Key events
Cooper says people with links to UK will be prioritised when migrants are picked for admission from France
The government will prioritise people with a connection with the UK when deciding which asylum seekers to accept from France, in return for small boat arrivals being returned, Yvette Cooper said this morning.
Asked how the government would select the 50 or so migrants from France expected to be brought to the UK every week under the scheme, the home secretary told LBC:
In terms of people applying to come to the UK, we’ve said that priority will be given to people who have a connection to the UK, people who are most likely to be genuine refugees or have been targeted by the smuggling gangs as well.
But this is a pilot, and we will develop it over time, but that principle, that fundamental change is really important.
Returns deal will involve some people arriving on small boats being detained, Cooper says
Yvette Cooper has confirmed that the returns agreement with France will involve some small boat arrivals being detained prior to removal.
Speaking on the Today programme, she said:
We will be detaining people certainly as the pilot is introduced and as the programme becomes operationalised.
Asked to clarify who would be detained, she added: “Those will be operational decisions and we will update people on those as we roll the programme out.”
Cooper declines to say how many people will be returned under deal with France, but says numbers expected to go up
In her interviews this morning Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, declined to say how many people arriving in the UK on small boats would be returned to France under the deal announced yesterday.
It has been widely reported that the pilot will start with 50 people a week being returned – although this figure has not been officially confirmed.
Cooper did not challenge the claim that 50 a week would be the starting piont, but she stressed that the “ultimate numbers” were not fixed. She told LBC:
We’re not actually fixing the ultimate numbers, either in the first phase of the pilot or in subsequent phases of the pilot, and so we need to get this started, and we need to build this over time.
She also insisted that the government wanted to increase the numbers over time. She told the Today programme:
It is a pilot, and we’ve been clear about that, and we obviously want to extend and develop this.
She also told LBC that the government was deliberately being coy about process because it did not want to help the people smugglers. She explained:
We don’t want the smuggler gangs to find different ways around this, and they will respond to whatever information we put out about this pilot. They will respond and they will twist details, and they will use that in order to make more money, because that’s how they work.
Britain expects EU to approve migration deal with France, says Cooper
Yesterday Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron published a leaders’ declaration that implied the returns agreement would need EU sign-off. They were not very clear about this, but the Times led its main story on this on the suggestion that the EU might block the deal.
As Kiran Stacey reports, in her interviews this morning Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, said that European commissioners had been “very supportive” of the plan and that she did not expect them to block it.
Yvette Cooper avoids saying if Macron right about Brexit making UK’s illegal migration problem worse
Good morning. Keir Starmer notched up a notable achievement yesterday – by agreeing a pilot returns agreement with France, something never managed by his immediate Conservative predecessors. But, as Kiran Stacey and Jessica Elgot report in their analysis, there was some Tory precedent for the policy. When Robert Jenrick was immigration minister, he tried, and failed, to get Rishi Sunak to negotiate a deal of this kind.
Yesterday Jenrick, who is now shadow justice secretary and seen as a likely replacement for Kemi Badenoch before the next election, told GB News that the Starmer scheme “hasn’t got a cat in hell’s chance of working” because the numbers involved were too small. The key Tory papers, like the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and Daily Telegraph, are fiercely critical. But, nevertheless, this is a win for Starmerism. The PM regularly argues that calm, sensible cooperation with allies can pay off, and now he has that the returns deal with Emmanuel Macron can achieve this.
In politics good news never lasts for long and the headline lines this morning is about the economy shrinking in May. Graeme Wearden has the details on his businesss live blog.
This is a setback because Starmer and Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, have made boosting growth their number one priority. Graeme is covering the reaction to this.
I will be focusing on the reaction to the returns deal. Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, has been doing an interview round this morning. She dismissed claims that the EU would try to block the arrangement, but she was less forthcoming about how many migrants might actually be returned to France, saying the numbers had not been fixed. And she declined to say whether Macron was right to say at the press conference with Starmer yesterday when he said Brexit had made it harder for the UK to deal with illegal migration.
In comments that have infuriated the pro-Brexit papers, Macron said:
Many people explained that Brexit would make it more possible to fight effectively against illegal migration But since Brexit the UK has no illegal migration agreement with the EU … That creates an incentive to make the crossing, the precise opposite of what Brexit promised.
The British people were sold a lie, which was that [migration] was a problem with Europe. With your government, we’re pragmatic, and for the first time in nine years we are providing a response.
Asked on Sky News if Macron had a point, Cooper replied:
I think what I’ve seen happen is that the way that the criminal smuggler gangs operate is that they will weaponise anything that is happening. And so what we saw in the run-up to Brexit being implemented was we saw criminal gangs promising people that they had to cross quickly, and they had to pay money to the smuggler gangs quickly in order to be able to cross in time before Brexit happened.
As soon as Brexit happened, they then said ‘Oh, well, now you’ve got to pay us money, because this means you can’t be returned because the Dublin Agreement isn’t in place’.
So the thing about the criminal smuggler gangs is whatever arrangements are in place, they will use them in order to make money, but that’s why we have to be fundamentally undermining their model.
I will post more from the Cooper interviews soon.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: MPs debate backbench bills, starting with Linsey Farnsworth’s unauthorised entry to football matches bill.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
Lunchtime: Keir Starmer is hosting a cabinet awayday, reportedly at Chequers.
And Kemi Badenoch is on a visit in her constituency, North West Essex, today.
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