Rishi Sunak’s asylum plans condemned as ‘deeply disturbing’ and against international law – as it happened

The SNP claims that both Labour and the Tories are engaged in a “race to the right” on asylum. This is from Stuart McDonald MP, the SNP’s justice and immigration spokesperson.

Watching both the prime minister and Keir Starmer attempt to outdo one another with intolerant, rightwing rhetoric show’s exactly why Scotland needs independence.

The SNP, and the people of Scotland, want no part in this deplorable race to the right.

Instead of offering a humane and compassionate response to those fleeing war-torn countries or facing persecution, both the Tories and Labour remain hell-bent on playing up to their extreme Brexit and borders-obsessed wings.

That’s all from me for tonight. My colleague Harry Taylor is taking over now.

Opposition parties in Wales have called on the Welsh government to consider raising the rate of income tax to combat the “perfect storm” of financial pressures it is facing.

During a debate on the Labour government’s draft budget, the finance minister Rebecca Evans said the economy and public services were fragile but announced spending plans aimed at protecting the most vulnerable.

Evans said an extra £165m is being allocated for NHS Wales to help protect frontline services and an additional £227m is being provided to local government to help safeguard the services delivered by councils, including schools.

The draft budget also provides an additional £18.8m for the discretionary assistance fund, which provides lifeline emergency cash payments to people facing financial hardship and about £70m will be provided to increase the pay of social care workers.

Evans said:

This is a budget in hard times, which will help to protect frontline public services as far as we can in the face of a perfect storm of financial pressures.

Adam Price, the leader of Plaid Cymru, said:

We believe the Welsh government needs to look at using the income tax powers it has available. We realise this isn’t a cost-free or pain-free option but we are in a time of crisis and we campaigned for those powers so we could avail ourselves of them at times precisely like these.

The leader of the Lib Dems in Wales, Jane Dodds, called on the government to “look at our tax raising powers”, adding: “I would like to see some modelling on how we can look at the upper bands of tax and what that could deliver.”

Mark Drakeford had earlier said the idea of raising taxes “at a time when people cannot buy food and they cannot afford to pay for energy” was “astonishing”.

In the House of Lords, peers have started debating regulations to bring into force the law requiring voters to present photo ID at polling stations. This will apply for the first time at the English local elections next year.

In an unusual move, the Liberal Democrats have tabled as an amendment a fatal motion – one that would block the regulations.

Lady Scott, a communities minister, opened the debate for the government. Despite reports that electoral administrators are concerned about the impact the new law will have on the local elections in May, she said they were preparing to implement the new rules. Asked why the chair of the Local Government Association, who is a Conservative, is calling for the plans to be abandoned, she said she did not know.

She would know if she had read this story. James Jamieson, the LGA chair, said: “We are concerned that there is insufficient time to do this ahead of the May 2023 elections, and for this reason are calling for the introduction of voter ID requirements to be delayed.”

Scott urged peers to reject the Lib Dem motion. She said it was not usual for peers to reject regulations that were implementing legislation already passed by parliament.

But she sounded more conciliatory about another amendment, tabled by Labour. This would not kill the regulations for good (like the Lib Dem one), but it “regrets” the implementation of the new photo ID rules so quickly and calls for a review of the operation of the rules at the local elections, overseen by a new select committee.

Scott said the government was already committed to a review. If Labour agreed not to push its amendment to a vote, she said the government would agree to conclude this by November 2023, and allow an external agency to produce the report.

During her speech Scott was asked why certain types of photo ID were acceptable for older people but not younger people. The i’s Paul Waugh has a good example.

Scott was unable to answer. She just claimed this matter had been addressed when peers debated the bill.

The debate is still going on, but Labour has welcomed the concession from Scott. Scott said an “external research ag agency” would write the review report, and Labour takes this as meaning the review will be properly independent.

