Tag Archives: Priti Patel

Yes, there are alternatives

I doubt if there are any descriptions and expletives not used about the Rwanda offshore processing scheme. The scheme in which Priti Patel wants to pack off asylum seekers arriving here by unorthodox means.

You can see the Liberal Democrats for Seekers of Sanctuary response to the proposal here: OFF SHORING PROCESSING OF ASYLUM SEEKERS IN RWANDA – STATEMENT FROM LD4SoS.

She is demanding to know alternatives, and yes there are. They are firmly embedded in Lib Dem policy.

The obvious one, most talked about, is Safe Routes for Refugees.  This has been mooted by Lib Dems since we first made the policy in 2015, and is as true as well as needed even more than it was in September 2015.  It has been in every manifesto commitment since.

However, more than that is needed.  Lib Dems have another policy, DECISION MAKING ON ASYLUM APPLICATIONS (pdf), saying that:

Liberal Democrats will review and reform all aspects of current asylum rules and operations that offend basic measures of fairness and justice. In particular, we would seek to change the culture of disbelief that affects all people applying for asylum. The Home Office is not fit for purpose and needs radical reform. The political influence must be taken out of decision making.

This is a radical departure from the present system, having respect, dignity and fairness at its heart.

It will cost more at first, with better trained staff, but decisions would be fairer and quicker.  It will be more accurate for the first time, so not so many appeals needed.  Appeals are not only traumatic for those making them, but cost the Ministry of Justice money, and 40% of them are won.  How much better for all if they get the decision right first time!

It would also be a system that took into account the different situations such as family reunion, unaccompanied children, victims of torture and rape, mental and physical health, and LGBT people.

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Priti Patel’s new asylum strategy – wrong in every sense

The announcement that the Home Secretary has finalised an “economic development and migration agreement” with Rwanda, whilst not necessarily a surprise, is a reminder that Government policy is now to make the seeking of asylum in the United Kingdom as difficult and unpleasant as possible, regardless of the cost.

The idea is that asylum seekers will be initially processed at a base in the United Kingdom, before being flown to Rwanda and “warehoused” there whilst their application is considered. That is, perhaps not everybody, as The Times is suggesting that only male asylum seekers would be sent. But the devil is not in the details.

There is a precedent for such treatment – the Australian Government took a similar approach, offshoring asylum processing to Nauru and Christmas Island. It was a disaster, with horror stories of abuse, suicide and, at the end of it all, most applicants were approved. The cost? £5,277… per day.

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Our nation should hang its head in shame over Rwanda refugee plans

I cannot believe the depths to which our nation has sunk. We have a government led by a liar and by ministers and civil servants being handed out fines for breaking their own laws. We have a government that slaps tax increases on struggling people and refuses to raise benefits to the level people need to survive. Food banks, once few and far between, and now ubiquitous and essential for good health and survival of many families. And we have a government that is planning to fly migrants and asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing.

It is almost impossible to see any humanitarianism in this government’s attitude towards refugees crossing the channel to a country they dream of as a safe haven. Instead of tackling the people smugglers who have been responsible for hundreds of deaths in the same way we tackle terrorists, our government is taking aim at vulnerable people desperate for new lives.

Priti Patel is in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, today to sign the “migration and economic development partnership” this morning. This is low moment for our country that I have always believed had humanity in its national heart.

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World Review: Oil, vigilantism in America, refugees, Swedish politics and Omicron

Prepare for an oil price war in 2022. The combatants are OPEC and a consortium of top energy consuming countries including the US, China, UK, Japan, India and South Korea. All of these countries have built up huge strategic oil reserves in case of emergency such as war or another 1973-style OPEC oil embargo. The US has the largest reserves with 638 million barrels tucked away in storage facilities in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. The last two times America’s oil reserves were used was after Hurricane Katrina and during the Gulf War. Biden is depleting them to combat the energy shortage which has pushed up prices to $81 a barrel and is threatening the US and world economic recovery from the pandemic.

