First asylum seekers confirmed to have arrived on Bibby Stockholm barge Here is Rajeev Syal’s story about the first asylum seekers arriving on the Bibby Stockholm. Afternoon summary The first group of asylum seekers due to be housed on the Bibby Stockholm barge in Portland, Dorset, have been taken onboard. Given that polling suggests voters are more likely than not to see this as an acceptable option for single, male migrants, ministers may view the arrivals as a success. But the news coincided with No 10 having to in effect disown reports saying the government was seriously considering sending asylum seekers to Ascension Island, only hours after a Home Office minister claimed this option was on the table. (See 12.31pm.) Labour said the government media strategy for the week was “descending into chaos”. (See 2.48pm.) Labour has revealed that the number of asylum seekers in hotel accommodation has risen by 25% since Rishi Sunak said, in December, that he wanted to stop the practice. (See 2.48pm.) GB News is being investigated for four further potential breaches of impartiality rules, as the media regulator Ofcom struggles with the rightwing channel’s willingness to push the boundaries of British broadcasting rules. The growing crisis facing the NHS presents “quite a few business opportunities” for AXA to expand its private healthcare business, the French insurance group’s chief executive has said. Increasing fines for illegally employing migrants "likely to be counter-productive", says migration expert Earlier Colin Yeo, an immigration barrister, posted tweets critical of the government’s plan to increase the fines for employers and landlords who employ or house migrants who do not have a lawful immigration status. (See 11.18am.) He has firmed up his view in a post on his Substack account in which he says the proposals are likely to be counter-productive and could have “disastrous consequences”. You can read the post (for free, or by taking out a subscription) here. And here is an extract. There is no evidence that the existing system is working or that increasing the level of fines will improve the effectiveness of the system. In fact, there is reason to think that increasing the level of fines might make the system less effective in that good faith employers will not know any better what they are supposed to do and may well end up being closed down by this change. It is unlikely to have any impact on serial offender employers. If the increase in the level of fines is about raising more revenue, there is reason to think that it will fail at that as well, because the new fines would simply lead a lot of employers to close or go bankrupt. Trying to pay a fine of £15,000 per worker was hard enough for a small employer. Paying £45,000 per worker is simply going to be impossible. This sort of measure has become the hallmark of this fag-end government. It sounds tough. In reality it is likely to be counter-productive. It may well have unintended and disastrous consequences for individuals and employers acting in good faith but caught out by incredibly complex and ever-changing immigration law requirements. Government previously ruled out sending asylum seekers to Ascension Island due to £1m per head cost, Rees-Mogg reveals Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former leader of the Commons and former business secretary, has said that sending asylum seekers to Ascension Island would be “impossibly expensive”. In an interview with GB News, he said he was involved in the talks on whether this was feasible when he was in government, and ministers concluded it would cost around £1m a head. He explained: I was involved in some of the discussions looking at this whilst I was a member of the government and unfortunately it would cost at least a million pounds per person you sent there to do it … You’ve got to send out Portakabin residences for your builders, then you’ve got builders who have to live there whilst they’re doing the building, then you have to build the premises for the migrants to live in, then you’ve got to persuade people that they want to go and live on Ascension Island for long periods to run the centre. And the costs just went up and up and up and up. And that’s why when I was involved in the discussions, it was just thought to be impossibly expensive to do. SNP council leader condemns Home Office plan to put asylum seekers on barge in Glasgow Susan Aitken, the SNP leader of Glasgow city council, says the UK government wants to put asylum seekers on a barge in her city. The council will not allow that, she says. Aitken’s comment has been retweeted by Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister. As the National reports in its story on this, Edinburgh city council has already told the Home Office that it is opposed to plans to put asylum seekers on a cruise ship docked at Leith. Portland town council mayor condemns conditions for people on Bibby Stockholm barge Carralyn Parkes, the Labour mayor of Portland town council, has condemned the conditions on the barge being used to house asylum seekers in her local port. She told Sky News: It’s awful to think that this government, in the 21st century, would even consider housing some of the most vulnerable people in the world on a barge in Portland Port. She said that the barge was designed to house 220 people, but that it would now be taking more than twice as many people. She went on: I took a tape measure on board with me when I went on the Bibby Stockholm. I measured three of the cabins and they averaged around 10 feet by 12 feet. They’ve got bunk beds and so you’re talking about two people being accommodated in these rooms. The rooms are small, the bunk beds are small as well, the mattresses are about six feet long. So if you’re a tall person, you’ve got a problem. The bathrooms are clearly made for one person. They’re not made for two people. Originally they were talking about accommodating people between three and six months. Now it’s nine. So you’re not talking about it being a short-term solution. It’s going to be somebody’s living space for a considerable amount of time. The corridors are narrow, everything is small. Parkes also said the port was a secure area, which meant “you can’t just wander in and out of it”. The asylum seekers would have to be bused in and out, she said. And they would have to go through airport-style security. So in practice they would not have complete freedom of movement, she said. The Green party says that, instead of having a week of announcements linked to its “stop the boats” strategy, the government should instead make it “welcome refugees week”. Benali Hamdache, the party’s spokesperson on migration and refugees, said: No barge is a suitable home for refugees. Most people who reach our shores and claim asylum are doing so completely legitimately due to fleeing war, persecution, discrimination or climate breakdown. The vast