Ministers have been accused of writing a “blank cheque” for Boris Johnson’s legal bills, as it emerged taxpayer-funded support was being extended to help defend him against claims he misled parliament over Partygate, my colleague Aubrey Allegretti reports.

One of the bolder claims in Rishi Sunak’s statement was that the government expected to “abolish the backlog of initial asylum decisions by the end of next year”. (See 1.30pm.)

But at afternoon lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson said this pledge only related to claims made before June this year, when the Nationality and Borders Act came into force. There were 92,601 claims in that category, he said.

Asked why Sunak would not commit to reducing the entire backlog, the spokesperson said:

It wouldn’t be right to prioritise more recent claims. It would be right to focus on legacy claims that predate the introduction of the Act

Organisations that campaign on behalf of refugees have strongly condemned the plans announced by Rishi Sunak today.

Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said:

Without safe routes [asylum seekers] have no choice but to take dangerous journeys.

The prime minister failed to set out any concrete plans to expand these routes through a resettlement programme or an expansion in family reunion visas.

Instead this government wants to treat people who come to the UK in search of safety as illegal criminals.

This is deeply disturbing, flies in the face of international law and the UK’s commitment as a signatory of the UN convention on refugees to give a fair hearing to people who come here in search of safety and protection.

Many people from Albania face real danger and persecution – we must not turn our backs on them or any other nationality seeking asylum.

And Sile Reynolds, head of asylum advocacy at Freedom From Torture, said:

The backlog in asylum decision making is an inexcusable administrative failure but instead of taking the opportunity to fast-track grants for clearly well-founded claims to clear the backlog, the prime minister is recycling unethical and unworkable gimmicks.

Fast-tracking refusals and removals based solely on nationality or method of arrival is a dangerous, one-size-fits-all repackaging of a policy that risks breaching our international obligations to protect refugees …

As we know from our work with torture survivors, signs of persecution can often be hidden, complex and difficult to identify.

It is crucial that all claimants receive individualised assessments and are given adequate legal advice and access to appeal to ensure nobody is returned to face torture or even death due to bad decision-making.

Adam Afriyie, the Conservative MP who has been declared bankrupt, says he is standing down at the next election, but will not quit parliament before then.

It is widely assumed that people declared bankrupt cannot serve in parliament. But that only applies when a bankruptcy restrictions order or a debt relief restrictions order is in place, and that does not seem to be the case here.

My colleague Jessica Elgot has the full story.

Amnesty International UK says the PM’s statement shows that “he either doesn’t have a clue or frankly does not care”. In a statement Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty’s refugee and migrants rights director, said:

Sunak speaks of fairness – yet his government has wrecked the UK’s asylum system, doing significant harm to thousands of vulnerable people for no reason other than an attempt to avoid the responsibilities he expects other countries to take.

Fairness means acting on our legal responsibilities, not shamelessly seeking to shirk them. It means respecting people’s rights and recognising their needs, not demonising people to excuse the cruel injustices the government is doing to them.

The announcement today is littered with errors of both law and fact, and if acted upon will make an already disastrous situation created by Sunak’s government’s policies more harmful to people fleeing conflict and persecution while continuing to profit smugglers, traffickers and other abusers.

Instead of scapegoating people seeking asylum, we urgently need the government to completely overhaul its policy, cancel the Rwanda deal, put in place safe routes so fewer desperate people risk their lives and focus on fairly and efficiently deciding the asylum claims the UK receives.

The statement did not specify what Sunak’s “errors” were, but I have asked Amnesty to elaborate, and will post a response when I get one.

UPDATE: See 4.12pm for the Amnesty reply.

Joanna Cherry (SNP) asked if the government was going to derogate from any international treaties to implement these plans. Sunak dodged the question. But Sir Edward Leigh (Con) has just said Cherry was right. He says the UK might have to derogate from the refugee convention. Will the UK do that?

Again, Sunak sidesteps the question. He just says he wants to see people removed who arrive in the UK illegally.