The OPEC countries (and Russia), however, like the high prices and they are used to controlling the market to suit their needs by raising and lowering production. They fear that Biden’s move on economic rather than security grounds threatens their historic stranglehold on the market. An OPEC summit is planned for 2 December. The oil ministers were planning to announce a 100 million barrel increase in production from January; not enough to substantially reduce prices, but possibly enough to stabilise them. That is expected to be off next week’s agenda. President Biden also has internal problems in the form of the Republicans who advocate increasing domestic oil production and reinstating projects such as the Keystone XL oil pipeline to reduce reliance foreign sources. But that, of course, runs afoul of climate change promises.

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WATCH: Alistair Carmichael’s Conference Speech in full

Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesperson Alistair Carmichael spoke on the opening day of the Party’s Autumn Conference. In his speech he discussed Covid ID cards, Priti Patel’s Home Office failures, the labour shortage crisis and refugees. And the video is spectacular.

 

I don’t know if our Home Secretary lacks the empathy or imagination to put herself in the place of these desperate people who take these risks to get to our shores.

But I DO know that her response to that growing crisis shames our country…

This summer we saw Tory MPs queuing up to criticise the RNLI… for doing what they exist to do, saving lives at sea.

a government led by a Prime Minister who considers himself to be above the rule of law. A government that rules for the benefit of the elite… Whatever challenges present themselves in the weeks and months to come we shall continue to take the fight to this government.

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World Review: 9/11, Trudeau, Putin and Patel

It is the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

Two decades since 2,996 lives were lost in suicide attacks on the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and in a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. In New York the occasion will be marked by families of the dead reading statements about their loved ones. The event will be closed to the public. Elsewhere in the world, the anniversary will be marked with foreboding. The attack was carried out by Al Qaeeda and was planned and coordinated from its base in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Within weeks a US-led NATO force toppled the Taliban government. There has not been a Jihadist attack on US soil since. President Biden has now withdrawn US forces from Afghanistan and the Taliban is back in power.

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How bullying casts a long shadow…a post updated with reflections on Priti Patel and Dominic Cummings

It is ten years since I first wrote this, and I share it every year during Anti-Bullying Week. I could write something else, but it took some emotional energy to write the first time and I’m not really up for putting myself through that again. 

Let’s not put up with anyone being treated like this, whether at school, in the workplace or within politics. It’s important that anyone in any sort of leadership role in any organisation has the skills to recognise and intervene to stop bullying and support those affected by it. It casts a very long shadow and destroys lives. Its costs are massive in terms of wellbeing. Also, if you are bothered about the money and the economy, happier people are more productive.  It’s entirely preventable and we should do all we can to eradicate it.

It is ironic that I share this during this year’s anti bullying week a day after a Prime Minister defends a Cabinet Minister who has been found to have broken the Ministerial Code in the way that she treated her civil servants:

My advice is that the home secretary has not consistently met the high standards required by the Ministerial Code of treating her civil servants with consideration and respect.

Her approach on occasions has amounted to behaviour that can be described as bullying in terms of the impact felt by individuals.

I think the report is quite lenient on her, almost justifying shouting and swearing at officials. There is no circumstance in which that is ever justifiable in a workplace. The idea that she gets off because nobody raised it with her in the Home Office is utterly ridiculous. It takes some courage to raise these issues with the person in charge who shouts and swears at you. 

By all accounts, the way the recently departed Dominic Cummings treated people was even worse than the allegations against Patel. This Government has so far been fuelled by bullying. A toxic culture in which people are working in an atmosphere of fear and loathing is never going to be conducive to getting stuff done well. And this is actually costing lives. You can’t perform well if you are constantly fearful and anxious about the behaviour of an individual. You can’t effectively challenge their thinking and ideas. When you are making decisions that are a matter of life and death for many people, you need to make sure that they are properly thought through. A wise person I know says that the most important person in the room is the person who disagrees with you, because their input helps make your performance better. 

If staff in any workplace wake up with that same nausea that I faced when I was bullied, it saps energy that they could be putting into their work. And that is entirely the fault of the bully. 

We have a Prime Minister who clearly doesn’t get the impact of bullying in the workplace, and who is prepared to overlook the most egregious instances of it. 

Priti Patel should have been sacked. Dominic Cummings’ behaviour as Michael Gove’s Special Adviser at Education should have  meant that he never got over the door of Downing Street. 

