Oliver Dowden suggests Fire Brigades Union’s concerns over asylum seeker barge politically motivated – UK politics live | Politics

Full story: Bibby Stockholm will be housing people within weeks, says Oliver Dowden

Aubrey Allegretti

Checks are still taking place on a barge designed to house asylum seekers, with the first group due to be housed there within “weeks”, the UK’s deputy prime minister has suggested.

Oliver Dowden said he was confident the Bibby Stockholm in Portland, Dorset, would become operational soon and that the government would “take into account those concerns” when pressed over fears raised about fire safety.

Despite the plan to start moving people on to the 500-capacity boat being repeatedly pushed back, Dowden was resolute it remained necessary to reduce the cost to taxpayers as part of a wider drive to “stop the boats”.

Explaining the delay, Dowden said: “We have to undertake a number of inspections and other measures to make sure that these vessels – and this vessel in particular – is suitable and ready.”

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he added: “I’m confident that in the coming weeks, we will have people on those barges.”

Dowden said the government was already taking into account concerns raised by the Fire Brigades Union, which has called the boat a “potential deathtrap” given concerns about overcrowding and access to fire exits.

He began to argue that the FBU was a significant donor to the Labour party, until it was put to him that the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) had also made a late intervention.

“Well, we are confident that we will be able to address all of these concerns,” Dowden told the BBC.

He pointed to what he described as some successes, as part of the government’s drive to “stop the boats”. He said the number of Albanians arriving on the English south coast had dipped by 90%, and that after cooperation with France there was a 40% rise in the number of people being intercepted in the Channel.

After Rishi Sunak vowed to clear an asylum backlog of 92,000 applications by the end of the year, Dowden said “we remain committed to that pledge” and added that the number of caseworkers had been increased to help.

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Aubrey Allegretti

Police are investigating a leaflet distributed by the Welsh secretary and Monmouth MP, David TC Davies, which was described as bordering on racism.

In what was billed as an “important update to constituents”, the leaflet encouraged people to give their thoughts on the local Labour-controlled council’s plans “to establish a number of Gypsy Traveller sites in the county”.

Under the heading “Gypsy and Traveller site coming to your area soon!”, the Conservative MP said he was concerned a public consultation on the plans being held during the summer holidays meant “many residents will be unable to participate”.

Providing his own form for people to fill in, Davies’ leaflet invited constituents to give their own view on the establishment of sites, along with their details. It contained a privacy agreement saying the Conservative party would use people’s information with their consent “inside and outside election periods”.

The leaflet was criticised by Mabon ap Gwynfor, a Plaid Cymru member of the Welsh Senedd. In a tweet in Welsh, translated into English, he said it “borders on racism” and that the Roma community “is the community that has been most persecuted” in the UK.

Travelling Ahead, a group that provides advocacy and advice for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities in Wales, said the leaflet was a clear breach of the Equality Act. It condemned “dog-whistle actions intended to create a hostile environment for Gypsies and Travellers”.

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Full story: Greenpeace protesters drape giant oil-black fabric over Sunak’s mansion

Helen Pidd

Greenpeace activists have climbed on the roof of Rishi Sunak’s North Yorkshire mansion and draped it in oily-black fabric to “drive home the dangerous consequences of a new drilling frenzy”.

The climbers managed to get on top of Sunak’s constituency home in Kirby Sigston, near Northallerton, on Thursday morning, as the prime minister flew to California on holiday.

After reaching the top of Kirby Sigston Manor using ladders and climbing ropes, they unfolded 200 sq metres of oil-black fabric to cover a whole side of the property. At the same time, two other activists unfurled a banner stating: “Rishi Sunak – Oil Profits or Our Future?” across the grass in front of the house.

This week the prime minister pledged to “max out” the UK’s oil and gas reserves as he announced more than 100 new licences for North Sea drilling, which experts said could be catastrophic for the climate. But in 2021, the International Energy Agency said there can be no new oil, gas and coal developments if the world is to reach net zero by 2050.

Greenpeace said the protest aimed to stop Sunak from approving Rosebank, the biggest undeveloped oil and gas field in the North Sea, the operations of which would be enough to exceed the UK’s carbon budgets.

A No 10 source told PA Media that police were at the property. “We make no apology for taking the right approach to ensure our energy security, using the resources we have here at home so we are never reliant on aggressors like [Vladimir] Putin for our energy,” the source said. “We are also investing in renewables and our approach supports 1000s of British jobs.”

North Yorkshire Police said they were managing the situation.

In a statement, the police force said:

We’re responding to reports of protest activity at a property in Kirby Sigston, near Northallerton.

Our officers are at the scene and managing the situation. We’ll provide a further update in due course.

Oliver Dowden suggested concerns about the Bibby Stockholm barge by the Fire Brigades Union are politically motivated.

Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today show about the FBU’s comments that the barge could be a floating “death trap” for asylum seekers, the deputy prime minister said:

Of course, we’ll take into account those concerns and that’s exactly what we’re doing.

I would just gently say the Fire Brigades Union has donated £850,000 to the Labour party since 2010. It is affiliated to the Labour party, and I’m afraid what we see with this is exactly what we saw with trying to pass the legislation earlier this year through parliament. There are many obstacles.