And this is what Rishi Sunak told MPs about the new agreement with Albania, and the new process for dealing with asylum claims from Albanians. He said:

A third of all those arriving in small boats this year – almost 13,000 – are Albanian.

And yet Albania is a safe, prosperous European country.

It is deemed safe for returns by Germany, France, Italy, Sweden.

It is an EU accession country, a Nato ally and a member of the same treaty against trafficking as the United Kingdom.

The prime minister of Albania has himself said there is no reason why we cannot return Albanian asylum seekers immediately.

Last year Germany, France, Sweden all rejected almost 100% of Albanian asylum claims. Yet our rejection rate is just 45%.

That must not continue. So today I can announce a new agreement with Albania - and a new approach.

First, we will embed Border Force officers in Tirana airport for the first time ever, helping to disrupt organised crime and stop people coming here illegally.

Second, we will issue new guidance for our case workers and make it crystal clear that Albania is a safe country.

Third, one of the reasons we struggle to remove people is because they unfairly exploit our modern slavery system.

So we will significantly raise the threshold someone has to meet to be considered a modern slave.

For the first time, we will actually require a case worker to have objective evidence of modern slavery rather than just a suspicion.

Fourth, we have sought and received formal assurances from Albania confirming they will protect genuine victims and people at risk of re-trafficking, allowing us to detain and return people to Albania with confidence and in line with ECAT [European Communities against Trafficking].

As a result of these changes, the vast majority of claims from Albanians can simply be declared “clearly unfounded”.

And those individuals can be swiftly returned.

Lastly, we will change how we process Albanian illegal migrants, with a new dedicated unit expediting cases within weeks, staffed by 400 new specialists.

Over the coming months, thousands of Albanians will be returned home.

And we’ll keep going with weekly flights until all the Albanians in our backlog have been removed.

This is what Rishi Sunak said about the five measures being implemented without legislation to reduce small boat numbers.

• Sunak announced the creation of a new small boats operational command. He said:

Our policing of the channel has been too fragmented, with different people, doing different things, being pulled in different directions.

So we will establish a new, permanent, unified Small Boats Operational Command.

This will bring together our military, our civilian capabilities, and the National Crime Agency.

It will coordinate our intelligence, interception, processing, and enforcement.

And use all available technology, including drones for reconnaissance and surveillance, to pick people up and identify and then prosecute more gang-led boat pilots.

We’re adding more than 700 new staff and also doubling the funding given to the NCA for tackling organised immigration crime in Europe.

• He said the number of immigration raids will increase.

These extra resources will free up immigration officers to go back to enforcement which, will in turn, will allow us to increase raids on illegal working by 50%.

And it’s frankly absurd that today illegal migrants can get bank accounts which help them live and work here. So we will re-start data sharing to stop this.

• He said the government would stop housing asylum seekers in hotels.

It’s unfair and appalling that we are spending £5.5 million every day on using hotels to house asylum seekers.

We must end this.

So, we will shortly bring forward a range of alternative sites such as disused holiday parks, former student halls, and surplus military sites.

We have already identified locations that could accommodate 10,000 people and are in active discussions to secure these and many more.

Our aim is to add thousands of places through this type of accommodation in the coming months - at half the cost of hotels.

At the same time, as we consulted on over the summe, the cheapest and fairest way to solve this problem is for all local authorities to take their fair share of asylum seekers in the private rental sector.

And we will work to achieve this as quickly as possible.

• He said the processing of asylym claims would be speeded up, with the intention of getting rid of the backlog by the end of next year.

We need to process claims in days or weeks, not months or years.

So we will double the number of asylum caseworkers.

And we are radically re-engineering the end-to-end process with shorter guidance, fewer interviews, less paperwork and introducing specialist case workers by nationality.

We will also remove the gold plating in our modern slavery system, including by reducing the cooling off period from 45 to 30 days - the legal minimum set out in the ECAT Treaty.

