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Tag: diane abbott

  • Diane Abbott unveils Labour’s new immigration policy

    Diane Abbott

    A Labour government would bring in a simplified visa system for foreign workers with “bona fide skills”, Diane Abbott has said.

    The shadow home secretary said the party would also scrap the government’s “bogus” net migration target.

    She set out plans for a “flexible work visa” to end the “idiocy” of medical staff not being able to take up jobs.

    Migrants from outside the EU should be treated with the same “fairness” as EU migrants after Brexit, she added.

    Do we really know how many people come to the UK? Migration from EU to UK continues to fall Windrush compensation ‘could be capped’ Diane Abbott: Labour would close two immigration detention centres

    The Conservatives said Labour’s new policy would “tear up the rules for people coming from outside the EU which would allow more low-skilled immigration”.

    Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Labour wants to “simplify” the immigration system

    Ms Abbott vowed to scrap the government’s target of reducing net migration – the difference between those arriving in the UK and leaving – to below 100,000 a year.

    “The target had never been met and never will be met,” she told the BBC, and called for “a new conversation about migration that is not fixated on numbers”.

    She vowed to scrap the minimum income requirement for non-EU migrants and to give people “more rights of family reunion”.

    What the party’s policy towards migrants from the EU would be after Brexit would depend on what the current government agreed in Brussels, she told the BBC, but she wanted to see “fairness” between the two categories.

    “We want an immigration system which is fair, and which is managed, in the interests of the economy and the community as a whole,” she added.

    The shadow home secretary is also pledging that Labour will abolish the Immigration Act 2014 and end the “hostile environment” policy deployed by the government, which she said had led to the Windrush scandal.

    But she insisted Labour would act against illegal immigration and “make the system of deportation of overseas criminals much easier and smoother”.

    “If a judge issues a recommendation for deportation for serious criminals post-sentence, that should be carried out as a matter of routine. From the prison to the airport,” she said in her speech.

    Immigration minister Caroline Nokes said Labour had “no interest in getting control of our borders as we leave the EU”.

    “Only the Conservatives will end free movement and build a fair and controlled immigration system,” she added.

  • Abusive tweets to MPs ‘more than double’ among elections

    Fil picture of Twitter logo Image copyright Reuters

    The collection of abusive tweets approximately politicians greater than doubled between 2015 and 2017, consistent with analysis of greater than a million tweets.

    Twitter insults focused on politicians rose from approximately 10,000 in the course of the 2015 general election to only underneath 25,000 within the snap election years later.

    The easiest-identified politicians got so much of tweets and abuse – however much less well-recognized MPs got proportionally more abuse.

    Sheffield University’s laptop technological know-how department performed the analysis.

    Project chief Kalina Bontcheva said the increase in abuse against public figures was once “surprising”.

    Labour’s Paula Sheriff has said the 2017 election had been the “most brutal” to date.

    On Thursday, Labour MP Stephen Doughty tweeted an instance of an abusive tweet he had stated – and Twitter’s reaction that it didn’t violate its policies.

    He said: “if you marvel why Facebook, Twitter and so on are more and more becoming tricky places, this is any other example of abuse we get and the reaction of the social media firms – who assume we deserve a unique threshold of abuse ‘to permit discourse’.”

    Responding to the research, Cabinet Place Of Work minister Chloe Smith mentioned: “It Is essential that we prevent the emerging intimidation of individuals in public place of business and those who need to stand for election.

    “that may be why this govt is consulting on new measures which will offer protection to candidates and campaigners status for public service. we can’t allow intimidation of people in public existence proceed unchecked.”

    Closing 12 months a report by the Committee on Standards in Public Lifestyles said an “intensely adverse online atmosphere” were created and warned other people could be do away with from coming into politics as a result of the abuse.