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Priti Patel’s plan to force migrant boats back into French waters has been thrown into doubt by complex rules imposed by the Home Office to prevent violations of international law.The Independent understands that any push-back operations would have to meet numerous conditions, including the presence of French authorities to receive vessels.But Paris has suggested it will not cooperate with the plans, with a letter to Ms Patel from her French counterpart earlier this year saying the “use of maritime refoulements to French territorial waters would risk having a negative impact on our cooperation”.It comes after the number of asylum seekers crossing the English Channel hit a new daily record of 1,185 on Thursday, following rocketing attempts since the home secretary vowed to make the route “unviable” in August 2020.Official legal advice that was leaked this week suggested that government lawyers believe that any push-backs will be met by legal challenges, and the Home Office is likely to lose.When questioned about the legality of the planned operations last month, Ms Patel said a “framework” had been drawn up but admitted: “There is a narrow basis for the operationalisation of this tactic.”Labour accused the home secretary of “blaming everyone but herself” for unprecedented numbers of people risking their lives to cross the English Channel.Nick Thomas-Symonds, the shadow home secretary, said: “Labour has called out the push-back technique as unconscionable and wrong-headed. It is unsurprising that government lawyers believe the technique would not be considered legal if brought to a court challenge, and yet the home secretary persists with it.“This is a clear sign of desperation from the home secretary because of her failure to grip this crisis. She must take responsibility, show leadership and change course.”The Independent understands that rules drawn up for Border Force mean that targeted boats have to be in a designated portion of the English Channel, and to have reached that area independently without being led or coerced.The vessels must be assessed by drone to look for numerous signs of “vulnerability” that The Independent has decided not to publish.People crossing Channel are ‘not genuine asylum seekers’ and just want to stay in hotels, Priti Patel saysIf a dinghy enters the push-back area meeting all of those criteria, the Border Force will still have to back off if the situation deteriorates.Crucially, French authorities have to be present during a push-back operation and be willing to receive the boat.A House of Commons library briefing published in September said the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea allows countries to prevent passage to prohibit smuggling, or breaching immigration rules, “but any return of a vessel to a state’s territorial waters would require that state’s consent”.A letter from French interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, in September said its position on rescue operations in the Channel remained unchanged and “safeguarding human lives at sea takes priority over considerations of nationality, status and migratory policy”.He added: “The use of maritime refoulements to French territorial waters would risk having a negative impact on our cooperation.”An official from the ISU union, which represents Border Force staff, said the “very strong view of staff is that push-backs are never going to happen”.“The constraints on when this would occur at all are so tight that we simply do not believe there will be a situation where this will ever happen,” Lucy Moreton told The Independent.“Even if we could identify a suitable vessel we would still need the French there, in a situation where the French say they won’t do it because they don’t think it’s legal.” More

A man with HIV who was awaiting deportation to Jamaica is being denied life-saving treatment in an immigration detention centre, The Independent has learned.The 42-year-old man relies on daily medication to manage his condition, and says the dosages for his other ailments, schizophrenia and depression, have been reduced by staff at Colnbrook Immigration Centre.He has lived in the UK for more than 30 years and was detained on Monday after enforcement officers “kicked his door off” and seized him at his home in the early hours of the morning.The Birmingham resident was scheduled to be deported to Jamaica next Wednesday, but Home Office staff have now said he won’t be removed, following enquiries from The Independent.“They haven’t given me any medication for my HIV at all despite my asking. I’d usually take one of these tablets every day and it helps me to manage my condition,” the man told The Independent from his cell at Colnbrook prior to the government’s U-turn.“They’ve stopped my depression tablets completely which I’ve been on for over ten years. For some reason, it’s like they want me to shout and kick off, but I’m not going to do that.”He added: “You can’t let someone suffer the way they’re making me suffer. What else do I need to do to show them that how they’re treating me is wrong?”The man also has a heroin addiction and must regularly take methadone to manage withdrawal symptoms.As a consequence of the reduction in his methadone, he is suffering from severe symptoms. He says that he has been vomiting frequently and has been unable to properly eat and sleep for days.Seth Ramocan, Jamaica’s high commissioner in London, told The Independent he was making “immediate” enquiries with the Home Office about the case. More

