Priti Patel

Priti Patel reportedly opposed four plans for affordable homes in her constituency despite the government’s “build, build, build” agenda. According to the Sunday Times the home secretary has lobbied against an application to build the new properties in her constituency of Witham in Essex. The report flies in the face of the Tory party’s “build, […]

Boris Johnson and Priti Patel have been urged to end their “hostility” towards lawyers who defend asylum seekers in a letter signed by more than 800 legal professionals. The letter, published in the Guardian by former and current lawyers, barristers, and UK justices of the Supreme Court, have called on the government to apologise for attacking the legal profession. The […]

The government has pledged £28 million to private companies to return asylum seekers who arrive in the UK without a visa. The Home Office will enlist transport, housing, medical and legal services firms to ensure illegal migrants are “reintegrated” in their home nation, POLITICO has revealed. According the media outlet, the move is part of a […]

A report into allegations of bullying by home secretary Priti Patel may never be released to the public, a top official has suggested. Newly appointed cabinet secretary Simon Case refused to guarantee the findings would be made public, saying that the decision was now in Boris Johnson’s hands. Patel has been the centre of a probe into […]

Labour peer and former child refugee Alf Dubbs has criticised the rhetoric of home secretary Priti Patel. Earlier in the week the former MP, born in Prague in 1932, defeated Patel in the House of Lords with his amendments to the minister’s immigration bill. Speaking to the New Statesman, Dubbs said he despised the atmosphere […]

The past few months have been rocky for Franco-British cooperation on migration, with Priti Patel denouncing Channel crossings and the dire conditions of migrants living in the streets of Calais and other cities in northern France. A ‘Clandestine Channel Commander’, Dan O’Mahoney, has even been given the job of making the crossing route unviable for […]

Priti Patel’s immigration bill has suffered a setback in the House of Lords after peers inflicted a number of defeats on the bill that will end EU freedom-of-movement rules in the UK. The Lords has demanded a series of changes to the Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill, including to ensure continued help for […]

Home secretary Priti Patel has used her conference speech to criticise Black Lives Matter protests, accusing them of “hooliganism and thuggery” on the country’s streets. Social media video clips showed police in Westminster having objects hurled at them by anti-racist campaigners earlier this year, while a statue of Sir Winston Churchill had to be boarded […]

Dominic Cummings is said to be so “obsessed” with migrant Channel crossings that he is pushing No 10 to consider the construction of offshore processing facilities, a Home Office official has claimed. The prime minister’s most senior adviser is reported to be worried about the impact of asylum seekers crossing the English Channel on the opinions […]

Wave machines designed to push refugee dinghies back across the Channel are among a range of measures to have been considered by officials in Priti Patel’s Home Office department. The department has been looking at ways to disrupt refugees attempting to enter the UK by crossing from the French coast in small boats. The Financial […]

The government has refused to rule out using remote islands to process asylum seekers despite saying the plan was too costly. Home secretary Priti Patel reportedly scrapped plans to build an offshore migrant processing centre on the Atlantic islands of Ascension and St Helena after a review found it would be too expensive and logistically […]

Priti Patel has asked officials to explore sending migrants to an isolated island more than 4,000 miles away from Britain for processing. The home secretary allegedly ordered her own staff to look into transferring asylum seekers who arrive in the UK to a centre on the south Atlantic islet of Ascension Island , the FT reports. The […]