As a result of all these changes, we will triple the productivity of our case workers, and we expect to abolish the backlog of initial asylum decisions by the end of next year.

• And he said a new agreement with Albania could lead to the “vast majority” of asylum claims from Albania being refused.

As a result of these changes, the vast majority of claims from Albanians can simply be declared “clearly unfounded”.

And those individuals can be swiftly returned.

I will post more on the details of this agreement in a moment.

Rishi Sunak’s statement is not yet available on the No 10 website, but a text has been sent out to journalists and it is worth publishing large sections of it because of the importance of the details.

The statement contained three sections on policy: a list of five measures that will be implemented quickly; details of an agreement with Albania, and a new process for dealing with asylum claims from Albania; and – most controversially – plans for a new law next year to ban people arriving in the UK illegally from ever claiming asylum here.

This is what Sunak said about the proposed new law.

Early next year we will introduce new legislation to make unambiguously clear that if you enter the UK illegally you should not be able to remain here.

Instead, you will be detained and swiftly returned either to your home country or to a safe country where your claim for asylum will be considered.

And you will no longer be able to frustrate removal attempts with late or spurious claims or appeals.

And once removed you should have no right to re-entry, settlement, or citizenship.

And furthermore, if our reforms on Albania are challenged in the courts, we will also put them on a statutory footing to ensure the UK’s treatment of Albanian arrivals is no different from that of Germany or France.

The only way to come to the UK for asylum will be through safe and legal routes.

And as we get a grip of illegal migration, we will create more of those routes.

We will work with the UNHCR to identify those most in need so the UK remains a safe haven for the most vulnerable.

And we will introduce an annual quota on numbers set by parliament, in consultation with local authorities to determine our capacity, and amendable in the face of humanitarian emergencies.

Theresa May, the former Tory PM, says people smuggling and human trafficking are distinct and different crimes, and should not be treated as the same.

And she says modern slavery is a genuine problem. She says nothing should be done to weaken protection for victims of modern slavery.

She is not criticising the plans directly, but she implies that his plans would undermine the legal protection for victims of modern slavery (that she put in place as home secretary).

Sunak says he will not do anything to weaken support for victims of modern slavery.

UPDATE: May said:

Does (the prime minister) agree with me that in dealing with asylum claims, the onus must be on the Home Office to improve its processing?

That contrary to what is said by some commentators, and sadly some members of this House, people-smuggling and human-trafficking are distinct and separate crimes and should not be treated or spoken of as one and that modern slavery is a very real and current threat with too many people brought to this country in to slavery and that we must do nothing to diminish our world-leading protections for the victims of this terrible horrific crime?

Sunak says almost a third of asylum seekers are from Albania.

But it is a safe and prosperous country, he claims.

He says people will only be able to claim to be victims of modern slavery if there is evidence of this, not just a suspicion of this.

He says this, and other changes, should lead to “the vast majority” of claims from Albania being declared unfounded. People will then be returned quickly.

And he says he wants to ensure all Albanians in the backlog are quickly removed.

He says the government is also committed to starting flights to Rwanda, to send asylum seekers there (under the plan announced when Boris Johnson was PM).

Sunak says he will increase the number of officials dealing with claims. He says by the end of next year he expects to abolish the backlog of claims.

Sunak says he and the home secretary have studied the problem in detail. They will set out five new steps.

First, there will be a new, unified small boats command.

The current system is too fragmented, he says.

He says he wants to use new technology to identify boats. And he wants to prosecute more small boat pilots.

Rishi Sunak says there is a complex moral dimension to this problem.

He says there is a need to help those in need, but also a need to have control of our borders.

He says he wants to start by looking at what is unfair.

He says it is unfair if people can exploit the situation.

It is unfair on those with a genuine case for asylum when our capacity to help is taken up by people coming through and from countries that are perfectly safe.