Campaigners for press freedom are fighting back against government attempts to crack down on reporting of official information.They are calling for an end to efforts to stifle journalism through “draconian” proposals in the Official Secrets Act and attempts to weaken Freedom of Information laws.The government plans to make it easier under the Official Secrets Act to convict whistleblowers and journalists who publish information in the public interest without authority.And anyone convicted could be jailed for up to 14 years, instead of two, as now.In July, the Home Office revealed proposals to reform the Official Secrets Act 1989 to make convictions easier of people who disclose information without authority.The amendment would also ramp up prison sentences for disclosures about the security services, defence, international relations and law enforcement.At the same time, ministers intend making two new UK organisations exempt from Freedom of Information (FoI) laws, which allow anyone to request information held on file by a public body.They are the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, which will spend £800m of public money funding high-risk research, and the proposed new Heath Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB), which will look at anything going wrong in healthcare that may have implications for patient safety.The proposals come against a backdrop of claims of rising secrecy. A report by media organisation openDemocracy last week found that 2020 was the worst on record for Freedom of Information Act transparency, with government departments “stonewalling” and “exploiting loopholes to delay access to information”.Maurice Frankel, director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, warned: “Incredibly, a whistleblower who reveals that the new body [the HSSIB] has, say, failed to contact key witnesses to a medical accident will commit a criminal offence.”The public will have better rights to information from parish councils than from the new inventions agency, he said.Recent FoI disclosures in the public interest have revealed the lack of preparation for the pandemic, Covid contracts that went to ministers’ contacts, the dangers of smart motorways and the release of untreated sewage into waterways.“The FoI Act has repeatedly come under attack from government which finds the openness uncomfortable,” Mr Frankel said.He also hit out at the proposed changes to the Official Secrets Act, saying: “Astonishingly, the Home Office says the maximum for leaking should be the same as for espionage – 14 years in prison.“Threatening people who reveal government misconduct with oppressive penalties will ensure that improper behaviour continues.”The government looks set to reject Law Commission advice that anyone charged be able to argue that disclosure was in the public interest.Online media and newspapers are backing the Journalism Matters campaign this week that aims to fight back against threats to press freedom.The UK ranks only 33rd out of 180 countries in the Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index.Rebecca Vincent, director of international campaigns for Reporters Without Borders, said: “Publishing stories based on leaked information is a standard journalistic practice, and is part and parcel of the work of media organisations around the world.“However, recent years have seen increasing moves by governments to make every step of this process much more difficult – for sources, journalists and publishers alike.”Independent journalism has come under unprecedented attack around the world in recent years, she said, warning the global climate for press freedom was eroding.Internationally, more than 450 journalists are imprisoned, and more than 1,000 journalists have been killed because of their work in a decade.The Independent has asked the government to respond. More

The DUP will hold back on its threat to collapse Stormont over the Northern Ireland protocol for a few more weeks to enable post-Brexit negotiations between the UK and EU to continue, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has said.The party leader has faced questions at to why he has not followed through on his ultimatum to withdraw ministers from Stormont at the start of November – thus collapsing powersharing – if major changes to the contentious Irish Sea trading arrangements had not been secured by that date.It comes as the hijacking and burning of a bus in Newtownards, a predominantly unionist area, was possibly timed to mark the DUP’s missed deadline. Around 6.30 on Monday morning, two masked men boarded a bus and poured fuel over the vehicle before setting it alight.Stormont’s infrastructure