Fisheries
Telegraph
France has lifted a ban on Jersey fishermen landing their catch after the Channel Island granted a two-month delay to the controversial post-Brexit fishing licences.Last week the Council of La Manche, Normandy, prevented Jersey vessels from landing their catches in Granville, Barneville-Carteret and Dielette.
The fleet was stopped from landing for around five days, fishermen told The Telegraph, with one actively prevented from landing in Carteret on Thursday.
Welcoming the news, the Jersey government said the action was “not compliant” with the terms of the Brexit trade deal – the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA).
But on Tuesday night, the Normandy Fishing committee threatened to block a Jersey freight vessel, the Normandy Trader, from leaving the port of Granville on Wednesday if it attempted to land.
Didier Leguelinel, from the committee, told The Telegraph “it won’t be allowed to leave”, suggesting the fishermen intended to take the law into their hands with or without a ban.
Chris Le Masurier, skipper of the Normandy Trader, said that he decided not to land in Granville on Tuesday but instead went to Saint Malo, Brittany.
He told The Telegraph the harbourmaster at Granville said he would not be allowed in. “I just want to carry on and work. I’m tired of all this toing and froing, it’s driving me absolutely potty,” he said.
Times
French fishing leaders have celebrated an offer of peace talks from Jersey after the “war of the whelks”.
Annick Girardin, the French minister of the sea, said the Jersey authorities were prepared to renegotiate the fishing licences that prompted 50 or so trawlermen from Normandy and Brittany to hold a protest in the Channel off St Helier last week.
Girardin, who initially threatened to cut off Jersey’s power supply over the issue, said officials had offered a two-month delay to imposing new restrictions on catching whelks, crabs and other shellfish off the Channel island.
Girardin claims that the restrictions, which concern fishing zones and time limits, breach the Brexit agreement.
Immigration
Times
Asylum seekers will be barred from taking their appeals to judicial review in an attempt to speed up deportations under plans announced by ministers.
At present decisions by the Upper Tribunal about immigration cases can be referred to the High Court, which ministers say has led to “spurious legal challenges”.
The government wants to make the Upper Tribunal the final court for migration cases, which it also believes will reduce delays in the migration system.
The judicial review bill will also seek to stop campaigners from blocking large infrastructure projects on legal technicalities. It will give judges the power to suspend the effect of orders temporarily so that technical issues can be fixed.
Mail
Migrants who travelled through a ‘safe’ country like France or Belgium on their way to the UK will be blocked from seeking asylum in Britain.
The Government today confirmed a major overhaul of the nation’s immigration system as it set out its plans in the Queen‘s Speech.
The changes will mean migrants who ‘travelled through a safe country where they could have reasonably claimed asylum… will not be admitted into the UK asylum system’.
Legal arrivals and illegal arrivals will be treated differently for the first time so the system ‘does not reward those who enter the UK illegally’.
The shake-up will also see the asylum system streamlined, creating a ‘one-stop’ process designed to ‘end the cycle of limitless appeals’.
The Government’s so-called ‘New Plan for Immigration’ was unveiled by Home Secretary Priti Patel in March this year.
It will mean migrants who arrive in the UK illegally will no longer have the right to permanently settle here even if they have a strong asylum claim.
Anyone who arrives illegally having passed through a ‘safe’ country will be deemed ‘inadmissible’ to the UK asylum system.
The Government will seek the ‘rapid removal’ of ‘inadmissible cases’ back to the country they travelled to the UK from.
Eurostar
Express
UK MINISTERS may have had a “change of heart” over helping out struggling Eurostar, whose future is uncertain due to financial troubles, Express.co.uk understands.
The Cross-Channel train operator, which runs services between London St Pancras and Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam, carried 11 million passengers in 2019. But Eurostar faced a 95 percent fall in demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic and now only operates one train a day between London and Paris and Amsterdam/Brussels.
Company bosses have held meetings with UK ministers over a potential state-backed bailout as the cash-strapped train operator faces an uncertain financial future.
