Channel migrants reaching 50,000 under Labour ‘unacceptable' – ex-home secretary
Official figures from Monday suggested 49,797 had crossed in small boats from northern France. However the figure is expected to pass 50,000 when official data is released on Tuesday.
Lady Smith returned to Government last year, having served as home secretary for two years during Gordon Brown's premiership.
'It's a very big challenge,' she told Nick Ferrari on LBC, citing Government action such as 'doubling' asylum cases being determined and 'increased numbers of people being returned overseas'.
Speaking to BBC Breakfast, she added: 'It is an unacceptable number of people. It sort of demonstrates the way over the last six or seven years that the criminal gangs have got an absolute foothold in the tragic trafficking of people across the Channel.'
Before entering Government, Labour had promised to 'smash the gangs' to bring numbers down. The problem had plagued Rishi Sunak's government, which had struck an agreement with Rwanda to send asylums seekers there to have their claims processed.
However it was cancelled under the incoming Labour Government, after only a handful of migrants had gone to the central African country, voluntarily. Ms Cooper claimed the Tories had spent £700 million on it.
The issue has remained a thorn in the Government's side. The 50,000 milestone has been hit earlier under Sir Keir than compared to Mr Sunak. Sky News reported the number would be hit in under 401 days under Labour, if it was reached on Tuesday, compared to 603 under Mr Sunak.
Earlier on Tuesday, Lady Smith told Sky News that Ms Cooper has a tough job to tackle the gangs as she placed responsibility on Mr Sunak and his former ministers.
'I think it's tough because the last government enabled this hideous criminal activity to really get its roots into across Europe,' Lady Smith said.
'There's really important action that's being taken to tackle it, the way in which there's a much stronger focus on getting decisions made more quickly, returning more people who come here and don't have the right to stay, and in the last few months, the new deal that we have with the French, we've already detained people who've come here illegally, they'll be returned directly to France.'
She added: 'There was also a lengthy period, at the time, in which the criminal gangs, the criminal masterminds, the organised crime, who are behind this, had the opportunity to have this operation set up and really embedded, and that's the task that this Government now has, to deconstruct that, to build on the arrests that we've already made of people who are responsible for this, and to cut the numbers.'
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Spectator
24 minutes ago
- Spectator
Ricky Jones and the reality of two-tier justice
This may be looked back on as the week when two-tier justice moved from being an accusation to a statement of incontrovertible fact. The stark difference in treatment of Ricky Jones, the former Labour councillor accused of encouraging violent disorder as he mimed a throat being cut at a protest and Lucy Connolly, the mother who sent a nasty tweet shortly after the Southport massacre, is no conspiracy theory, despite the state's best efforts to pretend it is. To recap, Jones was filmed at an anti-racism rally after the Southport riots calling protestors 'disgusting Nazi fascists', and said 'We need to cut their throats and get rid of them'. Lucy Connolly received a 31-month prison sentence for sending an unpleasant tweet about migrant hotels (which she promptly deleted) saying, 'Set fire to all the f*****g hotels full of the bastards for all I care [emphasis added].' Given the caveat at the end of this sentence, it is debatable that this was a tweet which did much to incite anything. For what it's worth, I don't believe either individual should have been locked up for their speech, but if the state must do so, it needs to be seen as even-handed. This is a profoundly damaging moment, both for the government and for public trust in the judicial system – what little there was to begin with. By way of mitigating circumstances, Jones's defence argued that he may have been affected by ADHD, and suffered from 'emotional arousal' which could 'override deliberate decision-making' (which presumably therefore made it harder to understand the impact of calling for throats to be slit). Lucy Connolly's potential mitigations as the mother of a young daughter, who had previously lost her infant son in tragic circumstances which naturally made her sensitive to the news of murdered children, seem not to have mattered as much. One important difference is that, whereas Lucy Connolly pleaded guilty last summer, Ricky Jones fought his charges in court (defended by a silk from Garden Court chambers). But this only points to a further aspect of two-tier justice; namely, who has the means to fight their case. The privately-paid solicitor will naturally make sure his privately-paying client is aware of all the defences available to him. By contrast, the harried duty solicitor