majority are desperate people who need to be met with compassion. Housing them in a barge is to treat them as prisoners and is heartless. The Green party would open safe and legal routes for asylum seekers. With such routes many refugees would not be forced into making a dangerous crossing of the English Channel. We want this week and every week to be ‘Welcome Refugees Week’. The Greens say they would house refugee families in houses or flats, and single asylum seekers in a room of their own if they were in shared accommodation. The party would also allow them to work while their applications were being processed. The British Red Cross has joined Amnesty International UK (see 3.20pm) in putting out a statement today criticising the government’s decision to house asylum seekers on a barge. Alex Fraser, the charity’s UK director for refugee support and restoring family links, said: We know from our work supporting men, women and children seeking asylum that these sites will be entirely inappropriate for people and will lead to significant suffering. People who have been forced to flee their homes have already experienced unimaginable trauma. They need stability, support, to be able to maintain contact with their loved ones and to feel safe. We find ourselves in this position as a direct result of the failure to tackle the asylum backlog, with over 172,000 people living in limbo. We need a more effective and compassionate asylum system, one that supports people to integrate into a community so they can find safety and live in dignity. Greenpeace accuses No 10 of "bunker mentality" after it was banned from meetings with Defra over protest at PM"s home Greenpeace has accused Downing Street of a “bunker mentality” after it said the campaign group should not have “a seat at the table in discussions with government” following its protest on the roof of the PM’s home in Yorkshire. (See 1.23pm.) Will McCallum, Greenpeace’s UK co-executive director, said: Burying your head in the sand isn’t going to make the climate crisis go away. It’s precisely because the government has effectively shut the door to civil society groups, like Greenpeace, as well as ignoring warnings from the UN, its own advisers and the International Energy Agency, that we need to protest in the way that we do. The bunker mentality on display from this current government is deeply damaging – cutting ties with Greenpeace isn’t going to help. We represent the views of millions of our supporters and have a mandate to hold the government to account. A reader has been in touch to point out that, according to the Portland History website, a prison ship was docked in Portland harbour from 1997 to 2005. HM Prison Weare was a category C prison for adult men. It looked very like the Bibby Stockholm. Amnesty International UK has restated its opposition to asylum seekers being housed in barges. Commenting on the first people arriving on the Bibby Stockholm, Steve Valdez-Symonds, the charity’s refugee and migrants rights director, said: It seems there’s nothing this government won’t do to make people seeking asylum feel unwelcome and unsafe in this country. Reminiscent of the prison hulks from the Victorian era, the Bibby Stockholm is an utterly shameful way to house people who’ve fled terror, conflict and persecution. Housing people on a floating barge is likely to be re-traumatising and there should be major concerns about confining each person to living quarters the typical size of a car parking space. Labour’s shared values with Democrats will aid UK-US trade deals, says shadow minister Labour’s ideological closeness to the Democrats puts the party in an ideal position to sign trade deals with the US should both parties win their elections next year, Nick Thomas-Symonds, the shadow trade secretary, has said. Kiran Stacey has the story here. Labour says hotel use by asylum seekers has risen by 25% since Sunak said in December he would stop it The Labour party has just put out a news release claiming that the government’s small boats media week is “descending into chaos”. The statement is mostly about figures showing that hotel use for asylum seekers has gone up since December, when Rishi Sunak said he wanted to end the practice, but Labour is also citing the duff briefing about Ascension Island (see 12.31pm) as evidence of “chaos”. In December, as part of a package of measures intended to “stop the boats”, Sunak said: “It’s unfair and appalling that we are spending £5.5m every day on using hotels to house asylum seekers. We must end this.” But Labour says Home Office figures show that on 30 June there were 50,546 asylum seekers in hotel accommodation, which it says marks a 25% increase on the figure for December (around 40,000). Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said: Rishi Sunak is failing to fix the Tories’ boats chaos and the Conservatives are just flailing around chasing headlines rather than getting a grip. The prime minister admitted last December that hotel use was a serious problem and promised to end it, but instead since then it has gone up by a truly shocking 25% with more asylum hotels still opening, and the taxpayer having to pay billions more pounds as a result. This is the direct consequence of Tory mismanagement and their disastrous failure to speed up asylum decisions or clear the backlog which is still at a record high. On Ascension Island, Labour said: With no workable plan, the government has resorted to reheating proposals that were floated – and abandoned – three years ago to send asylum seekers to the Ascension Island. Despite clear briefings to the media yesterday, the Home Office already seem to be retreating from this this morning. Labour is assuming that the government wanted the Times and the Daily Mail to splash on the Ascension Island story this morning. Perhaps it did. But it is equally possible that this was just a cock-up. Lobby journalists do publish stories that have not been sanctioned by No 10, and when Sarah Dines, a junior minister, confirmed the stories this morning (see 9.33am), maybe she just did not know what she was meant to say. Labour is also criticising Dines for confirming that section of the Illegal Migration Act saying the home secretary is under a duty to remove migrants who arrive in the UK illegally to a third country has not yet come into force. Originally this law was meant to apply to people arriving from 7 March. But No 10 has defended this delay, on the grounds that until the supreme court says people can be deported to Rwanda, detaining people and removing them, using the terms of the Act, won’t be possible. GB News faces four more Ofcom investigations over impartiality rules GB News is being investigated for four further potential breaches of impartiality rules, as the media regulator, Ofcom, struggles with the rightwing channel’s willingness to push the boundaries of British broadcasting rules, Jim Waterson reports.