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Tag: Nick Thomas-Symonds

  • Nick Thomas-Symonds – 2021 Comments on Changes to Travel Restrictions

    Nick Thomas-Symonds – 2021 Comments on Changes to Travel Restrictions

    The comments made by Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Shadow Home Secretary, on 24 June 2021.

    The Government’s approach to securing our borders against Covid and its variants has been chaotic and dangerous. Boris Johnson’s failure to act let the Delta variant take hold and held back our reopening with the British people paying the price.

    Labour wants to see travel reopen and is supportive of a limited and safe green list. We have been calling for an international vaccine passport and will look seriously at the details of proposals for travel or quarantine arrangements for people who have been double-vaccinated.

    Ministers must urgently publish the data that supports their decisions and scrap the Amber List, which is still causing confusion, with too many people travelling to countries not deemed safe.

  • Nick Thomas-Symonds – 2021 Comments on Independent Windrush Committee

    Nick Thomas-Symonds – 2021 Comments on Independent Windrush Committee

    The comments made by Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Shadow Home Secretary, on 21 June 2021.

    Windrush Day is an historic day in our national story – and we owe the Windrush generation an enormous debt of gratitude.

    Shamefully, the mishandling of the Windrush Compensation Scheme by Conservative Ministers has heaped insult upon injustice. The numbers speak for themselves, with fewer than 700 people receiving compensation and least 21 people have died waiting for justice.

    Labour is calling for urgent action to overhaul the scheme, by placing it under independent leadership away from the Home Office. This is to help restore faith in the process and quickly get compensation to people who have been so appallingly treated. This injustice cannot continue.

  • Nick Thomas-Symonds – 2021 Comments on the Manchester Arena Inquiry Report

    Nick Thomas-Symonds – 2021 Comments on the Manchester Arena Inquiry Report

    The comments made by Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Shadow Home Secretary, on 17 June 2021.

    Today we have in our thoughts the 22 children and adults who were murdered and the hundreds injured in the Manchester Arena attack. We will always remember them, and their families who live with the pain of loss every single day. We thank all those people who responded so bravely on the night and who have done so much to help ever since.

    Learning the lessons from this horrific act, doing everything we possibly can to try and ensure it can never happen again, is a duty we owe to those who have been lost.

    The report is correct that the ultimate responsibility for the events of 22 May 2017 lies with the vile perpetrators. However, we must look closely at the findings and what must change. It is heartbreaking to read in the report that ‘there were a number of missed opportunities to alter the course of what happened that night. More should have been done.’

    Every necessary step must now be taken to embed these tragic lessons into the practice of everyday security. We will look closely at the recommendations and see how Labour can best play a role in helping to secure the changes necessary.

  • Nick Thomas-Symonds – 2021 Comments on the Daniel Morgan Report

    Nick Thomas-Symonds – 2021 Comments on the Daniel Morgan Report

    The comments made by Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Shadow Home Secretary, on 15 June 2021.

    The findings in this report are damning and go to the very heart of our policing, criminal justice system and media. My thoughts are with the Morgan family who have been denied justice for over three decades.

    The Panel’s finding of a “form of institutional corruption” is incredibly serious. The Metropolitan Police must now account for what has happened and act on the report.

    Ministers must set out a detailed timeline for when the report’s recommendations will be implemented. The time for a ‘duty of candour’ is long overdue, and it is for the Government to provide reassurance to the Morgan family and the wider public that something like this can never happen again.

  • Nick Thomas-Symonds – 2021 Comments on Thailand and Vietnam Covid-19 Risk

    Nick Thomas-Symonds – 2021 Comments on Thailand and Vietnam Covid-19 Risk

    The comments made by Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Shadow Home Secretary, on 4 June 2021.

    There is a terrible sense of déjà vu witnessing yet more variants reach the U.K. Outbreaks of the variant first discovered in Thailand is in addition to those of Brazil, South Africa and India.