minister, Nichola Mallon, said the men who carried out the attack “muttered something about the protocol” while holding the bus driver at gun point.The driver managed to get off the vehicle unharmed, but was left badly shaken by the incident. No passengers were onboard at the time. A nearby bus shelter was also significantly damaged by the fire.Condemning the “paramilitary elements” behind the attack, Sir Jeffrey insisted they would not influence his political strategy to remove the Irish Sea border.He said it would be “churlish” to pull down Stormont at this point, claiming the UK government was making progress in efforts to slash the red tape burden imposed by the protocol. His comments come as negotiations between the EU and UK remain deadlocked.The government has signalled it will move to unilaterally suspend elements of the protocol – by triggering a mechanism known as Article 16 – if an agreed outcome is not reached by the end of November.The oversight role of the European Court of Justice in policing the operation of the protocol remains a key sticking point in the negotiations.Sir Jeffrey said that he was prepared to give a few more “weeks” to enable negotiations to reach an agreement that would remove the Irish Sea border.“If that doesn’t happen, I expect the government, as the prime minister said last week, to take unilateral action. The prime minister has said that the conditions exist to trigger Article 16 and I expect that to happen. If these things don’t happen, then I will act. I’ve made that absolutely clear,” he said.The protocol is the mechanism agreed by the EU and UK to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland post-Brexit, which it has done by effectively keeping Northern Ireland within the EU’s single market for goods – an arrangement that has led to checks on products crossing the Irish Sea from Great Britain.Brexit minister Lord Frost and European Commission vice president Maros Sefcovic are due to meet face-to-face on Friday. More

Rishi Sunak’s announcement that taxes on alcoholic beverages are being slashed might have given parts of the industry reason to celebrate – not least sparkling wine producers, who will see a massive cut in duty – but for punters the reaction has been much more muted. As the chancellor was revealing an overhaul of the UK’s alcohol duty system, which he said would lead to the price of a pint in a pub falling by 3p, those frequenting the beer gardens of south London were far from enthusiastic about the impact it might have.The conclusion drawn by those The Independent spoke to was that the rising cost of living would likely swallow up any savings in duty from Wednesday’s Budget commitment, which included cutting taxes on draught beer and cider and scrapping a planned increase in duty on spirits such as Scotch whisky, wine, cider and beer.“Everything has gone up in price recently, so knocking 3p off a pint really won’t make much of a difference,” said one drinker at The Crooked Well in Camberwell, who asked not to be named.“If it helps pubs that would be something. The way people are drinking now has changed, more are drinking at home, so it would be good if the changes will help address that,” he added, before joking that perhaps it was for the best that prices held steady. “We’re already a nation of alcoholics and this might just push us over the precipice,” he said. Student Olivia Chapp who was with friends in the nearby Joiners Arms said she was “all for” cuts to alcohol duty. “If drinks will be cheaper then ‘yay’,” she said, though the chancellor’s slashing of the duty level of 28 per cent on sparkling wine, champagne, prosecco and cava would not see her popping corks any time soon.“Prices have really risen recently, so it would have to be a lot cheaper before I change what I am drinking,” she said. “Cutting a bit off the price of a bottle of champagne or prosecco won’t make me suddenly go out and buy one.”Away from the pubs, campaigners warned that the Treasury had “missed yet another important opportunity to significantly reduce the harm caused by alcohol” with the commitment to lower duty on many beverages.Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, chair of the Alcohol Health Alliance UK, welcomed the move to tax alcohol primarily based on its strength, but said: “The decision to once again freeze alcohol duty is totally misguided. We are already at crisis point when it comes to alcohol harm. “Deaths caused by alcohol reached record highs in 2020 and making alcohol even cheaper will only deepen the health inequalities that this government had promised to address.”Malcolm Clark, senior cancer prevention policy manager at Cancer Research UK, said the cuts and freezes in alcohol duty risked “sending out the wrong message to the public. There’s no ‘safe’ level of drinking, and whatever your drinking habits, cutting down can reduce your risk of cancer”.Jyotsna Vohra, director of policy at the Royal Society for Public Health, said the decision was “incompatible with the government’s many ambitions to levelling up health, tackling the NHS backlog and reducing crime”, coming