It is unfair on those who migrate here legally when others come here by cheating the system.

And above all, it is unfair on the British people who play by the rules, when others come here illegally and benefit from breaking those rules.

Rishi Sunak is about to give MPs a statement on tackling illegal immigration. He is expected to announce plans to fast-track the removal of asylum seekers from countries deemed safe like Albania.

Many experts object to describing people crossing the Channel in small boats as illegal immigrants, because often they subsequently do get granted asylum, but “illegal immigration” is the term No 10 is using to describe the subject of the statement.

The Nationality and Borders Act passed this year specifically made it an offence to arrive in the UK knowingly without the right documents. But, as the BBC reported yesterday, very few people have been prosecuted under this new law.

Children’s recovery from the pandemic is being held back by a workforce crisis in schools, colleges and early years, with children who have special education needs among those worst affected, according to England’s schools inspectorate, Ofsted.

Ofsted has made the claim in its annual report out this morning. Here is my colleage Sally Weale’s story.

At a media briefing on the report, Amanda Spielman, the Ofsted chief inspector, said school attendance was “running persistently somewhat lower than pre-pandemic, over and above anything that could be attributed to illness”. She suggested some parents had “lost sight” of the importance of keeping their children in school. She said:

I think this is a deep and concerning problem. For many years, I think there’s been a very clear social contract.

On the one side, the clear expectation is that parents should get their children to school every day, unless the child is too ill to go to school. And in return schools will do everything they can to give the child a good education and to prepare them really well for their futures, for their adult life.

The pandemic disruption, and the expectation that children should be kept at home, broke that. So for significant periods children were educated as best they could be remotely. And that broke down that structure, that routine of getting children up and to school every day.

We know how many children didn’t take up the places that were available (to attend school during lockdowns) for disadvantaged children, for example. And coming back post-pandemic, for a minority of families they’ve just sort of lost sight of the importance of that consistency of getting children to school every day – that it’s not an optional thing. It’s not a ‘when you feel like it, and not when you don’t’.

Schools can’t be expected to provide education remotely if the parent feels that they would prefer to keep the child at home more of the time.

A rail workers’ union has announced a fresh strike over pay, jobs and conditions, PA Media reports. PA says:

Members of the Transport Salaried Staffs Association at CrossCountry will strike on Boxing Day and 27 December.

TSSA is demanding a guarantee of no compulsory redundancies, no unagreed changes to terms and conditions, and a pay increase which addresses the rising cost of living.

The union said it believes the strikes will severely affect services at CrossCountry, which covers large swathes of the country, from Penzance in Cornwall, to the Midlands, Wales, and northern England through to Scottish cities as far north as Aberdeen.

The action replaces a strike at CrossCountry by TSSA on 17 December, which has now been cancelled.

The Conservative MP Adam Afriyie has been made bankrupt after a judge in a specialist court heard how he owed around £1.7m, PA Media reports. A bankruptcy order was made against Afriyie, who represents Windsor, at an online hearing in the insolvency and companies court today by judge Nicholas Briggs.

This story, by my colleagues Heather Stewart and Rowena Mason last year, explains the background to this case.

In its annual report, the migration advisory committee, an official government advisory body, says it is “bewildered” that the government is not doing more to tackle the problem of low pay in the care sector. It says care workers should be paid a legal minimum at least £1 an hour above the “national living wage” (currently £9.50 an hour). It says:

We completed our enquiry into the impact of the ending of freedom of movement on the adult social care sector in April and submitted the report to government and parliament. We recommended that care workers continue to be eligible to apply for a health and care worker visa and made some additional recommendations for changes to the immigration system to ease the burden on social care employers and migrants.

However, our main recommendation was that a minimum rate of pay should be established for care workers at a premium to the statutory minimum wage where care is being provided with public funds. We suggested that this should initially be set at £1 per hour above the national living wage but expected a more substantial premium to be needed to properly address the crisis in social care recruitment and retention.

