Author: Helen Rennie-Smith

Alf Dubs, member of the House of Lords, writes: Where to start with Patel’s ‘overhaul’ of the rules regarding asylum, announced today?

The Home Office claims it is ‘collapsing’ under the number of asylum claims. The Home Secretary herself described the asylum process as ‘broken’. But this government has been in charge for a decade, during which time the application process has got 8 times longer.

In 2019 there were approx 5 asylum applications for every 10,000 residents in the UK. Compare that to the EU average of 14 asylum applications per 10,000 of the population, placing us 17th in the EU in terms of asylum applications per head of population. The HO has closed the only two legal routes for refugee children stranded in Europe, including lone children and those with family here, to seek asylum in the UK. This is not “fair but firm’ – it keeps families apart and lacks compassion.

Removing legal routes to safety doesn’t prevent criminality – it fuels it. The day the legal routes for refugee children seeking asylum here was closed was a field day for people traffickers and smugglers who exploit despair.

And just to add one final piece of data, because facts matter. There were 29,456 asylum applications in the UK in 2020 – a drop of 18% on 2019. Germany took 7 times that number (121,955), France & Spain took 3 times that number (93,470 and 88, 530) and Greece with a population of 10.7m, took 40,560.

The UK Government is rushing the so-called “Police Bill” through Parliament.

The bill features several eye-catching items, such as power to ministers and police to curb “non-violent protest” and that assault on a “dead” statue gives a longer maximum sentence than assault on a living emergency worker.

Yesterday MPs voted for the newer, stricter rules despite the fact that protests actually gave them the power they now have. A few generations ago many of these politicians would not have had the right to be elected to Parliament let alone to vote, themselves, in an election.

This Government seems to normalise speeding up processes and avoiding Parliament’s right and duty to examine their bills before they become law. There is a very obvious risk that this results in laws which undermine the democracy and citizens’ basic rights.

Like Freedom of Speech, the Freedom of the Press is one of the building bricks in a healthy democracy.

Citizens should have access to news and other information from different providers presenting a multitude of angles and opinions. Investigative reporters should be able to, in a professional way, hold people of power to account. But freedoms also come with responsibility.

There are examples when journalists have gone too far and been accused of invading people’s private sphere. There are other examples when journalists have been proved to report blatant lies. And again, more examples of journalists publishing controversial opinions which are contrary to Editor’s Code of Practice.

To counter these tendencies, voices are being raised to legislate the freedom of press and set clear boundaries to what can and can’t be done. During 2020, the UK government tried to control the news reporting by only briefing journalists they trusted to report favourably. These measures have been criticised to be hindering investigative journalism and for the Government to avoid scrutiny.

Since 2018 the Arts & Humanities Research Council runs a project called Defining the Freedom of the Press. Read more about their findings.