Labour is now saying that it is “utterly grotesque” that the Conservative party is proposing to deport people from the UK who have previously been told they have indefinite leave to remain.The party issued a statement after Conservative HQ confirmed that Katie Lam’s comments on this topic in an interview at the weekend are in line with official party policy.(See 5.06pm.) The Tories published proposals in the form of a private member’s bill earlier this year and clause 3 of the bill says indefinite leave to remain (ILR) should be revoked from some categories of migrants, including people who have been in receipt of benefits and people earning less than £38,700 a year.

These plans go beyond the Tory plans to tighten ILR requirements announced in February,Commenting on these plans, Anna Turley, the Labour chair, said:It’s utterly grotesque that Tories want to deport people with the lawful right to be here to achieve ‘cultural coherence’,This policy would mean tearing families apart and ripping out our neighbours from communities,That’s Tory party policy and shows how far the party has fallen,The Tories haven’t learned a thing.

A frontrunner to chair the national grooming gangs inquiry has withdrawn his candidacy amid growing discontent from survivors over the government’s handling of the process.The Conservative MP Katie Lam was “broadly in line” with party policy when she called for very large numbers of legally settled people to be deported from the UK, Kemi Badenoch’s spokesperson has said.The government is to delay publishing its long-awaited overhaul of special educational needs provision in England as ministers seek to build a coalition among parents to support its changes.Plaid Cymru has been making a last-minute pitch for votes in Caerphilly, where a Senedd byelection tomorrow could reshape Welsh politics.A poll last week suggested Reform is narrowly on course to win, in a seat that has been solidly Labour for generations.

The poll also suggested Labour support has collapsed, and that Plaid Cymru could win.The byelection is being seen as evidence that Labour has lost its political dominance in Wales, and that next year’s Senedd elections will see Reform and Plaid vying for first place.Plaid’s leader Rhun ap Iorwerth said:People are telling us they’re coming to Plaid in their thousands because they want us, they want that positive change, and not Reform’s division.Only Plaid Cymru can beat Reform and a constituency poll last week clearly demonstrated it’s a two-horse race between both parties, with Labour trailing a distant third.We are asking all voters who want to stop Reform to lend their vote to Plaid Cymru this time.

Steven Morris has more on the contest here,For a full list of all the stories covered on the blog today, do scroll through the list of key event headlines near the top of the blog,I have updated the post at 1,48pm with fuller, direct quotes from Angela Rayner’s personal statement to MPs,You may need to refresh the page to get the update to appear.

Labour is now saying that it is “utterly grotesque” that the Conservative party is proposing to deport people from the UK who have previously been told they have indefinite leave to remain.The party issued a statement after Conservative HQ confirmed that Katie Lam’s comments on this topic in an interview at the weekend are in line with official party policy.(See 5.06pm.) The Tories published proposals in the form of a private member’s bill earlier this year and clause 3 of the bill says indefinite leave to remain (ILR) should be revoked from some categories of migrants, including people who have been in receipt of benefits and people earning less than £38,700 a year.

These plans go beyond the Tory plans to tighten ILR requirements announced in February.Commenting on these plans, Anna Turley, the Labour chair, said:It’s utterly grotesque that Tories want to deport people with the lawful right to be here to achieve ‘cultural coherence’.This policy would mean tearing families apart and ripping out our neighbours from communities.That’s Tory party policy and shows how far the party has fallen.The Tories haven’t learned a thing.

Keir Starmer has described the western Balkans as Europe’s “crucible” as he opened talks with leaders in London that will largely focus on how to tackle the challenge of migration, PA Media reports.PA says:The prime minister is hosting leaders from the Western Balkan nations of North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo as the UK seeks to agree further measures to bring down the number of migrants arriving illegally.The UK is in ongoing talks with some of the countries to host so-called return hubs where the UK could send failed asylum seekers before they are deported.Ahead of the summit, Kosovo has reportedly expressed a willingness to host such migrant hubs, while Albania’s prime minister repeated his rejection of them and Montenegro’s appeared to suggest his country was not planning to host but could be swayed by investment in its rail infrastructure.Keir Starmer said at the top of the meeting of leaders: “The region has been described as the crossroads of Europe, but so often it has also been Europe’s crucible – the place where the security of our continent is put to the test.

