Women and children to lose out most from Home Office plan to tighten rules on refugee family reunions, experts say – UK politics live

Proposals for financial or language requirements will either split families or force them into dangerous journeys, says Refugee Council

Back to small boats, and in her Commons statement this afternoon Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, will suggest that the government is making progress in disrupting the smuggling gangs. The Home Office says there were fewer small boats crossing the channel in August than in any other August since 2019.

This statistic is less impressive than it sounds, because boats have got bigger over the past six years, and they are increasingly overcrowded. The Home Office says that is because the authorities are getting better at seizing boats and engines.

The 55 boats to cross the channel this August is the lowest total for the month since 2019, when 34 boats crossed near the start of the small boats crisis. Since then, there were 116 small boats in August 2020, 99 in 2021, 192 in 2022, 102 in 2023, and 75 in 2024, meaning that the number of successful boat crossings this August has been less than half the average of the previous five years (55 compared to 116.8 – 47%).

The shortage of boats has also contributed to unprecedented levels of overcrowding. Average boat occupancy this August was 64.8, the highest monthly average on record, compared to an average of 59 over the first seven months of the year.

Big shake up of the No 10 comms operation too.

Tim Allan, an adviser to Tony Blair who went on to fund PR giant Portland, coming in as executive director of govt comms.

A huge change in the arrival of Tim Allan of strategic communications weakness in govt. Also massively strengthens the arm of the more “New Labour” constituency close to PM. And gather there was unease in some quarters about how the existing number 10 communications set up would work with an overall government head of Comms in David Dinsmore. That won’t be such a problem for Tim Allan.

Interesting that it’s one Blairite in with T Allan and one out in the Downing Street pack shuffle as Liz Lloyd leaves.

This was a waste of an experience’d hire: but never quite grafted on to the Starmer vibe and vice versa. So the policy jobs remain in the penumbra of people who have been close to KS – and the overall comms will be run by someone who’s default setting is to aim for the centre or even the right of centre.