SUELLA BRAVERMAN’S attack on the homeless plumbs new depths from a minister already known for kicking downwards.
It combines a xenophobic jibe at foreigners with brazen victim-blaming, ludicrously terming rough sleeping a “lifestyle choice” when the rise in homelessness is demonstrably the fault of the Conservative government.
The Home Secretary knows that the homelessness crisis cannot be swept under the carpet.
Rough sleeping has risen by 74 per cent since 2010, according to the government’s own figures. The rapid provision of safe accommodation to thousands of homeless people during the pandemic showed rough sleeping can be ended almost overnight where there is the political will: but as soon as the lockdowns passed the will disappeared, and a 26 per cent rise in rough sleeping last year alone points to the devastating impact of the cost-of-living crisis. Homeless Link CEO Rick Henderson pointed to the causes at the start of the year: “A shortage of affordable housing, an often punitive welfare system and increasingly stretched health services.”
The results are visible everywhere. It is now rare to take a journey in one of our larger cities without encountering beggars. This is an indictment of 13 years of Tory rule.
Refugee charity Care4Calais is seeking to sue the government for ‘segregating’ asylum seekers at RAF Wethersfield
Suella Braverman faces a fresh legal challenge over the government’s treatment of asylum seekers held at a former RAF base that has been compared to “a military-style prison camp”.
Refugee charity Care4Calais is seeking to sue the government over its policy of warehousing asylum seekers at RAF Wethersfield, which it claims amounts to a form of “segregation” and “quasi detention”.
The legal challenge comes weeks after asylum seekers at Wethersfield – a remote, 800-acre site in Essex, ringed by security fences, guards and CCTV – told openDemocracy they had been “locked up” in solitary confinement for complaining of depression.
In a private press briefing attended by openDemocracy today, Care4Calais said it is bringing the legal challenge after hearing testimonies from its clients living at the barracks.
A pre-action protocol letter issued by lawyers representing the charity accuses the home secretary of failing to fulfil her obligations of “ensuring an adequate standard of living and health for asylum seekers” under the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999.
The letter states that “measures short of 24-hour physical confinement, where they substantively deprive a person of their liberty, may amount to detention at common law.”
Ali*, 24, who escaped the Taliban earlier this year, told openDemocracy that staff at Wethersfield locked him up in a room for two days after he complained that being held there was causing him to be depressed. “They’ve done this to me twice,” he said, adding that it has “happened to other people too”.
He continued: “If they go and tell [staff] they don’t feel well or they have depression… they lock them in a room for 48 hours and make them quarantine – and they’re not allowed out.
“Wethersfield is like a prison. It doesn’t feel like we’re in any kind of home or hotel room – we’ve just been thrown into a military-style prison camp.”
Two other men living at the barracks told this website of “prison-like conditions” that are affecting their mental health.
Braverman is accused of separating “asylum seekers, all or most of whom are non-British, and many of whom are also from ethnic minorities or non-white, from the wider UK population”.
Care4Calais’ legal challenge also raises the absence of an effective screening process for asylum seekers due to be accommodated at Wethersfield.
Survivors of torture and modern slavery, or those who suffer from serious mental health conditions, are routinely sent to the barracks, the charity said, but are transferred to hotels when their cases are individually raised in individual pre-action protocol letters.
In its press briefing today, Care4Calais said this has happened up to 20 times in the past few months.
Wethersfield is already the subject of a legal challenge from Braintree District Council, which objects to the Home Office’s plans to expand the site’s capacity. A High Court case brought by the council on 31 October will also hear evidence about the inappropriate use of the RAF base Scampton in Lincolnshire – which is due to open in weeks and house up to 2,000 men.
The government has until 7 November to respond to the letter, before proceedings for a full judicial review are initiated.
ROME, Oct 19 (Reuters) – Jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will become an honorary citizen of Rome by early next year following a vote this week by its local assembly, the city’s former mayor Virginia Raggi said on Thursday.
Assange, 52, has been in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison since 2019 and is wanted in the United States over the release of confidential U.S. military records and diplomatic cables in 2010.
…
Other Italian cities have taken similar steps. The northern city of Reggio Emilia granted Assange citizenship last month, while Naples is set to follow shortly.
If extradited to the United States, Assange risks a sentence of up to 175 years in a maximum-security prison.