after a pandemic which had “only worsened alcohol misuse, with alcohol-specific deaths increasing by 20 per cent”. Dr Richard Piper, CEO of Alcohol Change UK, added: “The chancellor has missed yet another important opportunity to significantly reduce the harm caused by alcohol and to cover the costs of that harm. Instead, he has given a tax break to massive alcohol producers who have continued to see huge profits throughout the pandemic.”This cut will hurt the public purse by further decreasing revenue receipts by £500 million next year alone, and could make cheap booze even more affordable, causing even greater harm”.Elsewhere, reaction from industry was largely, though not entirely, positive.The Society of Independent Brewers said the lower rate of duty for beer sold in pubs was a “huge win for the industry” but warned that most craft keg beer in the UK was sold in 30 litre kegs, meaning they cannot benefit from a new lower rate for draught beer and cider which will only apply to 40 litre containers.But it was good news for Andrew Carter, CEO of English wine producer, Chapel Down, which has vineyards across Kent, Sussex, Surrey and Essex.He said demand for his products had “never been higher” and the chancellor’s pledge to reduce sparkling wine duty to the same level as still wines would make the business “more competitive against our worldwide competitors”. “This change will enable us to reinvest in our business and to continue growing at pace,” he said. “Chapel Down, along with the wider English wine industry, will be raising a toast to the chancellor for his support this week.” More

Priti Patel has said she wants to force boats carrying asylum seekers back to France to “save lives”.The home secretary insisted that planned operations by the Border Force in the English Channel would not risk lives and cause people to drown.During an evidence session held by the Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee, she said there had been “extensive work” on legal and practical issues around push-backs.Labour peer Baroness Chakrabarti, the former director of Liberty, said many people found the plans “shocking” and asked if the government had considered that it might be violating human rights and maritime law.“You’ve got to be really careful not to [affect] some people who are genuine refugees, and frankly not to drown people, whether they’re genuine refugees or not,” she added.Ms Patel said the government would “never do anything to put the safety of people’s lives at risk”.“We don’t want to see people dying at sea and I’m very vocal about this, but at the same time I’m unapologetic about our determination as a government to stop the people trafficking and putting people in boats,” she added.“We’re not here to threaten lives, we’re here to save lives and make sure that people’s lives are not put at risk.”Ms Patel said several people had already drowned in the Channel, including a migrant who was reported to have fallen off a dinghy off the coast of Essex on Tuesday.The home secretary told the committee that a legal framework had been created for push-backs and operational decisions would be made by Border Force, adding: “None of this is illegal.”Ms Patel said that decisions on push-backs would take the weather and conditions into account, and would be done “in a safe way”.“Our policy is based around saving lives and stopping people from drowning,” she added.Asylum seekers face violent pushbacks in Aegean SeaThe home secretary was speaking days after a UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) official said push-backs in the English Channel would “unavoidably” put lives at risk and may not work as a deterrent.Speaking to the Joint Committee on Human Rights on 20 October, the UNHCR’s UK representative Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor said: “There is an obligation to both save lives at sea and not endanger lives at sea, which would almost unavoidably happen if there were attempts at turning back dinghies which are overcrowded with people.”She warned that refugees forced back to France could “fall through the cracks” and be barred from its asylum seeker, adding: “There is a real risk that the right to seek asylum is eliminated by the fact that no country will take responsibility.”Asked if push-backs would meet the government’s stated aims of deterring Channel crossings and tackle people smuggling, Ms Pagliuchi-Lor replied: “Frankly I don’t think so, we have to see but I really do not think this is going to have a significant impact.”She questioned how many boats could effectively be pushed back when crossings are happening along a “very long stretch of coast”, and urged the UK to focus on effective processing and replacing returns agreements with EU countries that were lost in Brexit.A Home Office impact assessment of the Nationality and Borders Bill, which contains the government’s plans for the Channel and wider asylum changes, said focusing on small boats could encourage “riskier means of entering the UK”.Responding to government claims that its plans will deter dangerous sea crossings, the document said “evidence