It is deeply disappointing that the government have still not responded to our report. We note that the governments of Scotland and Wales are taking clear action to address low pay in the sector and are bewildered by the lack of urgency exhibited by the Department of Health and Social Care.

Jonathan Portes, an economics professor and a specialist on immigration, highlights this and other interesting aspects in the report in a good Twitter thread starting here.

Another opinion poll has put support for Scottish independence clearly in the lead, with yes outstripping no by five points, in the wake of the supreme court ruling that Holyrood does not have the power to stage a referendum.

The YouGov poll for the Times puts the yes vote at 47% and no at 42%, with “don’t knows” or “would not vote” at 8%. In October, YouGov had put yes at 43% and no at 45%.

Once “don’t knows” are excluded, the new polls translates into a six-point lead for yes on 53% with no on 47% this month.

This is the fourth successive poll putting yes in the lead since last month’s court ruling, and once “don’t knows” are excluded, brings support for independence close to the highs last seen in late 2020 when Nicola Sturgeon was leading Scotland’s battle against Covid.

While the none of those polls yet show an overall yes majority if don’t knows or reluctant voters are included, the mood has again shifted – nearly all the previous polls since spring 2021 had given a consistent lead to no.

It shows that independence remains firmly embedded as an option for around half of Scotland’s voters. The four polls also imply that Labour’s attempts to seize the constitutional initiative with Keir Starmer’s pledge last week to replace the House of Lords with an elected second chamber for the nations and regions, and empower Holyrood, has failed to impress voters.

However, YouGov’s results bring warnings for Sturgeon: 52% of YouGov’s respondents disliked her claim that the next general election should be a single-issue de facto referendum on independence. Only 39% agreed with Sturgeon that a majority of votes for the SNP would be a mandate to negotiate independence. YouGov also put SNP support at 43%, down two points on October – well short of that golden 50% threshold.

While 51% of voters supported a referendum in the next five years, only 38% supported her referendum target date of October next year. That finding has been consistently recorded by pollsters over the last few years: a modest majority of Scots support a referendum, just not now.

About 4 million mortgage borrowers are set to see their monthly payments jump by the end of the next year as the risk of households defaulting on debt has risen, the Bank of England has warned. In a summary of its financial policy committee report, it says:

Pressures on household finances will increase over 2023. In total around half of owner-occupier mortgages (around 4 million) will be exposed to rate rises over the next year.

Falling real incomes, increases in mortgage costs and higher unemployment will place significant pressure on household finances.

The share of households with high cost of living adjusted mortgage debt-servicing ratios would increase over 2023 to 2.4%, assuming current market pricing of Bank rate, but remain lower than in the global financial crisis (GFC).

Households are also experiencing increased pressure on their ability to service other types of consumer debt, such as credit cards and personal loans.

The report says that people who have fixed-rate mortgage expiring by the end of 2023 are likely to have to pay around £250 more per month when they renew their mortgage on a new rate. For an average household, this will mean monthly payments rising from £750 to £1,000, it says. It goes on:

That equates to around 17% of their average pre-tax income, up from 12% at the end of June 2022. Some mortgagors also have very low levels of savings, which means these households will only have a limited cushion against further shocks to their real incomes. Within the mortgagor population, those adversely affected by rate rises are typically younger, have lower incomes, and are the most leveraged.

In total, around half of owner-occupier mortgages (around four million) will be exposed to rate rises over the next year. This number includes those on variable rates, and those coming to the end of fixed-rate products during this period. Around a third of mortgagors, or 2.7 million households, are expected to face increases in monthly repayments of over £100 by end-2023, and around half by end-2025.

Rishi Sunak has been warned by the migration advisory committee to avoid focusing on reducing the numbers of people coming into the UK amid a national staffing shortage in key industries, my colleague Rajeev Syal reports.

