MPs

SIR Keir Starmer is under huge pressure to take a tougher line on immigration — as even his own MPs reckon his asylum shake-up is not enough.

The Prime Minister has been warned he will lose the next election unless the Government gets a grip on the Channel crisis — with one backbencher calling for a “national emergency” to shut down most asylum claims.

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It came as Nigel Farage cranked things up with a blueprint that pledges a mass deportation blitz within 30 days of arrival at No10.

Last week, Home Office figures revealed that a record number of people have claimed asylum in the UK since Labour came to power.

Just over 111,000 made claims in the year to June — with 32,000 migrants currently living in taxpayer-funded hotels.

Even yesterday, migrants continued to board dinghies off the coast of France to attempt the dangerous Channel crossing.

Reform UK leader Mr Farage is today due to unveil plans to arrest all illegal arrivals on entry, detain them on disused military bases and deport them within a month.

Under the blueprint, the UK would leave the European Convention on Human Rights and scrap the Human Rights Act, replacing it with a new British Bill of Rights.

The hardline stance will be pitched directly against the package unveiled by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper at the weekend.

Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice said: “The Reform plan will defeat the lawyers using human rights laws to stop deportations.

“Labour’s plans will still allow the lawyers to use the ECHR and human rights to stop removals.”

Ms Cooper promised to scrap the tribunal system and replace it with panels of “professionally trained adjudicators” to fast-track appeals and reduce the backlog of 51,000 cases, which each take an average of more than a year.

She insisted the “broken” process was leaving thousands of people in the system for years on end and vowed to substantially reduce the numbers in asylum hotels.

It comes after the High Court granted a temporary injunction that will force the Home Office to relocate around 138 male asylum seekers from a hotel in Epping, Essex, in a matter of days.

Labour backbencher Jonathan Brash told The Sun yesterday: “The British people expect our borders to be secure and they are rightly angry at the situation on our south coast.

“If the Government’s current measures don’t end the boat crossings, then we must go further and faster, including declaring a national emergency if necessary and closing our country to all asylum claims except for unaccompanied children.

“The message must be crystal clear — if you cross the Channel illegally, you will be detained and returned immediately. No loopholes, no delays, no excuses.”

Veteran Labour MP Graham Stringer echoed his comments, saying: “We need to persuade people who are coming here in the belief they will be allowed to stay and get priority in terms of housing and healthcare, that this won’t be the case.

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“And if that means withdrawing from international treaties, then so be it.” He also warned: “It will be very difficult to win the next election if we don’t solve the problem of illegal immigrants being given the right to stay.

We need to make it far more difficult for asylum seekers to want to come to this country

Jo White, leader of Labour’s Red Wall Caucus

“We need a more fundamental look at how to tackle illegal migration than the Government is currently pursuing.”

Jo White, leader of Labour’s Red Wall Caucus, also urged tougher action, saying: “I want Yvette Cooper to look at every possible solution — and there are many more than just looking at how fast the appeal system is working.

“We need to make it far more difficult for asylum seekers to want to come to this country.”

She went on: “I firmly believe that if we don’t sort it, then Labour are under threat at the next election.

“So I want this Government to look at every solution possible. And I’m very, very keen that Britain does take a look at what (Denmark) is doing.”

Denmark has pursued some of the toughest asylum policies in Europe, including plans to process claims in third countries, tighter rules on residency and benefits, and measures aimed at discouraging new arrivals.

A group of Liberal Democrat MPs have asked the culture secretary Lisa Nandy to intervene over Uefa’s “disgraceful” decision to demote Crystal Palace from the Europa League for breaching its multi-club ownership rules.

The seven politicians from London – including party leader Sir Ed Davey – wrote to express “deep concern” over what they called “a highly unusual and severe punishment on the club that raises serious questions about fairness and transparency in the governance of English football”.

The Eagles, who qualified for the Europa League by winning the FA Cup – their first major trophy – in May, were demoted to the lower tier Conference League on Friday.

The rules of European football’s governing body state that clubs owned, to a certain threshold of influence, by the same person or entity cannot compete in the same European competition.

American businessman John Textor owns a stake in Palace and is the majority owner of French club Lyon, who have also qualified for the Europa League.

Uefa’s rules set a deadline of 1 March 2025 to show proof of multi-club ownership restructuring – a deadline which Palace missed.

In a letter seen by BBC Sport, the group of Lib Dems described the saga as “heart-breaking for fans”.

