Early evening summary
- Boris Johnson has comfortably won a series of votes overturning Lords defeats on the nationality and borders bill. As of now, the divisions list show that only four Conservative MPs have voted against the government in one or more of the divisions. On the most contentious issue, the government plan to allow asylum seekers to be sent offshore while their applications are processed, David Davis, Simon Hoare and Andrew Mitchell were the only Tories voting against. The government had a majority of 70, and 57 Tories did not vote. (In the first division of the day, only 50 Tories did not vote.) In the division where the government rejected the Lords proposal to make it easier for asylum seekers to work while their claims are being processed, only Hoare and Tim Loughton voted with the opposition, with 69 Tories not voting. Davis was the sole Conservative voting against government plans to make it easier for the home secretary to deprive someone of their citizenship. As the debate wound up, Tom Pursglove, the minister for illegal migration, clarified comments made earlier about how the bill would allow Ukrainian refugees entering the UK illegally to be jailed. Pursglove said the bill did allow people entering the country illegally to be prosecuted, but he said this power was only intended to be used in “egregious cases”. See 4.20pm. After the votes Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said:
Today, Tory MPs voted to make it a criminal offence for Ukrainian families to arrive in the UK without the right papers, with a penalty of up to four years in prison. At a time when the British people have made clear that we need to help Ukrainian refugees, this is deeply shameful.
The Conservatives also voted against the international Refugee Convention, which Britain helped to draft in the wake of the second world war, calling on all countries to do their bit to help those fleeing the horrors of war. This should be a source of pride and for the British government to reject it when war is raging in Europe once more is inexcusable.
More than 3 million people have left Ukraine since the Russian invasion, many of them children and elderly people. They need support and solidarity from all countries. The Home Office has already been far too slow to help. Today’s votes make that much worse. Britain is better than this.
- In the Lords, however, peers have defeated the government in four votes on the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill. They voted to reject plans to give the police new powers to tackle noisy protests (in two divisions on this topic); they voted to make “intimidatory offences aggravated by sex or gender” a crime and they voted to give new powers to food crime investigators. MPs have already rejected these proposals, and the bill is now undergoing “ping pong” – the process where it goes back and forwards between the Lords and the Commons until one side backs down.
- An inquiry into why the British government took more than 30 years to pay a £400m debt to the Iranian government that was deemed fundamental to the release of British-Iranian dual nationals held in Iranian jails is to be mounted by the foreign affairs select committee.
- Transparency campaigners have accused ministers of conducting “government by WhatsApp” in the UK’s third-highest court, arguing that the use of self-destructing messages on insecure platforms is unlawful and undemocratic.
- The UK is on the brink of agreeing a deal with the US to remove tariffs on British steel exports, ending months of tensions that had stood in the way of a broader bilateral trade agreement.
Updated
MPs vote to reinstate provisions allowing asylum claims to be processed offshore – but government majority cut
MPs also voted to remove Lords amendment 9. This was a particularly contentious one, because amendment 9 took out the part of the bill allowing asylum claimaints to be removed from the UK for their claims to be processed in another country. The goverment won by 302 votes to 232 – a majority of 70.
Again, this is lower than the majorities in the first three divisions.
Updated