is not exactly best-placed to give considered advice. Either way, I suspect few who hear about these two cases will care very much about distinctions like guilty and not guilty pleas. Most will simply compare the two 'offences' with the respective punishments doled out, and judge for themselves. Crucially, like most of those arrested at the time, Lucy Connolly was denied bail. Facing a potential delay of months inside while awaiting trial, she may have felt that she had no choice but to plead guilty to the charges laid before her. This element of potential coercion was perhaps the starkest example of 'two-tier justice'. Since Jones was granted bail, he had more than a year to prepare his defence after multiple delays to his trial. Two-tier justice exists across multiple realities and manifestations; from the granting of bail to financial disparity – not to mention the fact that activist lawyers are sometimes only too happy to waive fees where they agree with the accused. While dismissing Lucy Connolly's appeal to her sentence in May this year, Lord Justice Holroyde went out of his way to praise her solicitor. 'He struck us as a conscientious defence lawyer with a clear grasp of the relevant law, practice and procedure and a realistic appraisal of the issues in the case.' The fact that Connolly, like other defendants charged with stirring up racial hatred post-Southport, may well have been cleared by a jury had it gone to trial, should surely call into question the advice she received. Lord Justice Holroyde's praise gives the uneasy impression of lawyers looking out for their own. The judiciary obviously cannot control the decisions of the jury that acquitted Mr Jones in a court of law, and nor should it. Yet some of the inevitable backlash we will now see might perhaps have been avoided had Lucy Connolly received greater clemency from the UK state. So long as she remains incarcerated for what appears a manifestly less serious offence, it will be harder than ever to argue that UK justice remains intact. A few weeks ago, Tony Diver at the Telegraph published an extraordinary story, revealing more about the activities of a secretive wing of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, known as the National Security and Online Information Team. Among other things this team monitors social media for evidence of 'narratives' they deem 'concerning', including, it turned out accusations of 'two-tier policing'. As we speak, civil servants will be trawling the internet for evidence of an alleged 'narrative' which now looks increasingly impossible to deny.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Ricky Jones case should not be compared to Lucy Connolly
A jury's decision to clear a suspended Labour councillor of encouraging violent disorder after he called for far-right activists' throats to be cut cannot be compared to the case of Lucy Connolly, lawyers have claimed. Ricky Jones, 58, faced trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court after he described far-right activists as 'disgusting Nazi fascists' in a speech at an anti-racism rally last year, in the wake of the Southport murders. The now-suspended councillor, surrounded by cheering supporters in Walthamstow, east London, on August 7 2024, was filmed stating: 'They are disgusting Nazi fascists. We need to cut all their throats and get rid of them all.' Jurors deliberated for just over half-an-hour and found him not guilty on Friday. This caused Conservative and Reform politicians to brand the decision 'two-tier justice' – with shadow home secretary Chris Philp comparing the case to that of Mrs Connolly, who was jailed for 31 months after she posted a tweet calling for 'mass deportation' of asylum seekers and to 'set fire to all the f****** hotels' on the day of the Southport attacks. Former home secretary and Tory leadership candidate Sir James Cleverly also called the jury's decision to clear Ricky Jones 'perverse' in an X post, adding: 'Perverse decisions like this are adding to the anger that people feel and amplifying the belief that there isn't a dispassionate criminal justice system.' Lawyers have said the cases should not be conflated as Connolly and Jones faced allegations of a different nature – and Jones faced trial where Connolly, having pleaded guilty, did not. Peter Stringfellow, a solicitor at Brett Wilson, told the PA news agency, said: 'Both (Jones and Connolly) said pretty unpleasant things. 'However, I'm afraid the conflation of the two after that is a problem. It comes from people who've got some sort of political agenda, in my view. 'They were facing completely different allegations and a massive part of those different allegations is the racial element. 'If you look at the Connolly case … her intention is of a racial nature.' Connolly pleaded guilty last year to a charge of inciting racial hatred by publishing and distributing 'threatening or abusive' written material on X. On July 29 last year, she posted: 'Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the bastards for all I care … if that makes me racist so be it.' 