Priti Patel accused of lying to parliament that migrant boats will be turned away
Liar: it seems clear that Priti Patel deliberately misled Lords into believing that asylum-seekers caught trying to cross the English Channel would be turned away, and tried to keep the policy stating otherwise secret.
Home Secretary Priti Patel has been accused of deliberately misleading Parliament and the public into believing that her Nationality and Borders Bill includes a plan to turn migrant boats away from the UK.
In fact, previously-unpublished clauses of the Bill explicitly state that pushbacks will not be applied against asylum-seekers.
The details came to light after the pushbacks policy was challenged by the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), and the NGOs Care4Calais, Channel Rescue and Freedom From Torture.
The Home Office had applied to the High Court for public interest immunity against publishing the details – a mechanism used over sensitive issues such as organised crime, terrorism or national security. But judges said disclosure did not “give rise to a real risk of serious harm to the public interest”.
Patel gave evidence to the House of Lords’ justice and home affairs committee last autumn in which she said turning boats full of asylum-seekers away from the UK was “absolutely still policy”.
Now it has been revealed that a key part of the previously-unpublished policy states that anyone in a dinghy who indicates they wish to claim asylum in the UK should not be pushed back but instead escorted to UK shores. Almost everyone who uses this method to reach the UK is an asylum seeker according to the Home Office’s own data.
So she lied to Parliament.
Correct me if I’m mistaken, but isn’t there currently a huge row over whether Boris Johnson should be ejected from his job as a member of the government because he’s believed to have deliberately lied to Parliament?
So, shouldn’t Patel also face the same penalty?
In fact, it seems to This Writer that she should be summarily ejected; this is an open-and-shut case.
Source: Priti Patel accused of misleading parliament over refugee pushbacks
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Conservatives don’t have the ability to be truthful about anything. They lie when campaigning, they lie to the unquestioning conservative press, they lie in unquestioned interviews, they lie because no one challenges them because if they do they will be removed, privatised, and taken into conservative ownership. We allow this to happen because our lives have been made so difficult by the conservatives that all we do is go around in circles and nothing ever changes.