Whilst UK ministers initially appeared to spurn requests to bail out Eurostar and urged them to ask the French Government for help, this publication understands Ministers may be starting to look the other way following their most recent meeting on April 12th.
Express.co.uk also understands the company recently struck a deal with lenders to refinance hundreds of millions of pounds of debts.
Railways Minister Chris Heaton-Harris said Eurostar significantly helped to boost the UK economy.
Queen’s Speech
Express
SEVEN new pieces of legislation are being planned by ministers to make the most of the UK’s freedom from the EU.
At the State Opening of Parliament, the Queen outlined a number of areas the Government is planning to alter legislation following Brexit. The Queen’s speech is the first since the UK left the EU in January 2020.
Addressing MPs and peers in the House of Lords, Her Majesty explained the Government’s legislative programme for the next 12 months.
Work has been underway over the last year to build a reform programme to provide new opportunities for growth, to slash bureaucracy, and bolster workers rights and animal welfare standards.
While some Brexit legislation has been passed since leaving the bloc, including the EU trade deal, this is the first time plans have been formally set out.
Addressing Parliament, the Queen said: “My Government’s priority is to deliver a national recovery from the pandemic that makes the United Kingdom stronger, healthier and more prosperous than before.
Covid
Times
Britain could be back to normal by the end of the year, the government’s chief pandemic modeller has said.
Professor Graham Medley of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said that people should return to normal mixing patterns slowly to ensure a third wave was not severe.
Matt Hancock, the health secretary, said yesterday that the government would be giving people more freedom to make their own judgments about risk as the pandemic eased.
“We will be changing the rules to be far more about people taking personal responsibility, exercising common sense according to their circumstances,” Hancock told Sky News.
Evening Standard
The UK could be back to normal by the end of this year if the vaccine rollout continues to succeed, the government’s chief pandemic modeller has said.
Professor Graham Medley, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told BBC Radio 4: “If vaccines continue to work, and we don’t have some nasty variants, then potentially we could be completely back to normal by the end of the year.”
However if there were more variants or “if the vaccines wane, so the impact wanes and we aren’t able to get boosters, then we could have been in a very different position”.
It comes after Health Secretary Matt Hancock on Tuesday said the government would be giving people more freedom to make their own judgments about risk as the pandemic eased.
“We will be changing the rules to be far more about people taking personal responsibility, exercising common sense according to their circumstances,” he told Sky News.
“We will set out really clearly the risks. People understand the risks – we know that – and we’ll make that very, very plain and then people can exercise their own personal responsibility.”
Britain on Tuesday reported an additional 2,474 cases of Covid and 20 more deaths within 28 days of a positive test as the total number of people to have received the first dose of a vaccine reached 35,587,348, according to official data.
The economy
Express
BRITAIN’S economy grew by 2.1 percent in March despite many lockdown restrictions remaining in place.
New figures released from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) indicate the economy is already bouncing back from the pandemic. While the UK economy contracted by 1.5 percent in the first three months of the year, the drop was far lower than expected.
Responding to the figures, Chancellor Rishi Sunak hailed March’s growth as a “positive sign of things to come”.
Boris Johnson announced England was entering a third national lockdown at the start of January, with similar measures being adopted by the devolved administrations.
The growth in March comes despite non-essential shops and hospitality remained closed in England until April, setting the path for the bounce back to accelerate when the figures for the second quarter of the year are reported later this year.
Free Speech
Times
Student unions will be legally obliged to protect freedom of speech for the first time and could be taken to court by cancelled speakers, the government has announced.
New laws will make it easier for academics, students and visiting speakers to take action against universities and student unions and claim compensation if they are gagged. The move follows instances of “no platforming” on campuses and claims that staff have been penalised for expressing controversial opinions.
The plan was one of two attacks on “cancel culture” outlined in the Queen’s Speech yesterday, with the second focused on online communication.
Ministers are to publish legislation to regulate social media companies, which will include an unprecedented requirement for them to safeguard freedom of expression.
Social care
Mail
Boris Johnson faced a massive backlash tonight after devoting just nine words to social care in the Queen’s Speech.
Measures to reform long-standing funding issues were absent from the list of 30 Bills announced in Parliament yesterday.