    It beggars belief that Conservative Ministers opened up an ambiguous ‘Amber List’, causing mass confusion and allowing thousands of people to travel to the UK from countries, including Thailand and Vietnam, with rising Covid numbers. They have recklessly opened the door to new variants and learned nothing from the crisis, putting at risk the 21 June reopening.

    The U.K. Government must add all countries on the Amber List to the Red List. Failing that, they should at the very least add Thailand and Vietnam to the Red List immediately.

  • Nick Thomas-Symonds – 2021 Comments on Foreign Health Workers Paying for Visas

    Nick Thomas-Symonds – 2021 Comments on Foreign Health Workers Paying for Visas

    The comments made by Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Shadow Home Secretary, on 2 June 2021.

    What does the Home Secretary have against NHS and care workers? Conservative plans to slap a stealth tax on frontline heroes, who have risked their own health to keep us safe through this pandemic, is shameful.

    The Prime Minister made a personal promise to remove the Immigration Health Surcharge for overseas workers. Now, what he gave with one hand, he seeks to take away with the other.

     

  • Nick Thomas-Symonds – 2021 Comments on Collapse of Hillsborough Trial

    Nick Thomas-Symonds – 2021 Comments on Collapse of Hillsborough Trial

    The comments made by Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Shadow Home Secretary, on 26 May 2021.

    The collapse of this case is devastating for the families of all those who lost loved ones at Hillsborough, everyone who was there on that tragic day and all those who have spent the last 32 years campaigning for justice for the 96.

    Five years on from the inquest that ruled fans were unlawfully killed, this shameful injustice cannot go on. It’s completely unacceptable that no successful criminal charges have been brought against any individual. The Hillsborough Law must be introduced, without further delay, to ensure proper transparency and accountability. Change is also needed – desperately – to ensure victims of injustices get the support they need.

  • Nick Thomas-Symonds – 2021 Comments on Dominic Cummings

    Nick Thomas-Symonds – 2021 Comments on Dominic Cummings

    The comments made by Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Shadow Home Secretary, on 26 May 2021.

    This admission is absolutely devastating for the Prime Minister and Home Secretary. It lays bare the fact that under this Conservative Government the UK was slow to lockdown borders, slow to border testing and slow to hotel quarantine. The dangerous mess over the ‘Amber List’ shows Dominic Cummings is right to say ‘look at variants…we still don’t have a proper border policy’.

    The Prime Minister and Home Secretary now have very serious questions to answer about the dire failings they have overseen – and must urgently get a grip of the dangerous border chaos they have created.

  • Nick Thomas-Symonds – 2021 Comments on Indian Variant

    Nick Thomas-Symonds – 2021 Comments on Indian Variant

    The comments made by Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Shadow Home Secretary, on 27 May 2021.

    Three quarters of the cases in the country coming from the variant first discovered in India, confirms the terrible consequence of the Conservatives’ reckless refusal to secure our borders against Covid.

    Labour warned time and time again that refusing to put in place a proper hotel quarantine system would have exactly these consequences. The Prime Minister delayed putting India on the Red List for two weeks, even when cases there were – tragically – rising quickly. Even now, Ministers have created confusion over the ‘Amber List’ for travel. This dangerous incompetence has to stop.

  • Nick Thomas-Symonds – 2021 Comments on the Immigration System

    Nick Thomas-Symonds – 2021 Comments on the Immigration System

    The comments made by Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Shadow Home Secretary, on 23 May 2021.

    The Home Secretary talks about a broken asylum system but it’s the Conservatives who have been in power for 11 years and are responsible for that.

    The idea of e-borders has been around for a number of years. Given that hundreds of thousands of items of data were lost from the Police National Computer in January and, four months later, we have no assurance they have all been recovered, there are serious questions about the Home Secretary delivering this digital system.

    The Government’s approach has lacked compassion and competence and now Ministers risk withdrawing support from victims of the heinous crime of people trafficking with their New Immigration Plan.