“Other clubs seem to go through much more protracted disputes with less severe outcomes,” they said.

“Many believe that this process has been opaque and disproportionately punitive [and] risks undermining not only the club’s achievement but also public confidence in the fairness of football governance.”

More than 100 Labour MPs are supporting a fresh effort to block the government’s planned changes to the benefits system.

The MPs have signed an amendment that would give them an opportunity to vote on a proposal to reject the welfare reform bill in its entirety.

Dozens of Labour MPs have expressed concerns about the plans to cut disability and sickness-related benefits payments to save £5bn a year by 2030.

Ministers have attempted to soften the impact of the welfare changes, but many Labour MPs remain discontented with the package of benefits reforms.

The welfare reform bill – called the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill – will include proposals to make it harder for disabled people with less severe conditions to claim personal independence payment (Pip).

The amendment, published on the UK Parliament website, notes “the need for the reform of the social security system” before outlining reasons why the bill should be rejected.

The reasons it lists for thwarting the bill include the number of people the plans are expected to push into relative poverty, a lack of consultation, and an inadequate impact assessment on the consequences on the jobs market and on people’s health.

It is known as a reasoned amendment, which is a parliamentary mechanism which allows MPs to record their reasons for objecting to a bill.

If the reasoned amendment is selected by House Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle, and the majority of MPs vote in favour of it, the bill will not be allowed to continue its passage through Parliament.

While the success of the amendment is not assured, the level of support for it among Labour MPs indicates the extent of the potential rebellion facing ministers.

The Labour MPs who have signed the amendment include 10 Labour select committee chairs.

These are Tan Dhesi, Helen Hayes, Florence Eshalomi, Patricia Ferguson, Ruth Cadbury, Dame Meg Hillier, Ruth Jones, Sarah Owen, Debbie Abrahams and Cat Smith.

This number of Labour opponents to the government’s welfare plans could be enough to inflict defeat on Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in the House of Commons, were all the opposition parties to oppose the plans too.

The government has a working majority of 165 in the Commons, meaning that 83 Labour MPs would need to oppose the bill to force a parliamentary defeat.

Earlier, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said she did not want to alert Labour to her plans before the welfare reform bill was voted on.

A senior Conservative source said the shadow cabinet would be discussing whether to help the government vote through the welfare reforms when they meet on Tuesday morning.

It is thought about half the amendment’s signatories so far are from the new intake of Labour MPs – those elected at the general election last year.

The vote on the government’s bill is currently due to take place a week tomorrow – on Tuesday 1 July.

In a meeting of Labour MPs on Monday evening, Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall defended the welfare reforms, arguing greater spending on benefits alone was “no route to social justice”.

“The path to fairer society – one where everyone thrives, where people who can work get the support they need, and where we protect those who cannot – that is the path we seek to build with our reforms,” Kendall said.

“Our plans are rooted in fairness – for those who need support and for taxpayers.

“They are about ensuring the welfare state survives, so there is always a safety net for those who need it.”

One of the main co-ordinators behind the amendment, who did not wish to be named, told the BBC the government’s U-turn on cutting winter fuel payments for pensioners “demonstrates that they are susceptible to pressure”.

They said the decision emboldened many of those who have signed the amendment, saying MPs “all voted for winter fuel [cuts] and have taken so much grief in our constituencies, so colleagues think why should I take that on again?”.

It is understood that plans for the amendment began when the government offered a partial olive branch, by expanding the transition period for anyone losing the personal independence payment.

The same MP who has been helping to co-ordinate the amendment said the offering by the government earlier this month was “pathetic” and “angered people even more”.

They said direct phone calls from Sir Keir and Chancellor Rachel Reeves that were supposed to placate would-be rebels had instead “been entrenching people” to vote against the bill.

They accused Number 10 of thinking MPs can be “bullied into voting with them” and said the aim of the amendment was to “send the government back to the drawing board” by forcing them to withdraw next week’s vote.

The welfare package as a whole could push an extra 250,000 people, including 50,000 children, into relative poverty, according to the government’s impact assessment.

The Department for Work and Pensions says it expects 3.2 million families – a mixture of current and future recipients – to lose out financially, as a result of the total package of measures, with an average loss of £1,720 per year.

This includes 370,000 current Pip recipients who will no longer qualify and 430,000 future claimants who will get less than they would previously have been entitled to.

