Yvette Cooper refuses to rule out sending asylum seekers overseas if Labour win general election – UK politics live | Politics

The Conservatives have “absolutely destroyed” Britain’s relationship with the EU, the Scottish Liberal Democrats have said.

Party leader Alex Cole-Hamilton told BBC One Scotland’s The Sunday Show of the Lib Dems’ hopes of getting Britain “back into the heart” of Europe.

He said the Liberal Democrats are “proud Europeans” and that his party would attempt to rebuild the country’s relationship with the EU and encourage free movement.

He said:

The Conservatives have absolutely destroyed our relationship with Europe, there is no trust there right now at all. We had one of the hardest possible Brexits and we’re still paying the price for that in terms of the goods that we buy in our supermarkets, but also the absence of the skilled workforce that we used to enjoy.”

“Lib Dems care passionately about removing the friction, rebuilding bridges, getting back into things like Interpol, moving forward to the free movement of people, reducing those pressures and the frictions that exist and getting us back into the heart of Europe – Lib Dems are passionate Europeans, always will be,” the party leader added.

Cole Hamilton said that voters on the doorsteps “don’t care” about a second independence vote, but care more about issues like access to GP or dental appointments.

Faiza Shaheen, the candidate blocked by Labour from standing in Chingford and Woodford Green, has told Lewis Goodall, the LBC presenter and the News Agents presenter, that she is considering standing in Chingford as an independent.

Shaheen, who stood in the north-east London seat in 2019, had already announced she would challenge Labour’s decision to block her from standing as one of its candidates in the courts, claiming she had faced “a systematic campaign of racism, Islamophobia and bullying”.

“This campaign of prejudice, bullying and spiteful behaviour has finally been rewarded by Labour’s NEC [national executive committee] and my name has been added to the list of those not welcome in the candidate club. And it is no surprise that many of those excluded are people of colour,” she said in a statement.

Shaheen was presented with a dossier of posts that she had liked on X, some dating back to 2014. The most recent was by a US academic who used the trope of the “Israel lobby” in relation to a sketch on The Daily Show in the US. Shaheen’s “like” prompted a complaint from the Jewish labour movement.

You can see her reaction to receiving an email telling her candidacy had been blocked in this Newsnight clip:

Toby Helm is the Observer’s political editor

A key New Labour adviser who worked for Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in Downing Street says there is an “overwhelming economic and ethical case” for Keir Starmer’s party to impose higher taxes on wealth if it wins the general election.

Writing in the Observer, Patrick Diamond, professor of public policy at Queen Mary University of London, and his colleague Colm Murphy, a lecturer in British politics, say a Labour government will need to look at radical ways to raise money, not least because the plans for higher economic growth that the party is relying on may never materialise.

Their comments will stoke the debate over Labour’s economic poli­cies and its attitude to wealth creation after Starmer made an appeal to middle-class voters in an interview with the Times on Saturday, saying that his party’s “number one mission is wealth creation”.

Starmer said he thought it was a good thing for people to be “aspirational”, adding that his was no longer a “tribal” party. “I want it to be wide enough to accommodate people who would identify as Labour. They’d vote for Labour this time.”

You can read the full story here:

Wes Streeting has revealed he does not travel on public transport alone after receiving death threats over his stance on Gaza.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, the shadow health secretary said he has had to “change my movements, change my routine” over his position on Israel’s war in Gaza.

He said:

It means I don’t travel at the moment on public transport alone. It’s really upset me, not much the fear for my safety, but for the last nine years I have really prided myself on the fact people see me on the Central Line into work; that they can walk up to me in Tesco and have a chat.

The Ilford North MP also said that until now he has refused to change his approach, even after the murder of fellow Labour MP Jo Cox in 2016.

Streeting added:

I don’t mind scrutiny. I don’t mind disagreement. That’s democracy. But no one should be subjected to threats and intimidation. I’ve had a death threat since the war in Gaza broke out and I’ve had threats of violence. The irony is I’ve been highly critical of Israel. I have been a longstanding advocate for an independent Palestinian state. Where I draw the line is I don’t think that to be pro-Palestinian is to excuse or justify in any way the barbarity of 7 October.

Streeting is being challenged in his Ilford North constituency by pro-Palestine independent candidate Leanne Mohamad.

