Did Patel drop her ‘pushbacks’ policy against asylum-seekers – or did it never exist at all?
Patel: did she deliberately mislead members of the House of Lords last autumn and is the Home Office trying to cover up for her now?
This is odd.
The BBC is reporting that Priti Patel has abandoned her plan to turn back migrant boats crossing the English Channel, ahead of a court challenge.
But The Guardian has already told us that this policy never existed at all.
It certainly seems true that the High Court was going to hear a legal challenge by the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), and the NGOs Care4Calais, Channel Rescue and Freedom From Torture on May 3.
But it also seems true that the court had already refused the Home Office permission for public interest immunity against publishing the details of its alleged pushback policy – and those details, once brought into the light, showed that there was never any plan to turn back asylum seekers.
The Home Office comment that “there are extremely limited circumstances when you can safely turn boats back in the English Channel” therefore rings true.
But the Graun also said that Patel had assured a House of Lords committee that turning boats full of asylum-seekers away from the UK was “absolutely still policy”, last autumn.
The claim that the policy has only now been dropped has muddied the issue.
So it seems to This Writer that the Home Office needs to publish the policy that was written into the Nationality and Borders Bill at the time she spoke those words, to allow us to establish whether she lied to Parliament then and an attempt is being made to deceive us now.
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An absolute gem from the Not so Priti Patel today. She accepted a free ticket to the latest ‘James Bond’ film as it was ‘work related’. Some spineless supporter said the film was about ‘executive function’. I read it this morning and haven’t stopped laughing yet!
Good news about one of our ‘favourite’ TV ‘personalities’ today….