supporting the effectiveness of this approach is limited”.The government has changed its Immigration Rules to mean that it can declare asylum applications from people who have travelled through EU member states on their way to Britain “inadmissible”.But the UK lost access to an EU-wide returns agreement allowing asylum seekers to be transferred back to countries including France, Italy and Spain, in Brexit.The home secretary admitted that only two returns agreements had been struck by Wednesday, with India and Albania, and several EU countries have told The Independent that bilateral negotiations are not underway.She confirmed that the government was threatening visa sanctions against “countries that do not cooperate” on accepting returnees.Ms Patel said the government would support asylum seekers arriving in the “right and proper way”, on regular routes and with documentation.But the former Labour home secretary Lord Blunkett pointed out that persecuted people may not have passports, visas or formal permission to leave the country they are fleeing.“I get the impression that if you are properly documented and you have been able to come legally you will not be granted asylum because you are clearly not at risk, whereas if you are at risk and escaped without documentation, you will be inadmissible,” he added. More

Ministers will not make a decision on Covid-19 restrictions for two weeks until the impact of half-term on infections can be seen, The Independent understands.The measures under consideration include restricting household mixing indoors this winter, as data modelling suggests that working from home and mandatory mask wearing might not be enough to avoid an increase in hospital admissions.The UK reported 263 deaths on Tuesday, a higher number than any day since 3 March at the tail end of the second wave, when 315 were reported. It comes amid an increasing clamour from experts and politicians to impose measures, including social distancing, as soon as possible. Labour has leant its backing to imposing plan-B measures and called on the government to enact it without “dither and delay”. “We think we should follow the science – if the scientists are saying work from home and masks, we should do that,” Labour’s shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves said on Sunday.Professor Adam Finn, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), also speaking on Sunday, said that the government must not be “complacent” about the rising rate of hospitalisations and deaths. Meanwhile, mayor of London Sadiq Khan has called on people to “urgently reconsider” mask wearing. However, measures, such as mandatory mask wearing and working from home – which fall under the government’s plan B, are unlikely to be enough on their own, according to sources familiar with modelling the impact of Covid restrictions. This means the government may be forced to go further, if the rollout of booster jabs is not fast enough to combat the waning of previous vaccine doses, particularly among the over-50s. Delays to imposing some restrictions also mean that more moderate measures will be less effective at containing the virus, according to the previously mentioned Whitehall sources.Speaking at a vaccination centre last Friday, prime minister Boris Johnson said that the government keeps “all measures under constant review”, but he added that “the numbers that we’re seeing at the moment are fully in line with what we expected in the autumn and winter plan”. The prime minister said: “I’ve got to tell you at the moment that we see absolutely nothing to indicate that that is on the cards at all.”The fresh details about which measures are under consideration follow warnings from Professor Lucy Chappell, chief scientific adviser to the Department of Health and Social Care, at a parliamentary committee on Tuesday. The adviser said that further measures beyond plan B had been “proposed” but these had not been “extensively worked up”. She confirmed these had been referred to as a plan C.Prof Chappell also told MPs that there is “no single metric” that would lead to plan B being enacted, as MPs expressed their frustration at the lack of information on the decision-making process in the days ahead.The Independent understands these measures which go beyond plan B include limits on mixing in pubs, cafes and restaurants, and in homes. This is because the impact of asking those who can to work from home has been dramatically reduced as the workforce has stuck with home working several days a week even after restrictions were lifted.This change in behaviour means the limitations of plan B, such as working from home, have become more acute than when it was originally devised. And while some workers have cut down on their days in the office, they are content to travel to socialise in crowded indoor settings.There will be “a bit of a crunch moment” in the two weeks after half-term concludes to see whether the infection rate climbs sharply and feeds through into considerable numbers over-50s without boosters being hospitalised. Over-50s are more likely to have medical complications and