Asylum seekers facing deportation from Britain to Rwanda are given as few as seven days to appeal, and told they should have sought refuge in another country, leaked documents reveal.
The government is sticking to its plans to deter migrants who arrive in on small boats and hidden in lorries by dispatching them to Africa despite strong objections from human rights groups, the UN, opposition MPs and the head of the Church of England.
Some asylum seekers have already been told they are facing expulsion and have received paperwork, published by ITV News, selling Rwanda as the “land of a thousand hills” and describing it as a safe and welcoming country.
The brochure tells people they are facing deportation because they travelled through “a safe third country where you should, or could have, claimed asylum”, typically referring to France.
Migrants who believe they should not be deported are given seven days to provide a written appeal if they are being kept in detention, or 14 days if they were not in detention when they received the paperwork.
They are told they will receive “removal directions” at least five days before being deported to Rwanda, with an offer of up to £3,000 ($3,790) to help them return to their country of origin if they withdraw their application for asylum.
Responding to the leak, Stephen Kinnock, the opposition Labour Party’s spokesman on immigration, said the Rwanda plan was about “chasing headlines” rather than deterring dangerous English Channel crossings.
“It’s a completely unworkable, extortionately expensive, and deeply un-British policy,” Mr Kinnock said.
Home Secretary Priti Patel, whose department is carrying out the programme, has defended the policy to her critics at the UN by insisting she is trying to save lives by deterring perilous Channel crossings.
Ms Patel overruled concerns from her top civil servant that the policy was poor value for money because there was no clear evidence it would actually deter people from seeking asylum in Britain.
Thousands of people have crossed the Channel in small boats this year, and 27 people drowned last November in the worst such accident on record. Ministers have promised to use Britain’s post-Brexit autonomy to curb immigration.
Rwanda last month signed up to the arrangement after being offered £120 million ($150m) in development assistance and funding to provide accommodation for the incoming refugees.
Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury who drew the ire of ministers for speaking out against the plan, told Channel 4 News that it would have been cowardly for him not to do so.
Mr Welby had said in an Easter Sunday sermon that there were serious ethical questions about the policy and that passing the buck to Rwanda was contrary to “the nature of God”.
“I remember writing it – it was about six lines – and just wishing I didn’t have to,” Mr Welby recounted, but “to have avoided those issues would have been cowardly.”
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Pharaoh's curse
British aristocrat Lord Carnarvon, who funded the expedition to find the Tutankhamun tomb, died in a Cairo hotel four months after the crypt was opened.
He had been in poor health for many years after a car crash, and a mosquito bite made worse by a shaving cut led to blood poisoning and pneumonia.
Reports at the time said Lord Carnarvon suffered from “pain as the inflammation affected the nasal passages and eyes”.
Decades later, scientists contended he had died of aspergillosis after inhaling spores of the fungus aspergillus in the tomb, which can lie dormant for months. The fact several others who entered were also found dead withiin a short time led to the myth of the curse.
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Results
Stage Two:
1. Mark Cavendish (GBR) QuickStep-AlphaVinyl 04:20:45
2. Jasper Philipsen (BEL) Alpecin-Fenix
3. Pascal Ackermann (GER) UAE Team Emirates
4. Olav Kooij (NED) Jumbo-Visma
5. Arnaud Demare (FRA) Groupama-FDJ
General Classification:
1. Jasper Philipsen (BEL) Alpecin-Fenix 09:03:03
2. Dmitry Strakhov (RUS) Gazprom-Rusvelo 00:00:04
3. Mark Cavendish (GBR) QuickStep-AlphaVinyl 00:00:06
4. Sam Bennett (IRL) Bora-Hansgrohe 00:00:10
5. Pascal Ackermann (GER) UAE Team Emirates 00:00:12
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EA Sports FC 26
Publisher: EA Sports
Consoles: PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series X/S
Rating: 3/5
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Fly Etihad or Emirates from the UAE to Moscow from 2,763 return per person return including taxes.
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Gender equality in the workplace still 200 years away
It will take centuries to achieve gender parity in workplaces around the globe, according to a December report from the World Economic Forum.
The WEF study said there had been some improvements in wage equality in 2018 compared to 2017, when the global gender gap widened for the first time in a decade.
But it warned that these were offset by declining representation of women in politics, coupled with greater inequality in their access to health and education.
At current rates, the global gender gap across a range of areas will not close for another 108 years, while it is expected to take 202 years to close the workplace gap, WEF found.
The Geneva-based organisation's annual report tracked disparities between the sexes in 149 countries across four areas: education, health, economic opportunity and political empowerment.
After years of advances in education, health and political representation, women registered setbacks in all three areas this year, WEF said.
Only in the area of economic opportunity did the gender gap narrow somewhat, although there is not much to celebrate, with the global wage gap narrowing to nearly 51 per cent.
And the number of women in leadership roles has risen to 34 per cent globally, WEF said.
At the same time, the report showed there are now proportionately fewer women than men participating in the workforce, suggesting that automation is having a disproportionate impact on jobs traditionally performed by women.
And women are significantly under-represented in growing areas of employment that require science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills, WEF said.
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October 13-14 KartZone (complimentary trials)
December 14-16 The Gulf 12 Hours Endurance race
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- 600-seat auditorium
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- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
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- Over a period of seven years, a team of scientists analysed dietary data from 50,000 North American adults.
- Eating one or two meals a day was associated with a relative decrease in BMI, compared with three meals. Snacks count as a meal. Likewise, participants who ate more than three meals a day experienced an increase in BMI: the more meals a day, the greater the increase.
- People who ate breakfast experienced a relative decrease in their BMI compared with “breakfast-skippers”.
- Those who turned the eating day on its head to make breakfast the biggest meal of the day, did even better.
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