Daily Archives: 14 Aug 2023

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14 Aug 2023

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Planning applications validated by EDDC for week beginning 31 July

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14 Aug 2023

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“Carry on Up the Channel” blame game points finger at Tory Dorset Council

Bibby Stockholm barge: Council didn’t tell ministers about migrant barge Legionella for three days

A council has claimed it told the Home Office about Legionella bacteria being found on the UK’s first asylum barge three days before 39 migrants were evacuated, as a blame game over the fiasco broke out.

By Charles Hymas, Home Affairs Editor www.telegraph.co.uk

The debacle saw the asylum seekers housed on the Bibby Stockholm, docked in Portland Port in Dorset, evacuated on Friday, just five days after arriving, when it emerged tests had found traces of Legionella bacteria in the water supply.

The tests were carried out on July 25 by Dorset Council’s environmental health department but the initial results did not come back until last Monday, August 7, after the go ahead had been given to allow migrants onto the barge that day and the first had arrived.

A government source had expressed concern over why it took two days for the council to alert the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), who were only told on Wednesday night.

Dorset Council has revealed it “verbally” told the Home Office on Tuesday. The council said that the findings of Legionella on the barge were mentioned at a meeting late on Tuesday where a junior Home Office official was present with the contractors.

Dorset Council opposed the plans for the barge to house migrants, and planned to take legal action against it before deciding it would be too expensive and was unlikely to succeed.

The discovery of Legionella means it will be several weeks before asylum seekers can be moved back onto the barge from hotels, currently costing the Government £6 million a day to house 51,000 migrants.

The fiasco has prompted senior Tory MPs to accuse the Home Office of “incompetence” and even led to renewed calls for the sprawling department to be broken up by hiving off immigration from its other responsibilities for policing, crime, counter-terrorism and security.

The Telegraph has established the timeline which raises questions over why ministers were kept in the dark for so long and how asylum seekers could have been put at risk.

Dorset Council said it told the barge contractors of the Legionella traces in the tests on August 7 “as the responsible body for the barge, employed by the Home Office”.

It confirmed that it received the preliminary report on the test results that day, but said it was the duty of the barge contractors to operate it safely.

Asked why migrants were allowed onto the barge without the test results, it said: “Dorset Council cannot, and did not, make the decision about whether or not migrants could be placed on the barge.”

It said it had discussed the test results with the barge contractor on August 8, but a second site visit on August 9 led to “concern about control measures” on the barge and it decided to alert the UKHSA.

The agency told The Telegraph that it was not informed by Dorset council until after 5pm on August 9 when it convened a “multi-party incident management meeting” for the morning of August 10, including the Home Office.

Home Office officials, however, failed to alert ministers until the evening of August 10. It was believed a further six asylum seekers boarded the barge that same day.

UKHSA advised the Home Office that no more asylum seekers should be allowed on board, which meant the six on August 10 would have to be removed. However, once alerted, it was believed ministers decided to go further and order all 39 to be evacuated.

Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, was understood to have told the barge’s two contractors that they need to be more transparent in future.

Legionella ‘a common problem’

Industry insiders said that Legionella bacteria was a common problem on vessels. The test results were thought to have only revealed marginal traces.

Legionella can cause serious illnesses among over-50s, smokers and those with underlying health conditions. Death rates from contracting Legionnaires disease are as high as 10 per cent. The bacteria multiply when the temperature of water is between 25C and 50C, or if there is poor or no flow into a water system.

The Home Office said no migrants had fallen sick or developed Legionnaires. The asylum seekers were evacuated by 7pm last Friday night and taken to hotels understood to be a two hours’ drive away.

Ministers intend the Bibby Stockholm to hold 500 migrants, but it has already been delayed by a month owing to a longer than anticipated refit, bad weather and safety checks. 

It is one of three mass accommodation sites to reduce the £6 million a day cost of migrant hotels. The other two are former RAF bases.