We’re confident that we will be able to address all of the concerns. I’m absolutely certain about that and I’m absolutely certain we will be able to get people on this vessel in the coming weeks.

Severin Carrell

Robin Harper, who became the UK’s first Green parliamentarian when he won election to the inaugural Scottish parliament in 1999, has quit the Scottish Greens in protest at its stance on independence and gender recognition.

Harper, who served as co-convenor of the Scottish Greens from 2004 to 2008, stepping down as an MSP in 2011, has made little secret of his antipathy to the party’s pursuit of more radical policies under the leadership of his successor, Patrick Harvie.

The Scottish Greens became a staunchly pro-independence party after Harper stood down, joining forces with the Scottish National party before the 2014 referendum, and has taken an uncompromising stance on the case for gender recognition reform.

Harper was highly critical of the party’s decision to sign a cooperation agreement with Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP government in 2021 after the Scottish Greens won a record eight seats, pushing the Liberal Democrats into fifth place. Harvie and his co-leader, Lorna Slater, became junior ministers.

In his resignation letter, reported by the Times, Harper told Harvie a number of people had told him they believed the party had “lost the plot”.

Harper told BBC Radio Scotland on Thursday morning the independence debate had become “sterile”, with no prospect of any movement on it.

The debate should be around the radical constitutional reform being offered by Labour, including replacing the House of Lords with an elected assembly. Harper is on the board of Gordon Brown’s Our Scottish Future thinktank which co-wrote Labour’s reform strategy.

A Scottish Greens spokesman thanked Harper for his service, but said:

Independence and human rights, including the rights of trans people, are at the core of our vision and have been since our party was founded over 30 years ago. Our commitment to that vision has seen us achieve record result after record result in recent elections.

Rishi Sunak has insisted the government’s pay offer to doctors is “fair” and “final”.

Writing in the Daily Express, Sunak said “there will be no more talks on this year’s pay” and he urged doctors to call off their strikes.

He called the NHS “an institution the UK is rightly proud of” thanks to the “extraordinary men and women who work so hard to protect our nation’s health”.

Sunak wrote:

For that reliable, high-quality service to continue, we need our brilliant doctors to be on the front-line treating patients.

He called the government’s pay offer to doctors “very generous”, saying a first-year junior doctor would see pay rise by 10.3%.

He wrote:

Our pay deal is fair, so I urge all doctors to know when to say yes and call off their strikes.

That’s the right thing to do.

Because on every day of industrial action, tens of thousands of appointments are cancelled.

And at a time when millions of people are already waiting for treatment, that’s causing waiting lists to go up, not down.

Sunak said he made tackling waiting lists one of his priorities and it should be a “national mission”.

He said:

I know that most doctors just want to get on with their life’s work of caring for patients.

And in the end, no amount of strikes will change our decision. This offer is final.

Sunak faced heavy criticism on Wednesday from a junior doctor for insisting striking doctors are to blame for record-high NHS waiting lists.

Police are at the North Yorkshire home of Rishi Sunak after it was scaled by Greenpeace activists, a No 10 source said.

Greenpeace activists have climbed on to the roof of Rishi Sunak’s mansion in protest against his new drilling “frenzy”.

The campaigners have draped the prime minister’s manor house in North Yorkshire with an oily-black fabric to “drive home the dangerous consequences” of continued use of fossil fuels.

Sunak and his family are on holiday in California.

This week Sunak announced plans to “max out” the UK’s oil and gas reserves by granting more than 100 new licences for extraction in the North Sea.

A Downing Street source said:

The police are in attendance.

We make no apology for taking the right approach to ensure our energy security, using the resources we have here at home so we are never reliant on aggressors like [Vladimir] Putin for our energy. We are also investing in renewables and our approach supports 1000s of British jobs.

Oliver Dowden said asylum seekers will be housed on the Bibby Stockholm barge “in the coming weeks”.

The plans to move migrants on to the barge, docked in Portland on the Dorset coast, have been beset by delays, with government sources suggesting the first arrivals may not be on board until next week.

The plan is to move more than 500 adult male asylum seekers to the Bibby Stockholm, which will save the government the cost of putting them up in hotels. Aside from major doubts over whether it is a fit place to house potentially traumatised people, serious questions have been raised over whether the vessel is even safe.

Campaigners have called the government’s plans cruel and inhumane. One local authority whistleblower has said it has the potential to become a “floating Grenfell”. And the Fire Brigades Union has said it considers the vessel a “potential deathtrap”.

Asked about the plans, the deputy prime minister told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

We have to undertake a number of inspections and other measures to make sure that these vessels, and this vessel in particular, is suitable and ready.

But I am confident that in the coming weeks we will have people on those barges.

Dowden said of the Bibby Stockholm:

We are confident that we will be able to address all of these concerns, I’m absolutely certain of that, and I’m absolutely certain we will be able to get people on this vessel in the coming weeks.

I will be looking after the politics blog today. If you have any tips or suggestions, please get in touch: nicola.slawson@theguardian.com.

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