'She directs everybody to the fact that this was a racial comment,' Mr Stringfellow said. 'She pleads guilty to that intention … she accepted that she had intended to stir racial hatred. 'The Jones case is different because one, he's facing a completely different allegation: he's facing encouraging violent disorder. 'And the difference with him is he's saying: 'That's not what I was intended to do'.' Mr Stringfellow added that, in the case of Connolly, racially aggravated discourse on social media did translate into real-life violence across the country – whereas Mr Jones' comments at a rally did not cause a violent disorder. 'What she (Connolly) did, what followed her comments about threatening to burn people in hotels, is that that's precisely what then happened – and people were attempting to burn people in hotels.' Ernest Aduwa, partner at Stokoe Partnership Solicitors, said comparisons between Jones' and Connolly's cases were 'misplaced'. 'We need to be honest about what is going on here. The verdict in the Ricky Jones case was not political, it was legal,' he said. 'A jury listened to the evidence, tested it and decided unanimously he was not guilty. 'That is not bias or 'two-tier justice' – it is the justice system doing what it is supposed to do: separating facts from noise. 'Comparisons with the Lucy Connolly case are misplaced. 'Lucy Connolly pleaded guilty. There was no trial, no cross-examination, no jury. She admitted the specific offence: stirring up racial hatred online. 'Ricky Jones faced a different charge … with a high burden of proof. 'The jury decided the Crown had not met it. 'That does not mean the protest was not passionate or loud – it means there was not enough evidence to prove intent to incite violence. That distinction matters. 'I understand why emotions run high. But flattening two different situations into one misleading narrative does no favours to justice. 'The fact that a black man at a protest can receive a fair trial and be acquitted should be seen not as an injustice, but as proof the system can still get it right.' He added: 'The law is not perfect, but it must rest on evidence – not opinion, pressure, or politics.'
Daily Mirror
2 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
Nigel Farage slams ‘two-tier' justice system after Labour councillor cleared by jury
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp compared it to the case of Lucy Connolly, the wife of an ex-Tory councillor who pleaded guilty to stirring up racial hatred amid the riots Nigel Farage and top Tories have been condemned after labelling a jury verdict"unacceptable" and 'two tier justice'. It comes after Labour councillor, Ricky Jones, who called for far-right activists' throats to be cut at an anti-racism rally in the wake of the Southport murders was found not guilty of encouraging violent disorder on Friday. Mr Farage questioned the courts, as did the Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp. Shadow Housing Secretary James Cleverly also took to X to slam the verdict, despite it coming from a jury. Reform UK leader Mr Farage said: "This is another outrageous example of two-tier justice." Mr Cleverly said: "Perverse decisions like this are adding to the anger that people feel and amplifying the belief that there isn't a dispassionate criminal justice system." Mr Philp compared it to the case of Lucy Connolly, the wife of an ex-Tory councillor who pleaded guilty to stirring up racial hatred for vile posts amid the riots following the Southport murders. He said: 'It is astonishing that Labour councillor Ricky Jones, who was caught on video calling for throats to be slit, is let off scot free - whereas Lucy Connolly got 31 months prison for posting something no worse. The development of two tier justice is becoming increasingly alarming.' The criticism comes despite Connolly pleading guilty, and a juror finding Mr Jones not guilty. Connolly had posted 'mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the b******* for all I care… if that makes me racist so be it.' The criticism also puts them at odds with the Shadow Justice Secretary MP Robert Jenrick, who said earlier this year that juries were Britain's 'gift to the world '. Responding on X, barrister Joanna Hardy-Susskind said: 'Lucy Connolly pleaded guilty & was sentenced. Ricky Jones pleaded not guilty & was acquitted by a jury. 'That is not two-tier justice. It is legally illiterate to imply one was punished & the other 'let off scot free' - when one of them was quite literally acquitted after trial.' Former Tory cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg also questioned the language used by his former colleagues. He said: "This is self-evidently not an example of two-tier justice as this Councillor was cleared by a jury. Lucy Connolly offered a guilty plea so did not have a jury trial, although she probably could have done had she pleaded not guilty. There was also condemnation from a source in the legal system, who warned 'we must respect the verdict of the jury and it must be right whatever it is'.
