will appear before the court on Wednesday April 10.
“All have been charged with section 42 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 and for breaching court bail.
“The arrests were made on Tuesday April 9 under section 42 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001.
“This power stops the harassment of a person at their home address if an officer suspects it is causing alarm or distress to the occupant.”
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