Home secretary rejects Zarah Sultana's claim Labour failing to improve lives
Date: 2025-07-04T07:43:22.000Z
Title: Yvette Cooper
Content: Ministers are 'looking at a range of different issues' for cutting small boat crossings, the home secretary said as she declined to confirm reports the government was considering a 'one in, one out' policy for asylum seekers, reports the PA news agency.
Asked whether the government was looking at such a scheme with European nations, told Sky News:
We've been looking at a range of different issues, different ways of working – not just with France but with other European countries, other countries like Iraq, countries where we've seen these networks of criminal gangs operating.
She added that the government was 'looking at different ways of doing returns'.
Cooper also said she hoped France would change its own rules 'as swiftly as possible' to allow French police officers to intervene in French waters.
She said:
We've seen these just appalling scenes of people just standing in the water, climbing into the boats, French police unable to do anything about it.
So [that is] one of the things I've been working very closely with the French interior minister on, and he and I agree those French rules need to change.
Update:
Date: 2025-07-04T07:37:04.000Z
Title: 'I strongly disagree': Home secretary refutes Zarah Sultana claim that Labour is failing to improve lives
Content: Zarah Sultana has 'always taken a very different view' from the government, the home secretary has said.
Responding to the former Labour MP's announcement that she was co-founding a new party with Jeremy Corbyn, Yvette Cooper told Sky News:
I think she has always taken a very different view to most people in the government on a lot of different things, and that's for her to do so.
Cooper also rejected the Coventry South MP's accusation that Labour was failing to improve people's lives, saying:
I just strongly disagree with her.
The home secretary pointed to falling waiting times in the NHS, the announcement of additional neighbourhood police officers, extending free school meals and strengthening renters' rights as areas where the government was acting. She said:
These are real changes [that] have a real impact on people's lives.
As well as Cooper, co-chair of the Conservative party Nigel Huddleston is also on the media rounds this morning.
There's sure to be more reaction today to the news that Sultana has resigned from the Labour party to join Corbyn's Independent Alliance. But there's more coming up today:
A bid to temporarily block the banning of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation is set to be heard at the high court on Friday, ahead of a potential legal challenge against the move.
Councils will have to agree targets to improve the number of children ready for school, under new plans to be announced by the education secretary.
In other recently reported developments:
Critics of the UK's role in the Gaza war are considering setting up an independent tribunal if, as expected, Labour blocks a bill tabled by Jeremy Corbyn backing an official inquiry. Government whips are expected to object to the former Labour party leader's bill in the Commons on Friday, leaving him with few practical options for his legislation to pass.
Wes Streeting has staked the future of the NHS on a digital overhaul in which a beefed-up NHS app and new hospital league tables are intended to give patients unprecedented control over their care.
Some farms in England could be taken entirely out of food production under plans to make more space for nature, the environment secretary has said. Speaking at the Groundswell farming festival in Hertfordshire, Steve Reed said a revamp of post-Brexit farming subsidies and a new land use plan would be aimed at increasing food production in the most productive areas and decreasing or completely removing it in the least productive.
Ministers are closely watching a court case in which Vodafone is alleged to have 'unjustly enriched' itself at the expense of franchise operators, and have raised the prospect of a regulatory crackdown on the sector. The small business minister, Gareth Thomas, has said he will 'track very carefully' a £120m legal claim brought against Vodafone last year by a group of 62 of about 150 franchise operators.
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