But ministers have stressed the figures do not factor in the government’s plans to spend £1bn on helping the long-term sick and disabled back into work, or its efforts to reduce poverty.

Ministers hope these efforts will boost employment among benefits recipients, at a time when 2.8 million people are economically inactive due to long-term sickness.

If nothing changes, the health and disability benefits bill is forecast to reach £70bn a year by the end of the decade, a level of spending the government says is “unsustainable”.

The government is planning to put the welfare reforms in place by November 2026 and no one will lose out on benefits payments until that happens.

Cameron told ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan that applying for arrest warrants for Israeli officials would be like ‘dropping hydrogen bomb’, media report says.

Several United Kingdom lawmakers have criticised the previous government over allegations in a recent media report that former Foreign Secretary David Cameron “privately threatened” to defund and withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) over its plans to issue arrest warrants for Israeli officials over alleged war crimes in Gaza.

The report, published on Monday by the UK-based outlet Middle East Eye (MEE), cited sources with knowledge of a phone call Cameron allegedly made to ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan on April 23, 2024, after he had given advance notice of his intention to apply for the warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

MEE’s report cited unnamed sources, including former staff in Khan’s office, and had seen minutes of the conversation, claiming that Cameron warned the arrest warrants, which were issued in November that year, would be – in quotes reported by the sources – tantamount to “dropping a hydrogen bomb”, warning that if the ICC went ahead, the UK would “defund the court and withdraw from the Rome Statute”.

Khan reportedly stood his ground, with sources telling MEE that he said afterwards that he did not like “being pressurised”. “I won’t say if it rises to blackmail – I don’t like being threatened,” he reportedly said, adding that the government was “debasing” the UK with its clear attack on the independence of the court and the rule of international law.

Neither Khan nor Cameron, who was prime minister between 2010 and 2016, and now sits in the House of Lords as a life peer, has commented on the report.

Following the report’s publication, Labour Party MP Zarah Sultana said on X that Cameron “and every UK minister complicit in arming and enabling Israel’s genocide in Gaza” should be investigated.

David Cameron — and every UK minister complicit in arming and enabling Israel’s genocide in Gaza — must be investigated for war crimes. https://t.co/YYcsmFg1BN

— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) June 9, 2025

Scottish National Party MP Chris Law said the allegations were “shocking”, but added the country was “not seeing much better under Labour”.

Shocking that the UK Tory govt tried to undermine the International Criminal Court for investigating those responsible for war crimes in Gaza. However not seeing much better under Labour #GazaGenocide‌ https://t.co/Wd3nK9UkhV

— Chris Law MP (@ChrisLawSNP) June 9, 2025

Bell Ribeiro-Addy, a Labour MP, called for an “independent inquiry into the UK’s role in the Gaza genocide”.

Concerning new allegations, which suggest the last foreign secretary tried to shield Israeli leaders from facing justice for war crimes.

We need an independent inquiry into the UK’s role in the Gaza genocide.https://t.co/JROBHyqtDo

— Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP (@BellRibeiroAddy) June 9, 2025

Zack Polanski, the deputy leader of the Green Party, was cited by MEE as saying: “It’s been clear for all to see that both the former and current government have stood with the oppressors, not the marginalised.”

When the ICC applied for the arrest warrants in May last year, the previous Conservative Party government, a strong backer of Israel, decried the move as “not helpful in relation to reaching a pause in the fighting, getting hostages out or getting humanitarian aid in”.

In July, the new Labour government, led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, dropped the previous Rishi Sunak-led government’s bid to challenge the ICC’s power to seek the warrants, which were issued for Netanyahu, Gallant and three Hamas leaders in November.

Three Maori Party MPs were suspended from New Zealand’s Parliament for performing a haka in protest of a bill backed by a far-right coalition partner that they say was an attack on Indigenous people. The bill was defeated, but tensions remain high.

Parliament voted to impose record suspensions on the trio of legislators for their protest haka.

New Zealand legislators have voted to suspend three MPs who performed a Maori haka in the House to protest against a controversial bill.

The MPs from Te Pati Maori – the Maori Party – were handed the toughest sanctions ever imposed on legislators by New Zealand’s parliament on Thursday.

Te Pati Maori co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer were both suspended from parliament for 21 days.

Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, New Zealand’s youngest legislator, 22, was suspended for seven days.

The length of the bans was recommended by parliament’s privileges committee, which advised the trio should be suspended for acting in “a manner that could have the effect of intimidating a member of the House”.