It is incredibly worrying that the person in charge is willing to let this sort of unforgivable behaviour pass. The example that sets to other employers is extremely unhelpful, to say the least. 

And now on to that 10 year old piece.

I’ve been procrastinating like anything to avoid writing this post because although I know the events I’m going to describe took place a long time ago, they cast a long shadow. Their stranglehold on my life is long gone, but the memories are not. I might have teased my sister for posting something inane on my Facebook wall a while ago when she has important work she needs to do, but how would I know if I hadn’t similarly been wasting time.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about writing this post for a very long time, but now is probably the right time. When Stephen wrote so movingly about how his experiences of homophobic bullying had almost led him to the brink of suicide, I thought about telling my story too. His account of standing on the breakwater as a 17 year old brought vividly to my mind those dark occasions I’d stood far above the sea and contemplated jumping as a young teenager myself. I wasn’t bullied for homophobic reasons. In fact, it was made very clear to me that no man, woman or even beast would ever find me attractive.

The bullying started in earnest when I went to secondary school. I was in a very dark place as a 12 year old. This isn’t the right place to explain why but when I experienced those feelings again in later life, the doctor called it Depression. To add to that, we’d moved so I was far away from the emotional bedrocks my wonderful grannies provided. I was vulnerable, alone and, let’s be honest, not very likeable. I certainly didn’t like myself much anyway.

During the first three years of high school, I was primarily known by two names, neither of which had been given to me by my parents. In English one day in first year, we were taking it in turns to read out a scene from a play. I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what it was but as fate would have it, the line I had to read was “I want a yak.” Quick as a flash, the boy in front of me yelled out “I always thought you were one……” Cue the entire class, including the teacher, to collapse in laughter. That spread like wildfire, and before long it became my name to the entire pupil body.

If we’d had Google images then, I might have discovered pretty quickly that yaks are really kind of cute, but I never really saw it that way at the time and I really don’t think that the name was an affectionate one.

The other name came from the fact that, yes, I do have weird eyes. For that reason, people would hiss like a cat when they saw me coming, and spit out “Cat’s Eyes” as I passed.

I’m sure that doesn’t sound like much, but when you hear one or other of those things round every corner every day, you do feel less than human.

I became adept at varying my route to and from school to try to avoid the bullies who were there to pull my hair, or steal my stuff or point, or laugh, or kick or trip me up. They liked to mix it up a bit so I never really knew what I was walking into. I know it’s all quite low level, but it wore me down. I lived in perpetual fear and carrying that around everywhere was exhausting.

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Priti Patel should know that there’s no such thing as an ‘activist lawyer’

During the working day I am a lawyer. For most of the rest of my time I am an activist. But I am not an activist lawyer. Despite the dangerous arguments that have been bandied around by the Conservative-run Home Office over the past week, Priti Patel should know that this is something that just doesn’t exist. The reality is that, under our legal system, the personal views of a lawyer won’t have an impact on the outcome of a case.

I’ve always privately held liberal political views and for the past four years I’ve been an active Liberal Democrat. It’s something I often get asked about by colleagues behind the scenes but I’ve always taken care to keep my politics out of my work. It would be wrong for my personal views to influence the legal advice I give or how I argue a point in Court.

One of the most common questions I’ve been asked is why I would be willing to put my legal career on hold to become a Liberal Democrat MP. Why would I give up something that I enjoy and have worked hard to achieve, in exchange for – let’s be honest – a pretty precarious, highly pressured and intensely scrutinised job in Parliament?

My answer has always been this: there’s an important difference between the roles of barristers and politicians. It comes down to whether or not our own personal views have any influence over the cases and causes that we take up.

As activists and politicians we fight for the causes that we personally believe in. But as a barrister it is my job to fearlessly argue my client’s case in accordance with the law. What I personally think does not matter, and should not matter. And that’s why this idea of ‘activist lawyers’ is such a nonsense.

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LibLink: Rabina Khan on the treatment of migrants

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Cllr Rabina Khan is written in The Independent under the headline: ‘The treatment of migrants crossing the Channel is plain wrong and against British values.’ Rabina is a councillor in Tower Hamlets and Special Advisor to Lib Dem peers.

