Home Office says nearly 60,000 people deported from UK or left voluntarily since 2024 election
Nearly 60,000 unauthorised migrants and convicted criminals have been removed or deported from the UK since Labour took office, the Home Office has said.The announcement came amid claims that the government was promoting “harmful stereotypes” by equating migration with criminality.Officials said the figure was the highest number in a decade.The department said 15,200 people who were in the UK illegally were removed since the 2024 election – a 45% increase on the previous 19 months.A statement said 43,000 people left voluntarily after being told they were in the UK illegally.
Deportations of foreign national offenders have risen by 32%, with more than 8,700 deported under this Labour government.The Home Office also released footage showing a recent removals flight, with detainees, their faces blurred, being escorted on to a plane destined for eastern Europe.The figures have been released as the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, said she would “scale up” the number of deportations even further.Keir Starmer’s government, languishing third in recent polls behind Reform UK and the Tories, has pledged to ramp up deportations, end the use of asylum hotels and curb the number of small boats bringing people across the Channel.More than 65,000 people have arrived in the UK by crossing the Channel since Starmer became prime minister.
The Home Office is preparing to introduce legislation to stop those facing possible removal from “gaming the system” by using the European convention on human rights to appeal against their removal,The UK is one of several countries pushing for changes in the way the treaty is interpreted, notably in its Article 3 protection against inhuman or degrading treatment and the Article 8 right to a family life,Both articles have been used to challenge deportation and removal decisions,Unauthorised migrants will also be restricted to a single route of appeal, the Home Office outlined,Mahmood said: “I vowed to scale up removals of illegal migrants – and we have.
However, we must go further to remove those that have no right to be in our country,I will do whatever it takes to restore order and control,”The government has also pledged to end the use of hotels to house asylum seekers by the end of this parliament by using more basic accommodation such as military sites instead,Fewer than 200 asylum accommodation hotels remain in use, the government said, compared with a peak of 400 under the previous government,Reacting to the Home Office announcement, Minnie Rahman, the chief executive of the migrant charity Praxis, said: “Many of those labelled ‘foreign national offenders’ have lived in the UK for most of their lives and have a legitimate right to be here.
“Yet, while the government has still not implemented key lessons from the Windrush lessons learned review, it continues to promote harmful and racist stereotypes that equate migration with criminality.This is unjust, divisive, and deeply damaging.”Griff Ferris, a spokesperson for the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said: “The government continues to perpetrate this cruelty and violence in an increasingly desperate attempt to court the far right.It has gone very far down a very dark road, and this announcement of mass deportations while also seeking to gut rights protections is frightening, alongside the home secretary using openly fascist rhetoric.“Behind these numbers are real people who have had their lives torn apart.
We need a compassionate system that puts people first, with the same routes of travel accessible for everyone, and the same good quality, safe housing for everyone.”Natasha Tsangarides, a director at Freedom from Torture, said: “Chipping away at Article 3 of the ECHR is a dangerous game that could trigger a domino effect worldwide.Any attempts to erode Article 3 protections risks undermining our shared right to live a life free from torture and does the dirty work of repressive regimes abroad.This is not who we are as a country.”
What does the disappearance of a $100bn deal mean for the AI economy?
Did the circular AI economy just wobble? Last week it was reported that a much-discussed $100bn deal – announced last September – between Nvidia and OpenAI might not be happening at all.This was a circular arrangement through which the chipmaker would supply the ChatGPT developer with huge sums of money that would largely go towards the purchase of its own chips.It is this type of deal that has alarmed some market watchers, who detect a whiff of the 1999-2000 dotcom bubble in these transactions.Now it seems that Nvidia was not as solid on this investment as had been widely believed, according to the Wall Street Journal. Negotiations had not progressed, with Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, privately emphasising that the deal was “non-binding” and “not finalised”
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Google parent earnings beat projections amid plans to invest deeply in AI
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Condemnation of Elon Musk’s AI chatbot reached ‘tipping point’ after French raid, Australia’s eSafety chief says
The eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, says global regulatory focus on Elon Musk’s X has reached a “tipping point” after a raid of the company’s offices in France this week.The raid on Tuesday was part of an investigation that included alleged offences of complicity in the possession and organised distribution of child abuse images, violation of image rights through sexualised deepfakes, and denial of crimes against humanity.A number of other countries – including the UK and Australia – and the EU have launched investigations in the past few weeks into X after its AI chatbot, Grok, was used to mass-produce sexualised images of women and children in response to user requests.Inman Grant told Guardian Australia: “It’s nice to no longer be a soloist, and be part of a choir.“We’ve been having so many productive discussions with other regulators around the globe and researchers that are doing important work in this space,” she said
Pinterest sacks two engineers for creating software to identify fired workers
Pinterest has fired two engineers who created a software tool to identify which workers had lost their jobs in a recent round of cuts and then shared the information, according to reports.The digital pinboard business announced significant job cuts earlier this month, with the chief executive, Bill Ready, telling staff he was “doubling down on an AI-forward approach”, according to a LinkedIn post by a former employee.Pinterest, which is based in San Francisco and has an office in London, said the cuts would affect about 15% of its workforce, or about 700 people, but did not specify which teams or staff members would be affected.Two engineers at the company then wrote code to identify sacked staff.A spokesperson for Pinterest said: “Two engineers wrote custom scripts improperly accessing confidential company information to identify the locations and names of all dismissed employees and then shared it more broadly
Fairphone 6 review: cheaper, repairable and longer-lasting Android
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