The 41-year-old said: “There will be some people in my constituency who don’t feel we’ve been strong enough on Gaza and may not vote for me. But I think there are many more who are voting Labour because they want to bring an end to the chaos.”

Labour backs a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, but not the end of arms exports. Keir Starmer has faced pressure from within the party to take a tougher line on Israel’s war on Gaza and faced a rebellion from dozens of his own MPs late last year on the issue.

There are more lines from Yvette Cooper’s interview on BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme (see earlier posts at 09.20 and 09.27 for her other quotes).

The shadow home secretary declined to rule out off-shore processing or sending asylum-seekers to have their claims processed abroad.

She said her party would create a border security command “to clear the backlog and to end asylum hotel use, and to put another new returns and enforcement unit in place to actually get the proper returns where people have no right to be here”.

Cooper said:

So, your question was might there be other future arrangements and so on? Keir has always said we would look at what works and there are different kinds of, I think, the sort of offshore processing arrangements and things that have already been used at different times in the past.

For example, the Dublin agreement did mean that, under that scheme, some people were returned to France or to Germany or other countries.

When asked if Labour would send asylum seekers who are stuck in the system to another country to have their claims processed, Cooper said: “That’s certainly what used to happen as part of the Dublin scheme and we look at what works.”

Keir Starmer said last year that he would look at offshore schemes where migrants are processed in a third country “usually en route to their country of destination”, saying that other European countries were also considering this.

Labour’s decision to consider a range of options for offshoring caused alarm among charities and drew criticism from some of its political rivals.

Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth has said Keir Starmer wants to “act as the puppet master within all of the Labour party” through his “parachuting of candidates last minute to Wales”.

He told Sky News’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips programme that his party would support a no-confidence motion in Welsh first minister Vaughan Gething next week. Plaid Cymru ended its cooperation agreement with the Labour-led government in Wales last month.

The Plaid leader had said he was deeply concerned that Gething had refused to hand back a £200,000 donation for his successful leadership campaign from a company whose owner was convicted of environmental crimes.

Ap Iorwerth told Sky News on Sunday:

We have no confidence in the first minister. More importantly than that, the Welsh public don’t have confidence in him. But it’s Labour who will decide – Labour members of the Senedd in that vote of no confidence, but crucially also Keir Starmer, who has shown through his parachuting of candidates last minute to Wales that he very much wants to act as the puppet master within all of the Labour party.

He added: “We have a Labour party that has converged so much with the Conservatives and offer so little for Wales.

Labour party members on Thursday accused the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, of orchestrating a “cull of leftwingers” after several high-profile figures were told they would not be selected as candidates for seats they held or had previously contested.

Members of the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) will meet next week to agree on Labour’s full list of parliamentary candidates at what is set to be a stormy meeting where the fates of several candidates will be in the balance.

The SNP’s House of Commons leader, Stephen Flynn, has accused Labour and the Conservatives of a “conspiracy of silence” on austerity in Scotland.

Speaking with Sky News’ Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips, Flynn said there has been £18bn in public sector cuts, with neither party “providing an answer” on the matter.

He said the SNP is the only party who would return the country to a single market, invest in net zero technologies and will not privatise the NHS.

John Swinney, the Scottish first minister, was recently told that he will have to make “significant” public spending cuts by the permanent secretary to the Scottish government, John-Paul Marks. The Scottish government had to plug a £1.5bn black hole in this year’s budget.

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has said there will be “no return to austerity under a Labour government”.

In a separate part of the interview, Flynn said that a Labour government would be “extremely dangerous” for the country.

He highlighted ongoing speculation that Labour’s approach to its handling of net zero and a greener country would cost the oil and gas industry 100,000 jobs. Flynn said what Labour is proposing is “extremely dangerous” for all of Scotland and not just the north-east of Scotland, where the oil and gas industry is prominent. But he said there were no circumstances in which the SNP would support the Conservatives (if neither main parties have a majority at the general election in July).

The health secretary, Victoria Atkins, has suggested Labour is having a “bit of an identity crisis”, referring to Natalie Elphicke’s controversial defection to the party and the infighting that erupted last week over issues around Diane Abbott’s selection.

Keir Starmer had spent three days insisting Abbott’s candidacy was not in his power, and it was a matter for the party’s ruling national executive committee (NEC), but the row was increasingly distracting from Labour’s election campaign. He then said she was free to stand.