She writes:

Home secretary Priti Patel tells us the UK government is committed to “shutting down” routes used by migrants crossing the Channel to the south coast and disassembling the criminal gangs “making fortunes” enabling the illegal crossings to take place.

And whose fault is it anyway? Well, the French of course – as far as the government is concerned. If the French stopped the migrants putting to sea on their side of the Channel, our brave Border Force officers would not have to be dragging them out of their deflating dinghy on English soil.

Does anyone truly believe this will stop desperate people crossing dangerous waters in search of sanctuary and safety? It will not. The government often speaks of its admiration for the Australian points system for refugees. The way we treat these sad souls arriving from war zones, refugee camps and the deserts of North Africa needs no rating – it is plain wrong.

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Refugees are not our enemy – thoughts on Priti Patel’s remarks


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Around 4,000 migrants have crossed the channel from France in small boats this year. For context, 105,425 migrants crossed the Mediterranean sea to Southern European countries such as Italy and Greece last year. The overwhelming majority of refugees find sanctuary in the country neighbouring their own. Lebanon, Jordan, Pakistan, Turkey and Uganda are amongst the host countries for the majority of refugees.

Refugees are under no legal obligation to claim asylum in the first safe country they land in. All refugees have a legitimate claim to asylum in any safe country if they are still at risk of persecution in their country of origin. There are just no legal routes to seek refuge in the UK. Seeking asylum should not be a crime.

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Observations of an expat: Maybe Minister

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The row between British Home Secretary Pritti Patel and her until recently Permanent  Under Secretary of State Sir Phillip Putnam is part of a disturbing trend which is undermining a 150-year-old tried, tested and globally-respected system.

Europe, America and most of the rest of the world endure political patronage in varying degrees. This was also the case in the UK before Gladstone took a leaf from the Chinese and Indian experience and introduced civil service exams in 1870. Patronage, corruption and political ties were swapped for a civil service based on merit. Bribery income was replaced with job security, above average salary, a gold-plated pension and the prospect of a lucrative private sector contract upon retirement.

In return the civil servants were expected to offer apolitical and impartial advice to their policy-making ministers. When the policy was decided, the civil servants implemented it.  Secretaries of state came and went. The civil servants stayed on to provide a historic knowledge, keep track of the buried bodies and point out the consequences and pitfalls of a minister’s preferred course of action.

The final ruling, however, rested with the minister. That is why when a mistake was made it was the politician who resigned.  The issue of resignations is one of the core causes for the unravelling of the relationship between civil servants and government. Ministers have, for the most part, stopped taking responsibility for their decisions. Politics has become a career choice. Elected officials have become increasingly focused on retaining their jobs, political infighting and climbing the greasy pole rather than public service.

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3-4 August 2019 – the weekend’s press releases

Police should reduce fear, not create terror

Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesperson Ed Davey has criticised Home Secretary Priti Patel as “out of touch” for her comments about the police making people “literally feel terror”.

Responding to Priti Patel’s interview with the Daily Mail, Ed Davey said:

The Liberal Democrats want many more police so they can catch criminals, prevent crime in the first place and work in our communities to help people feel safer – and it’s a shame Priti Patel didn’t back our campaign for more police these last four years.

Yet Priti Patel’s notion that making people terrified of the

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Swinson: No 10 must answer questions over Patel

I have to say, I’m not unhappy to see the back of Priti Patel from Government. I have never forgiven her for caving to pressure and withdrawing funding from an innovative and successful project which changed attitudes and behaviour, protecting girls from harassment and violence.  She can’t protect women and girls from violence, but she’s happy to talk about using our aid budget to help out an occupying army against government policy.

It’s quite astounding that Patel wasn’t sacked when the initial revelations about her behaviour came out at the weekend.

Jo Swinson said that there still questions for No 10 …

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After the Coalition: A Conservative agenda for Britain

Collections of policy essays from new or junior MPs rarely have much of an impact or shelf-life in British politics, but however fallible their predictions for the future they can be illuminating about the current state of the authors’ party and its broad ideological direction.

So it is with After the Coalition which is very different in tone and hope for the future from last year’s Which Way’s Up? by Nick Boles. The contrast is there in the sub-titles for the two books. Boles had “The future for coalition Britain” whilst the five authors behind this volume have gone for …

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