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Ex-marine chosen by Labour to stand against Johnny Mercer in Plymouth

A former Royal Marines captain is aiming to neutralise Johnny Mercer’s electoral “trump card” of having a military service record, after being selected by Labour to stand against the veterans minister at the next general election.

Rajeev Syal www.theguardian.com 

Fred Thomas, 31, who spent seven years in the elite commando force, will be attempting to overturn a nearly 13,000 Conservative majority in Plymouth Moor View.

In his first national media interview, Thomas said he had been partly driven to politics by his Tory opponent’s claims to be helping veterans, many of whom are struggling to survive.

“I would love to see Johnny Mercer lose his seat to anyone, even if I hadn’t left the Royal Marines to do this, because he uses veterans as a huge campaigning tool. He just hasn’t delivered.

“Veterans are really struggling with the cost of living crisis and he is part of the government that caused that.

“While I was serving, it was incredibly frustrating, time and time again, to hear someone painting themselves as a great champion for veterans’ rights when this was going on,” he said.

His combative words will set up an intriguing political battle for the seat in south-west Devon, in a city that is home to many veterans and is built around a naval base.

Mercer, 41, a former captain in the Royal Artillery, took the seat from Labour in 2015, and increased his vote share in 2017 and 2019.

Conservative leaflets have sought to highlight Mercer’s 10-year career in the army. He has written a book about his three tours of Afghanistan, in which he referred to his time working with special forces.

Thomas said he hoped that facing an opponent from the armed forces might push the Conservatives and Mercer to talk about their political records instead.

“I am sure he finds me threatening, and I think he will know that his trump card that he has used for the last eight years he has been an MP he no longer can use,” he said.

Thomas, one of five children born to a civil servant and a teacher, was a pupil at the top public school Winchester college before reading religion, politics and ethics at King’s College London.

Thomas learned to read and write Arabic, studied in Egypt shortly after the Arab Spring, and was there while there was a coup against the Muslim Brotherhood.

After signing up to the military, he became the Royal Marines’ light heavyweight boxing champion and was deployed to train in Arctic warfare and worked in nuclear security on Faslane naval base in Scotland.

He also served in combat missions before leaving the corps in February, he said, but remains tightlipped about the details. Asked if he served with special forces, as sources have claimed, Thomas declined to comment.

Thomas said his primary motivation for leaving the corps for politics was because he had “a sense of public service” and realised that the UK’s economic and political institutions were breaking down.

“There was this assumption when we [the Royal Marines] were engaged in international development or international security work that the UK has got the basics sewn up. But increasingly I saw that it was not the case,” he said.

He indicated that the next government should recommit to spending 0.7% on international development. “Whether we like it or not, countries do look to us because we do have experience of driving change in an international sphere,” he said.

The Labour party appears to be quietly elated at having bagged a presentable former senior army officer. One party insider said Thomas was “a younger, better looking and more accomplished version of Mercer”.

Thomas acknowledged that Labour HQ was throwing resources at the seat, because it was precisely the kind that would have to fall if Starmer was to form the next government. “I’ve actually got two Labour party staff video makers with me in Plymouth. We are off the ground,” he said on Thursday.

Thomas said he expected a bruising election campaign, given Mercer’s fondness for public confrontations, often on social media. Shortly after Thomas’ selection as Labour’s candidate, Mercer’s wife, Felicity Cornelius-Mercer, claimed in a tweet that her husband’s war record was more impressive than his new opponent.

“Fred doesn’t compare to JM’s frontline combat,” she wrote.

Thomas said he was prepared for intense scrutiny and criticism in the lead-up to the election. “I get it. It is a Royal Marines captain against an army captain. I understand that as a story. But this is about everyone in our community being served by someone who supports policies that will improve their lives,” Thomas said.

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“Levelling Up” goes down the drain

As part of the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, the government has plans to appoint a toilet commissioner – the so-called Lavatories Tsar – to address the closure of public facilities by councils. The Lavatories Tsar will work with a panel of advisers to come up with a strategic plan to reverse this decline. 