”German chancellor Friedrich Merz and Austrian chancellor Christian Stocker were also at the talks alongside ministers from France, Greece and Italy and the European Commission’s Kaja Kallas.Starmer said talks would focus on security, migration and economic growth and that leaders would discuss how to tackle Russia’s “malign influence”, as well as rooting out corruption and shared issues of migration.“The western Balkans has long been a vital transit route for the criminal smuggling gangs.You don’t want to see those gangs operating in your territory, and we all suffer the consequences of their action,” he said.Some 22,000 people were smuggled by gangs last year along routes through the region, which has become increasingly important to tackling illegal migration across Europe.

Prof Dame Clare Gerarda, a former chair and then president of the Royal College of GPs, and Polly Neate, a former chief executive of the housing charity Shelter, are being made peers, it was announced today.Both of them will sit as independent, non-party peers, and they are being given peerages after being recommended by the House of Lords Appointments Commission, a quango set up to recruit suitable, non-party experts for Lords membership.It is not just No 10 that holds a post-PMQs lobby briefing.The Conservatives hold one too.Peter Walker attended today’s.

As he reports on Bluesky, the party broadly supported Katie Lam over her deportation comments on Sunday, saying that what she told the Sunday Times was broadly in line with the policy the party proposed in Chris Philp’s immigration and visas bill.Peter says:Slightly confusing briefing with Badenoch’s spokesman & a Tory press person on their/Katie Lam’s migration plans.Here’s what I could follow:• Tory policy on revoking indefinite leave to remain is “broadly in line with what Katie said” (they “haven’t seen” her idea it’s extended to EU nationals)..• The point of revoking ILR is that you have to be a “net contributor”.

But they couldn’t say what this means *and* and policy as I understood it was that you’d lose ILR if you claim benefits at all, irrespective of earlier contributions.• This would not apply to claiming the state pension BUT• They can’t say if it would apply to all other benefits eg statutory maternity pay.• Won’t say if it would apply to people with ILR who have UK national kids and/or spouse.• Very few answers at all: “There are always going to be fringe cases & the policy will need to be designed very carefully.”• Defence of the retrospective changing of the rules: “No good parliament can tie the hands of a future parliament.

”• No doubts about the morality of it all: “The Conservative party is clear that immigration was too high under successive governments,We need to bring that down,”The uncertainty is all the more curious in that the full policy is set out in a “Immigration and Visas Bill” introduced by the Tories earlier this month,UPDATE: And here is Peter’s story,A man sent back to France under the “one in, one out” scheme has returned to the UK on a small boat, the Guardian has learned.

Diane Taylor has the story.Sundus Abdi is a Guardian reporter.Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader, has called on Lisa Nandy to withdraw what he described as “grossly misleading” comments about the decision to bar Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from attending a match against Aston Villa next month.In a letter sent yesterday, Corbyn said he was “deeply disappointed” in Nandy’s response to an urgent question in parliament on Monday, accusing the culture secretary of conflating a public order decision with antisemitism.The independent MP said his remarks were focused on safety concerns, not religion, and that it was “irresponsible” to imply otherwise.

He wrote:This is about a group of football fans with a history of racism and violence.This is not about banning Jewish people – and you know full well that none of us would support such a ban.Any attempt to conflate these two issues is not just grossly misleading; it is irresponsible and represents a shameful attempt to exploit the fears and anxieties of Jewish people.He ended by asking Nandy to “return to the House of Commons to retract your comments”.Corbyn appeared in a video on X this morning alongside fellow independent MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, Ayoub Khan, who supported his call for clarification.