Rishi Sunak will give a statement to MPs today about tackling illegal immigration, sources are telling journalists. This will be the announcement previewed in the Times. (See 9.28am.)

Here are the main lines from Mick Lynch’s morning interview round.

• Lynch, the RMT general secretary, insisted his union was not opposed to reform of working practices on the rail network. “We’re not opposed to change, we deal with it all of the time,” he told BBC Breakfast. But he said there had to be “negotiated change, not imposition”.

• He said that the rail dispute was costing the government £320m, and that the train operating companies had no incentive to settle because the Treasury paid their costs. He told PA Media:

The government is prepared to take so far a loss of maybe 320 million quid so that they can subsidise this dispute, so the incentive is not with the train-operating companies to settle this because they’ve been instructed not to settle by the government.

The RMT frequently complains that the rail companies have no incentive to settle the dispute under their current financing structure. Ed Conway, Sky’s economics editor, explained this well in a Sunday Times column at the weekend.

The RMT union is supposedly negotiating pay and conditions with the Rail Delivery Group, which represents the train operating companies. It might have made sense to have these two parties facing each other over the table a couple of years ago, when the franchise operators had a say in these things. Back then, it was up to them to absorb the cost of raising pay, and any days lost to strikes would take a slice out of their profits.

These days, however, the franchise system has been replaced with “passenger operating contracts”, which is a slightly long-winded way of saying “nationalisation”, since Whitehall ultimately decides on almost everything and takes the financial hit. “We can’t fart without permission,” as one senior rail operator put it.

The upshot is that the companies running the trains have less incentive to improve their service, and little punishment when things go wrong. They don’t really suffer when there is a strike, so why are they doing the negotiation?

• Lynch apologised to members of the public for the disruption caused. He told PA Media:

We don’t like disrupting the public and we apologise for the disruption that’s being caused. I believe we could have worked towards a settlement a couple of weeks ago until that was undermined by the stance that certain people have taken.

• He refused to accept that the result of the ballot of RMT members in Network Rail, who yesterday rejected the pay offer by 64%, was disappointing. A previous majority against settling was higher. But Lynch said:

Two-thirds were not willing to accept it in a very straightforward democratic vote on a very high turnout.

And the company Network Rail put on a big effort. They sent all their managers out into the depots and stations, they made special films, they put a lot of comms together to try and get our members to accept it, and our members have resisted that very strongly.

There’s always going to be a constituency of people that want to settle at the first go, but they’ve also shown through a strike mandate ballot that we had a couple of weeks ago, or three or four weeks ago and this latest referendum, that they’re prepared to stick behind the dispute to get a settlement that they can support.

• He said that there was still time to settle the dispute before Christmas. He said:

We’ve still got plenty of time before the Christmas Eve strikes if [Network Rail chief executive] Andrew Haines and the train operating companies, Huw Merriman the rail minister, and Mark Harper the secretary of state, want to come to me with a set of serious proposals to improve their offer so that we can get a settlement to the dispute, we’ll come over and see them as soon as possible.

They’ve already invited me to a set of talks and we’ll attend those to try and get a settlement to this dispute. And when our members decide that they want to accept it, that’s when the dispute will be finished.

• Lynch accused the Today presenter, Mishal Husain, of repeating rightwing propaganda when she asked him how much his members were losing in pay from the strike action. In response, he told her:

That depends on what shifts they were working, what rate of pay they earn and how many occasions they have to go out.

What I do find annoying though, Mishal, is that you put these lines that are directly taken from the propaganda of the other side. You never show any admiration for the fight that working people are putting up in this country for the rebalancing of our society.

You never criticise the super-rich for what they’re doing to nurses, what they’re doing to postal workers, and you never seem to take an impartial view on the way this society is balanced at the moment with the complete lack of distribution of wealth in our society.

You always just seem to punt out anything you receive from the employers and from the government, and that’s what I’m hearing directly through the filter of the BBC this morning.

