NGOs call Home Office ‘unethical’ over £15m offer to help resettle deportees

The Home Office has been accused of “cynical” and “unethical” behaviour after offering millions of pounds to refugee charities to help settle newly deported people.A government contract put out to tender earlier this month offers to pay £15m over three years to NGOs who work with people being removed from the UK to 11 countries, including Ethiopia, Iraq and Zimbabwe.In August, Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, announced a plan to increase removals of those who have had their asylum claims rejected to 2018 levels over the next six months, meaning more than 14,000 deportations by the end of the year.The contract, entitled Home Office Reintegration Programme, asks for bidders from “non-statutory sector organisations that are charities and non-profit making organisations” to help with temporary accommodation, food, and cash assistance once they arrive in their country of origin. Other countries covered by the contract will be Albania, Bangladesh, Ghana, India, Jamaica, Nigeria, Pakistan and Vietnam

Sue Gray’s £170,000 pay prompts fury among Labour advisers

Sue Gray has been given a salary of £170,000 as Keir Starmer’s chief of staff – more than the prime minister – prompting fury among Labour colleagues who have taken lower pay since entering government.Gray was given a pay rise after the election despite other political special advisers being unhappy that their salary was reduced compared with their previous jobs at the Labour party.The BBC first reported that Gray was paid £3,000 more than Starmer’s salary of £166,786.One source told the broadcaster: “It was suggested that she might want to go for a few thousand pounds less than the prime minister to avoid this very story. She declined

Tom Tugendhat’s call for review of Huw Edwards’ sentence backfires after experts tell him law doesn’t allow it – as it happened

Another Tory leadership candidate, Tom Tugendhat, has also been on X today raising an issue that he thinks might help with his campaign. But, arguably, his tweet has backfired.This morning he posted online a copy of a letter he is sending to to the attorney general urging him to review the decision not to jail Huw Edwards for viewing child abuse images. Tugendhat said the attorney, Richard Hermer, should use the unduly lenient sentences scheme to do this.Huw Edwards won’t be going to jail for possession of indecent images of children

How UK leaders’ spouses have negotiated clothing in the media age

Asked in 1996 by the late David Frost whether there was anything she would do differently if she had her time again as the wife of the prime minister John Major, Norma Major had a ready reply: “Yes: I wouldn’t have worn the blue suit.”There had been the criticism at the time of the unflattering tool-box blue jacket in which she had arrived at the couple’s first big day at 10 Downing Street on 28 November 1990. But the response was also an acknowledgement that her choice for the iconic photo outside the famous black door would likely dog her for ever.The position of prime ministerial spouse surely has some upsides but those who have taken on the role on the postwar era have often found it torturous. In the media (and now social media) age, the issue of clothing and image has been a central cause of that discomfort

John Swinney: IndyRef anniversary can reawaken optimism in Scotland

John Swinney has urged independence supporters not to live in the past as he celebrated the 10th anniversary of the independence referendum as a moment of “reawakening” for the yes movement.Speaking to a crowd of campaigners in Edinburgh 10 years to the day since Scotland voted 55% to 45% to remain part of the UK, the SNP leader said: “We have had a long, dark decade – a decade of austerity, of Brexit, of a cost of living crisis and a global pandemic.”“As a nation, we can’t just regret the things that we cannot do – it is time for us to start focusing again on the things that we can,” he said. “And that is exactly what we are going to do. It starts by reawakening the sense of optimism, of hope and of possibility that was so prevalent throughout Scotland in 2014

John Major criticises Rwanda asylum plan as ‘un-Conservative and un-British’

John Major has criticised the former Conservative government’s Rwanda scheme, saying it was unsuitable for the 21st century and was “un-Conservative and un-British”.The Tory former prime minister expressed frustration about “the way society has come to regard immigration as an ill” and said he did not think the policy would have acted as a deterrent.In one of his first acts as prime minister, Keir Starmer in July scrapped the controversial policy, which the Tories believed would deter asylum seekers by sending those who arrived in the UK illegally to the east African country.Major said: “Are they seriously saying to me that somewhere in the backwoods of some north African country, they actually know what the British parliament has legislated for? I think not.He added that people who came to the UK on small boats did so “because they’re not quite sure where to go”