It recommended Maipi-Clarke be given a shorter sanction because she had written a letter of “contrition” to the parliament.

Previously, the longest suspension imposed on an MP had been a three-day ban.

Prior to Thursday’s vote, Maipi-Clarke told legislators that the suspension was an effort to stop Maori from making themselves heard in parliament.

“Are our voices too loud for this house? Is that the reason why we are being silenced?” she said. “We will never be silenced and we will never be lost.”

The legislators had performed the haka in parliament in November. Their protest interrupted voting during the first reading of a proposed bill to legally define the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, the 1840 pact between the British Crown and Indigenous Maori leaders signed during New Zealand’s colonisation.

The proposed law prompted widespread protests amid concerns it would erode Maori rights. It was later scrapped.

Maipi-Clarke had begun the protest by ripping a copy of the legislation, before she and fellow MPs approached the leader of the right-wing party that had backed the proposed law.

Their actions prompted complaints from fellow MPs to the parliament’s speaker that their protest was disorderly, and the matter was sent to parliament’s privileges committee, prompting months of debate.

A report from the privileges committee said that while both haka and Maori ceremonial dance and song are not uncommon in parliament, members were aware that permission was needed from the speaker beforehand.

SIR Keir Starmer yesterday told Labour rebels to fall into line over welfare cuts – as more than 100 of his own MPs are demanding a U-turn.

The PM insisted the system is “not working for anybody” and vowed to press ahead with slashing the health element of Universal Credit and tightening disability benefit rules.

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Asked if he would soften the package, he said: “The argument for reform is overwhelming and that’s why we will get on and we will reform.”

It comes as furious MPs are urging him to delay the cuts and have slammed the lack of proper impact checks. 

In a blistering letter to the Chief Whip, they said: “We regret we are unable to support a Bill before this has taken place.”

If all the MPs who have signed the letter follow through and vote against the plans, it could wipe out Sir Keir’s majority and trigger the biggest rebellion of his leadership.

Such is the worry inside Labour, that a party source warned dissenting MPs they could be punished at the ballot box.

The source said: “There is only going to be so much money, time and resources at the next election. 

“How people behave now will make a difference to how those resources are allocated.”

It comes as some furious MPs are poised to rebel against Sir Keir because they think they’re toast at the next election.

Moderate backbenchers who have so far towed the party line are mulling taking a public stand on issues including disability benefit cuts, immigration and winter fuel payments – even if it means losing the whip.

There is also growing anger around the two-child benefit cap still being in place.

The Sun understands some MPs want to work “with a clear conscience” until the end of this parliament – knowing that they are unlikely to return because of the threat of Reform.

A Red Wall Labour MP said: “Multiple colleagues with slim majorities think they have no chance of winning their seat.

“They want to hold the PM to account on issues causing an uproar locally, including PIP payments, and think they have nothing to lose if they defy party whips going forward.”

Another Labour MP told The Sun: “The numbers willing to rebel are much higher than expected.

“I think people shouldn’t underestimate just how much welfare is a driver of why a lot of Labour MPs, particularly moderates, are in the Labour party in the first place.

“A lot of our politics was defined by the performative cruelty of the Osborne era, and that casts a long shadow.”

Over 150,000 on benefits will see their payments cut under Personal Independence Payments (PIP) changes, the DWP has confirmed.

The Government is shaking up the way PIP is assessed meaning hundreds of thousands will miss out from November 2026.

From late next year, new and existing PIP claimants being reassessed will have to score a minimum of four points in at least one activity to receive the Daily Living Component.

It will see those unable to cook qualify, but not those who can use a microwave.

Likewise, assistance required to wash your lower body would not deem you eligible but your upper body would.

And, while requiring help to use the toilet meets the threshold, needing reminded to go would fall below it.

The higher rate of the Daily Living Component is currently worth £110.40 a week.

Claimants will also have to score at least eight points when being assessed.

The Government estimates this means by 2029/30 around 800,000 won’t receive the Daily Living Component of PIP.

But it has also confirmed 150,000 will be missing out on Carer’s Allowance or the Universal Credit Carer’s Element by 2029/30 too.

This is because to receive either of these carer’s benefits you have to be caring for someone who receives the Daily Living part of PIP.

It means new and existing PIP claimants finding they are no longer eligible will disqualify their carer’s from next November when the changes kick in.