Despite lengthy negotiations, No 10 and the Treasury have been unable to reach agreement on a strategy to limit the amounts pensioners have to pay toward their own care.
It meant the Queen was unable to say any more than: ‘Proposals on social care reform will be brought forward.’
The glaring omission of any detail comes despite figures revealing that 10,000 people have been financially crippled while waiting for Mr Johnson to fix the crisis. Charities, experts and MPs condemned yet another delay in the introduction of a credible plan.
Tory MP Damian Green, who worked on social care reform as Theresa May’s deputy, said: ‘I am absolutely insistent that this needs to be the year for action and decision rather than kicking the can down the road any further.’
Mr Johnson promised imminent reform when he became Prime Minister in July 2019. Standing outside No 10, he said: ‘My job is to protect you or your parents or grandparents from the fear of having to sell your home to pay for the costs of care.
‘And so I am announcing now – on the steps of Downing Street – that we will fix the crisis in social care once and for all with a clear plan we have prepared to give every older person the dignity and security they deserve.’
But nothing has been forthcoming, aside from a promise that plans would brought forward by the end of 2021.
COVID
Professor Graham Medley, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told BBC Radio 4: “If vaccines continue to work, and we don’t have some nasty variants, then potentially we could be completely back to normal by the end of the year.”
So if Covid “variants” keep conveniently turning up, then we will never be “back to normal”, even though the annual death rate remains normal. Last year, the year of Covid Terror, the annual total death rate in England & Wales remained very close to one per cent, just like it has in the last thirty years.
From the Office of National Statistics : –
30 year average death rate, 1990-2019 : 0.986% (around one in 100)
2020 (first Covid year) : 1.016% (around one in 100)
Difference in chance of dying : 0.03%.
And I’ll bet sea levels percentage have’nt changed much annually as well
I know it’s not apples and pears, but similar scare tactics are used.
Some years ago I worked on a coastal project in Hull. There was a claim that sea levels were rising by 1/4 inch per year. The reality was a long term tilt in the land mass; downwards towards the east.
We’ll not be allowed to burn all the bodies outdoors like India does!
Lo and behold Ralph, according to the Telegraph today (Thurs.) the dreadful Indian variant is here now.
No one in my family will have to sell anything to pay for a care home( that name has proven wrong by the action of the owner of old people accommodation- they do not give a toss about the person , its all money) ,i will overdose before I would accept being incarcerated in one of those establishments – they are hateful !
I’ll believe the immigration stuff when I see it. Every brain dead do-gooder will be down on Boris like a ton of bricks.
Just think of all those poor lawyers who’ll be eating grass.
I wonder what Starmer made of that, he’ll be the first to put a spoke in if he can.
“Migrants who travelled through a ‘safe’ country like France or Belgium on their way to the UK will be blocked from seeking asylum in Britain.”
This has been far too long in coming; surely it could have been done years ago.
“The Government will seek the ‘rapid removal’ of ‘inadmissible cases’…” Again an unacceptable response. Why do they need to “seek” that which should be mandatory and happen as a matter of course?
Surely removal should be immediate on the availability of suitable transport?
I simply cannot trust government on this issue.
There’s a lot there to digest . ” Slash bureaucracy “. Interesting.? Nowwhere have we heard that before ?
Answer:– Every new PM since Moses. .
When has it happened ?.
Answer:– In the 50’s and 60’s in private sectors when C. Northcoat Parkinson published his books. These codified and put into textbook form, all the basics, signposts, and drivers and cures of beaucracy . This ennable business to recognise the apalling waste and dishonesty of the industrial bureaucracy sector, and cure it. Only for the promise of computers to solve it , a lie promulgatedby IBM etc., only for the problem to mushroom. and reach its present ridiculous, dominant and unchallenged status.
Indeed TG.
AND, the new craze for Apps or platforms or phones for everything is daily making it worse. It has become an industry on .its own, self contained, with its own ethos, language, money,. That may or may not be a good thing, but its another where governments have abandoned their responsibilities like drugs etc. and are now seemingly encouraging it.