Just stop oil founders Indigo Rumbelow and Roger Hallam were arrested in separate raids this morning after police forced entry to their homes, searched belongings and confiscated papers.
Just Stop Oil protesting in London 6 December 2022.
Just Stop Oil said:
“We will not be intimidated by our criminal government. Not content with cheering on war crimes in Gaza, by maxing out our oil and gas reserves they are complicit in the greatest crime in human history. New oil and gas will result in unimaginable suffering and destroy the lives and livelihoods of billions of people. No one has ever voted for this, there has never been a democratic mandate to destroy the habitable world.
“Just Stop Oil supporters are deeply committed to stopping all new oil and gas. If our government refuses to do what is right to protect humanity, then people will step up to do what needs to be done.
“The painful truth right now is that our politicians and corporations have no intention of acting in accordance with the fundamental interests of either our young people or the country as a whole. Whether those in charge realise that they are committing the crime of genocide, is not the question. For this is how it will be seen by the next generation and all future generations. Our friends in police custody and languishing in prison understand this very well as do we.”
Comment by dizzy: Roger Hallam appears to get arrested and imprisoned regularly.
Video is from November 2022. Just Stop Oil are no longer blocking the M25 motorway.
16.40 update: Just Stop Oil are claiming that Indigo Rumbelow and Roger Hallam were arrested as a result of short speeches they gave at a festival this summer. Here are those speeches.
19.40 Uncertain why he was arrested over that speech, he didn’t seem to say anything outrageous. For example, he didn’t encourage people to engage in violence. Is it that the UK government is so intolerant? Are there some really nasty laws now prohibiting debate?
Indigo Rumbelow’s speech …
19.50 Indigo talks really well. Recommended.
19/10/23 I’ve seen a video of Roger Hallam getting arrested where charges of conspiracy were discussed – so it would seem that they were not arrested for giving these speeches.
Liberty is taking the home secretary to court for ‘unlawfully’ passing legislation Parliament had already rejected
Image of Home Secretary Suella ‘Sue-Ellen’ Braverman
A human rights campaign group is taking Suella Braverman to court for “unlawfully” forcing draconian anti-protest legislation through Parliament, openDemocracy can reveal.
In June, Braverman used secondary legislation – which is subject to less parliamentary scrutiny – to allow police to restrict or shut down any protest that they believe could cause “more than minor disruption to the life of the community”.
A cross-party parliamentary committee said this is the first time secondary legislation has been used to make changes to the law that have already been rejected by Parliament. Akiko Hart, interim director of Liberty, which launched initial legal action in June, described the move as “the latest power grab from this government”.
The government previously tried to insert the new powers into the Public Order Act 2023 in January, but was blocked by the Lords. Liberty’s lawyer, Katy Watts, accused Braverman of “sneak[ing] in new legislation via the back door, despite not having the power to do so”.
Hart said: “We all want to live in a society where our government respects the rules – but the home secretary has deliberately done the opposite. The home secretary’s actions have enabled the government to circumvent the will of Parliament.”
She continued: “This is just the latest power grab from this government, which has shown it is determined to erode the ways people can hold it to account, whether that’s in Parliament or on the streets. The home secretary’s actions give the police almost unlimited powers to stop any protest the government doesn’t agree with – and the way she has done it is unlawful.”
The home secretary has long called for more police powers to tackle peaceful methods of protests by climate activists, such as road blocking, ‘locking on’, and slow marching, which she said “bring misery and chaos to the law-abiding majority”.
One supporter of Insulate Britain previously told openDemocracy that protest is “our only legitimate means to achieve the changes needed within the time frame we have”.
Another of the group’s supporters said that the criminalisation of protest – in particular, of environmental protest – “is an example of attempting to shoot the messenger” and that elected politicians “obviously don’t really care about protecting people’s democratic rights”.
Watts, Liberty’s lawyer leading the case, said Braverman’s circumventing of the Lords’ rejection is “a flagrant breach of the separation of powers that exist in our constitution”.
She added: “The wording of the government’s new law is so vague that anything deemed by police to cause ‘more than a minor’ disturbance could have restrictions imposed upon it. This same rule was democratically rejected earlier this year, yet the home secretary has gone ahead and introduced it through other means regardless.
“It’s really important the government respects the law and that the home secretary’s decision is reversed immediately.”
Liberty has also claimed the new legislation was not consulted on fairly. It has accused the government of only consulting parties it knew would support the amendments, such as the police.