waning protection from vaccines because of when they were jabbed.It is this reluctance to go to the office but eagerness to go to the pub that means that the power of a work from home request is “weaker compared to older modelling, and it wasn’t that strong before”, one Whitehall source said.Other data, including footfall figures gathered by Google show that while the population is concerned about infection rates, people are not moderating behaviour in the same way as during previous periods of higher infections.Previously, as infections have risen and ahead of the government imposition of restrictions, people had already moderated their behaviour and started to be more cautious. Now, the vaccine roll out and a “dulling effect” means that people are less concerned about mixing with others. “This is forcing a binary if there is a sharp increase in hospitalisations, and if there is a slow roll out of booster vaccines in the coming weeks,” a source familiar with government Covid planning said. “It’s Freedom Day or it’s Plan C, with significant restrictions on mixing in indoor settings,” they said. “There would need to be a vaccine passport system ready now, with far greater uptake, for it to have a decent impact. It’s too late for that.”Adaptations to allow for home-working mean that the economic fallout from this restriction would be far lower than previously assumed, too. The Politico website reported that a Treasury impact assessment of five months of plan B measures could cost as much as £18bn. Economists told The Independent that it was hard to judge what restrictions would mean for future growth, but that companies have adapted to greater home working.“Each time the impediment on economic activity from lockdown appears to reduce,” said Kallum Pickering, senior economist at Berenberg bank. “I don’t think we can really speculate what kind of policies might be needed because these situations can move very fast as we’ve learned, but I am quite confident that if we did have renewed restrictions, the [economic] impact would be temporary.“There’s no reason to think the economy wouldn’t bounce back,” he added.There was little reason to think that plan B on its own would be “devastating or transformational”, said James Smith, research director at the Resolution Foundation, a think tank. However, greater measures would likely force the government to reinstate previous tranches of economic support, such as furlough.“Being clear about at what points [in terms of hospitalisations] the government would start implementing plan B or even C, would be really helpful.”A government spokesperson said: “We knew the coming months would be challenging – this is exactly why we set out our Covid plan for autumn and winter.“We are monitoring all the data closely, and the prime minister has been clear that it does not yet show that plan B is necessary. But it is ready should we need to act to avoid a rise in hospitalisations which would put unsustainable pressure on the NHS.“Our focus remains on our booster campaign, vaccinating 12-15 year olds, and encouraging those who haven’t yet come forward to have their jab.” More

Britain’s spy agencies have struck a deal with Amazon that would see the company’s cloud computing host classified material, it has been reported. The agreement aims to improve the use of data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) in espionage, according to the Financial Times. The deal was reportedly spearheaded by GCHQ, the UK’s intelligence, cyber and security agency.The high-security cloud system is also planned to be used by M15, M16 and government departments taking part in joint operations, according to the Financial Times. Data will reportedly be held in the UK as part of the deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon.com Inc’s cloud service arm. Ciaran Martin, the former head of the National Cyber Security Centre, told the newspaper the deal would allow spy agencies “to get information from huge amounts of data in minutes, rather than in weeks and months”. But privacy campaigners raised concerns over the agreement, with Gus Hosein from Privacy International calling it “another worrying public-private partnership”. In February, GCHQ said it had fully embraced artificial intelligence to uncover patterns in vast amounts of global data to counter hostile disinformation and snare child abusers.GCHQ has been using basic forms of AI such as translation technology for years but is now stepping up its use, partly in response to the use of AI by hostile states and partly due to the data explosion that makes it effective.In a report on AI, the head of GCHQ said the agency believes AI capabilities “will be at the heart of our future ability to protect the UK”. “They will enable analysts to manage the ever-increasing volume and complexity of data, improving the quality and speed of their decision-making,” Sir Jeremy Fleming wrote. “Keeping the UK’s citizens safe and prosperous in a digital age will increasingly depend on the success of these systems.”Amazon and MI5 have been approached for comment. Additional reporting by Reuters More