Who needs a strategy? How about reversing Local Authority funding cuts for starters? 

Never see a police officer on the beat? Don’t worry you will soon be able to spot your local Lav Inspector instead!

But this is not all! The Government is gunning to ban Unisex toilets at the same time! – Owl

Lavatories Tsar appointed by government – as plans face ridicule

Adam Forrest www.independent.co.uk

Rishi Sunak’s government has been mocked for introducing a “Lavatories Tsar”, as ministers announced an attempt to crack down on gender-neutral public toilets.

New shops, public buildings and offices will be ordered to have single-sex loos, as the PM and his equalities minister Kemi Badenoch lean into the “culture war” row with transgender rights groups on the issue.

But the latest idea has risked ridicule, being compared with John Major’s “cones hotline” fiasco in the early 1990s, when the then Tory prime minister was mocked for his focus on minor traffic issues during a major economic recession.

Damian McBride, a former adviser to Labour’s Gordon Brown, scoffed at Britain becoming the “first country in the world to appoint a dedicated ‘Lavatories Tsar’,” adding: “I bet you didn’t have that on your Tory summer fightback bingo card.”

James Asser, Labour’s deputy mayor of Newham Council, compared it to Major’s much-mocked initiative, which allowed the public to call and report rogue traffic cones on motorways. “Lavatories Tsar? We’re into Cones Hotline territory now,” he tweeted.

Launching her new crackdown, Ms Badenoch said the rise in gender-neutral toilets had removed the “fundamental right” of women and girls to have “privacy, dignity and safety”.

Trans rights groups have argued that gender-neutral toilets can help combat discrimination since trans people can face difficulties using male or female toilets.

But the Sunak government argues that communal cubicles and hand-washing facilities have led to “dignity and privacy concerns” among women who feel “unfairly disadvantaged”.

Pledging to halt the increase in gender-neutral facilities, the government is changing regulations to specify that all new non-residential buildings must offer separate single-sex toilets for women and men.

Self-contained, private unisex toilets should be provided in new buildings if there is space – but should not be put in at the expense of single-sex toilets.

“It is important that everybody has privacy and dignity when using public facilities,” said Ms Badenoch. “Yet the move towards ‘gender-neutral’ toilets has removed this fundamental right for women and girls.”

Separately, the government has plans to appoint a toilet commissioner – the so-called Lavatories Tsar – to address the closure of public facilities by councils.

Some 10 per cent of council-run public restrooms are thought to have remained shut following the Covid pandemic, while longer-term cuts mean availability has declined by 60 per cent since 2011.

As part of the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, the Lavatories Tsar will work with a panel of advisers to come up with a strategic plan to reverse this decline.

Former government adviser Sam Freedman mocked the Tories for complaining about an “overcentralised state” while having “someone sitting in Whitehall telling councils how many toilets to open”.

The government has previously been accused of using gender-neutral toilets and other trans-related issues to stoke divisions in a “war on wokeism”.

Labour’s Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, told The Independent in June that Rishi Sunak was exploiting the trans debate as a “wedge issue in an ugly culture war”.

The PM was also accused of transphobia after a leaked video saw him mocking Ed Davey for “trying to convince everybody that women clearly had penises”.

The Lib Dem leader accused the PM of treating trans people like a “punchline” after the clip surfaced. But No 10 insisted the joke was at the expense of Mr Davey, not a minority group.

It comes as the government prepares to set out new guidance to schools on trans issues when parliament returns next month.

The delayed document is widely expected to tell headteachers to consult parents if their child talks about a desire to transition socially to a different gender.

[PS Remember Boris Johnson: “…one final ingredient, the most important factor in levelling up, the yeast that lifts the whole mattress of dough, the magic sauce – the ketchup of catch-up and that is leadership and this brings me to the crux of the argument- this country is not only one of the most imbalanced in the developed world, it is also one of the most centralised…..”]