Khan said: “This had nothing to do with race, religion, creed or background, but everything to do with hooligans,” Corbyn added:On Monday, Lisa Nandy made disgraceful suggestions that my colleagues in the Independent Alliance group have done anything other than stand up for the safety of the public,Insinuations against my friends will not go unchallenged,And, on social media, Corbyn said the government and media had been “lying” about the Maccabi ban,After PMQs Khan used a point of order to raise today’s Guardian report by Vikram Dodd saying that the original police decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters from the Villa Park match was based primarily on an assessment saying that the biggest risk of violence came from their fans.

On Monday Nandy implied the Israel fans were told to stay away mainly because the police wanted to protect them from antisemitic aggression.He said that the ministerial code required ministers to give accurate and truthful information to parliament.He asked if Nandy would have to correct the record if she had breached the code.Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, said he did not have the power to require a minister to correct the record.Sometimes he would like that power, he said.

But he said the ministerial code was important, and he told Khan he was sure ministers had registered his point.The small boat arrival numbers for 2025 have now passed the figure for the whole of 2024, it has emerged.GB News says the two Border Force boats arrived at Dover at lunchtime with 150 migrants on board, taking total arrivals this year to 36,886.The figure for 2024 was 36,816.The Tories say the total number of people who have arrived on small boats since the general election has passed 60,000.

Commenting on the figures, Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said:The floodgates are open, the borders are gone, and the British public are left picking up the pieces.The Channel is now a conveyor belt for illegal immigration, and Keir Starmer is waving them through with taxpayer-funded hotel keys.Rapists, gang members, and foreign offenders are slipping through while the government sits on its hands.British people didn’t vote for an open border experiment.Philp said the Tories would solve the problem by taking the UK out of the European convention on human rights and removing all people who arrived illegally within a week.

Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, also issued her own statement on the milestone being passed.She said:The previous government left our borders in crisis, and we are still living with the consequences.These figures are shameful – the British people deserve better.This government is taking action.We have detained and removed more than 35,000 who were here illegally.

Our historic deal with the French means those who arrive on small boats are now being sent back.But it is clear we must go further and faster – removing more of those here illegally, and stopping migrants from making small boat crossings in the first place.And I have been clear: I will do whatever it takes to restore order to our border.Here is a Migration Watch UK chart with small boat arrival numbers, but not including today’s update.Western Balkans leaders have arrived at a summit on migration hosted by Sir Keir Starmer in London, PA Media reports.

PA says:The prime minister greeted his counterparts from North Macedonia, Hristijan Mickoski, and Serbia, Đuro Macut, as well as Montenegro’s premier Milojko Spajic, Albania’s Edi Rama, and Borjana Kristo of Bosnia and Herzegovina, outside Lancaster House.Kosovo’s Albin Kurti, who has reportedly expressed a willingness to host migrant return hubs ahead of the summit, arrived earlier and was greeted by the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper.Jim Gamble, a former police chief and former head the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command centre, who was thought to be the last remaining candidate to chair the grooming gangs inquiry, has withdrawn from contention for the role.A Home Office spokesperson said:The grooming gang scandal was one of the darkest moments in this country’s history.That is why this government is committed to a full, statutory, national inquiry to uncover the truth.

It is the very least that the victims of these hideous crimes deserve.We are disappointed that candidates to chair that inquiry have withdrawn.This is an extremely sensitive topic, and we have to take the time to appoint the best person suitable for the role.The home secretary has been clear: there will be no hiding place for those who abused the most vulnerable in our society.At the start of the week Gamble was reportedly on a shortlist of two for the job.

The other candidate, Annie Hudson, a former director of children’s services for Lambeth, pulled out on Tuesday,Keir Starmer told MPs that he favoured a parliamentary inquiry covering Prince Andrew’s housing arrangements at Royal Lodge – the mansion in Windsor which he leases from the Crown Estate on a deal that involves him paying no rent,But whether the PM is seriously calling for Andrew to be hauled to a parliamentary committee to give evidence in person is less clear,Starmer was responding to a question from Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader,Davey said:Given the revelations about Royal Lodge, does the prime minister agree that this house needs to properly scrutinise the Crown Estate to ensure taxpayers’ interests are protected?The chancellor has said these arrangements are wrong