Atkins said she would not comment on individual Tories who have defected to Labour, saying they will have had their “own reasons for going”.

She then told Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips on Sky News:

It’s a great surprise, I think, to everyone, including possibly to Natalie Elphicke herself, that such a hard-right Conservative politician should choose to join Labour.

But then we see this week from Labour that Sir Keir Starmer can’t work out whether Diane Abbott, one of his longest-standing and trailblazing Members of parliament, should in fact be a Member of parliament. He can’t work it out. So, it shows that there is a bit of an identity crisis within Labour.

We see today that Sir Keir is suggesting giving out peerages to solve the problem and, interestingly, inserting some of his own, his boys’ club, into those very seats from which he’s ejecting women. I have noticed that.

Yvette Cooper is being questioned by Laura Kuenssberg on her BBC Sunday politics programme.

The shadow home secretary says that Labour is not setting a target for how many people should be allowed to come to the UK, as numbers vary from year to year depending on circumstances, but wants a “significant” change in net migration.

She said: “Also, because from one year to another, there are variations. So, for example, the pandemic means the net migration figures, of course, fell, but the homes for Ukraine visa rightly meant that the figures increased because of the war in Ukraine.”

Pushed for an estimation on how much Labour want to lower migration, Ms Cooper said:

We clearly want to see significant changes in place because we have seen the numbers treble. I know that you’re effectively trying to suggest I set a target or a broad target, I’m not going to do that. We are going to be clear, net migration must come down.

Echoing Labour leader Keir Starmer’s comments to the Sun on Sunday, she said: “We are going to be clear: net migration must come down.”

The shadow home secretary said sectors including social care and engineering need stronger recruitment, but refuses to be drawn on specific figures.

In terms of illegal migration, Cooper says Labour would not commit to the Rwanda scheme and instead focus on clearing the existing backlog for those who are waiting – often a lengthy amount of time – to have their claims processed.

Good morning and welcome to our continuing live coverage of the 2024 general election campaign.

Keir Starmer has pledged to cut levels of net migration to the UK if his party wins the general election, in another attempt by Labour to appeal to Conservative voters.

The Labour leader is putting the migration plan in his manifesto, and it will include passing laws to ban law-breaking employers from hiring foreign workers and to train more people from Britain.

Last year’s net migration figure of 685,000 has “got to come down,” he told The Sun on Sunday.

A Labour government would bar bosses who break employment law – for example by failing to pay workers the minimum wage – from hiring foreigners, the newspaper reported.

It would also legislate to link the immigration system to training, with businesses applying for foreign worker visas having to train Britons to do the jobs.

Starmer declined to name the target level for migrant numbers, or a timeline. We will give you all the reaction to the announcement throughout the day.

Health secretary Victoria Atkins, shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson and Green party of England and Wales co-leader Carla Denyer are among those doing the media round this morning.

Here are your other headlines:

• The latest Opinium poll for the Observer on Sunday gives Labour a 20-point lead – the highest level it has recorded since Liz Truss was briefly running the country. Labour is on 45% – up four points on last weekend, while the Conservatives are down two points on 25%. Reform is up on one on 11%, the Lib Dems down two on 8%, and the Greens down one on 6%.

• The Conservatives have said that 100 new GP surgeries and 50 community diagnostic centres would be built were they to remain in power, funded by slashing the number of NHS managers. They pledged to expand their Pharmacy First scheme, which allows patients to access some treatments via their pharmacy without having seen a GP first. Rishi Sunak said the proposals would make it “quicker, easier and more convenient for patients to receive the care they need and help to relieve pressure on hospital services”. The shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, said the public would not believe this “latest empty promise” as people are finding it harder than ever to see a GP.

• A report in The Sunday Times that a number of left-wing MPs, including Diane Abbott, have been offered peerages in return for quitting. They have been told they would be elevated to the Lords if they made way for allies of the leadership team in their seats, according to the newspaper.

• SNP leader John Swinney will formally launch the party’s general election campaign at a rally in Glasgow today.

• The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, and the shadow education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, will be in south west London at midday for a campaign visit focused on Labour’s proposed Growth and Skills Levy.

It is Yohannes Lowe here today. If you want to get my attention then please do email me on yohannes.lowe@theguardian.com. Comments on this blog will be open later given weekend staffing levels.