On ITV’s Good Morning Britain Lynch also had a spat with the presenter Richard Madeley. He told Madeley:

We’re not targeting Christmas, it isn’t Christmas yet, Richard, I don’t know when your Christmas starts but mine starts on Christmas Eve.

When Madeley told him commercial Christmas starts in December, Lynch replied: “Richard, why don’t you just interview yourself?”

This morning Mark Harper, the transport secretary, and Mick Lynch, the RMT general secretary, have both been giving interviews. Their claims have been well rehearsed – this is a dispute that has been running for months, after all – but as it reaches the point where passengers are going to be inconvenienced more than ever before, the competition for public support becomes more intense.

In an interview with Times Radio, Harper claimed public opinion was turning against the RMT. Referring to the outcome of a ballot of its Network Rail members announced yesterday, Harper claimed:

[The RMT] have had a fair and reasonable offer, which has been accepted by Unite staff at Network Rail, the TSSA are recommending acceptance of that offer, it’s just the RMT that are recommending that it be refused. But even with them recommending refusal, almost 40% of their staff actually voted in favour of it. So I think the tide is turning on public opinion.

But the evidence for Harper’s claim is limited. Recently YouGov published polling suggesting a plurarity of voters are opposed to the strikes.

In the summer a separate Ipsos poll found the public split 50/50 (or 35% to 35%, to be precise) on whether they supported the rail strikes, and the difference between the two sets of results might back Harper’s case. But, even on the latest YouGov numbers, support for the RMT is high by historical standards, and support for rail workers being allowed to strike has actually gone up over the last three years, a YouGov tracker says.

In his interviews this morning Lynch said his union still did have public support.

Good morning. The first of four 48-hour national RMT rail strikes, set to paralyse the network of the holiday period, has started. Given the impact that these strikes will have on non-strike days, and other closures planned over Christmas, one estimate says rail services won’t return to normal for a month.

Here is my colleague Julia Kollewe’s story about the situation travellers this morning.

And here is Jasper Jolly’s business blog, which is covering this in more detail.

Cabinet is meeting this morning. Politics is dominated by the strikes, but the Times is reporting that Rishi Sunak could announce his latest plan to reduce the number of small boat crossings as early as today. In their story Matt Dathan and Stephen Swinford say:

The prime minister is expected to announce the first tranche of his strategy to deal with illegal immigration on Tuesday amid warnings from Tory backbenchers that the party will face defeat at the next election if it fails to resolve the issue. The announcement is expected to include a fast-track process for assessing claims from a list of “safe” countries such as Albania.

Sunak is set to announce that all asylum claims from countries on a Home Office “white list” will be automatically rejected unless the individual can provide evidence that their claim has merit, proposals that were first revealed by The Times earlier this month.

Government sources said there were plans to merge the assessment process for asylum and modern slavery claims, as part of efforts to stop failed asylum seekers “gaming” the system by claiming to be victims of modern slavery at the last minute to avoid deportation.

Sunak desperately needs something that will win his government some credit with the voters, given all the other problems he faces, although whether this will do the trick remains to be seen. Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, has already her announced her own plans to fast-track asylum applications from countries like Albania, and that will make it harder for Sunak to argue the Tories are doing something distinctive.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Rishi Sunak chairs cabinet.

10am: Ofsted publishes its annual report.

11.30am: James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

After 12.30pm: MPs debate the remaining stages of the levelling up bill.

12.45pm: Tom Tugendhat, the security minister, gives a speech to the Policy Exchange thinktank on defending democracy. The annual report from parliament’s intelligence and security committee is also due to be published at some point today.

2pm: Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, does a phone-in on LBC.

2.30pm: Grant Shapps, the business secretary, gives evidence to the Commons business committee.

Afternoon: Peers vote on a Lib Dem motion that would block regulations introducing voter ID for elections.

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