93-metre long “mega barge” will be used to house asylum seekers in Britain for the first time, the Home Office announced on Wednesday.
The Bibby Stockholm, built in 1976, will accommodate more than 500 men and will be moored off the coast of Dorset.
The Government insists the plan to place migrants on the boat will cut the £6million-a-day hotel bill it currently pays to house them while their asylum claims are assessed.
The three-storey Bibby Stockholm barge was previously used by the Dutch government to house asylum seekers but was branded an “oppressive environment” to live in. It previously saw at least one person die and reports of rape and abuse on board.
Promotional material says the boat has 222 bedrooms for 222 guests but the Home Office plans to house around 500 men, sometimes four to a room, while stationed in Portland Port.
The boat was previously used by energy firm Petrofac for workers building the Shetland Gas Plant.
Bar area
/ PA
It is unclear whether the Games Rooms with pool tables, dart boards and bar will be retained by the Home Office.
The Mirror reported that chartering such a vessel costs between £8,000 to £15,000 a day.
Bibby Stockholm accommodation barge, a 222 bedroom, three-storey vessel, which can house up to 506 people.
/ PA
Confirming the use of the Bibby Stockholm barge, immigration minister Robert Jenrick said: “The Home Secretary and I have been clear that the use of expensive hotels to house those making unnecessary and dangerous journeys must stop.
The Bibby Stockholm
/ Home Office
“We will not elevate the interests of illegal migrants over the British people we are elected to serve.
“We have to use alternative accommodation options, as our European neighbours are doing – including the use of barges and ferries to save the British taxpayer money and to prevent the UK becoming a magnet for asylum shoppers in Europe.
“All accommodation will meet our legal obligations and we will work closely with the local community to address their concerns, including through financial support.”
The Kitchen
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Conservative-run Dorset Council has opposed the use of Portland Port as the site for the huge vessel.
Local Tory MP Richard Drax said: “We will look at any way we can stop this.”
The Home Office said the barge will provide “basic and functional accommodation”, healthcare provision and catering facilities.
Around-the-clock security will be in place on board “to minimise the disruption to local communities”, the Home Office added.
The Bibby Stockholm will be in operation in Portland for at least 18 months and the Home Office is in discussion with other ports with the aim of deploying more vessels.
A bedroom
/ PA
Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: “This announcement is a sign of the Conservatives’ total failure to clear the asylum backlog, tackle the criminal smuggling gangs or get any kind of grip on the system.
“This barge is in addition to hotels, not instead of them and is still more than twice as expensive as normal asylum accommodation. It will house just 0.3% of the current Tory backlog which has sky-rocketed and is continuing to grow under the Conservatives.
“Until the Government takes serious action to clear the backlog, this problem is going to keep getting worse with more people in costly accommodation, not less. Their new legislation only makes the problem worse.”
The Refugee Council said the barge will be “completely inadequate” to house “vulnerable people who have come to our country in search of safety having fled beatings and death threats in countries such as Afghanistan and Iran”.
Chief executive Enver Solomon said: “A floating barge does not provide what they need nor the respect, dignity and support they deserve.
“There would be no need to use barges and former military bases if cases were dealt with in a timely and efficient manner.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has defended the use of the barge, insisting it would save taxpayers’ money.
On a local election campaign trip to Peterborough he said: “I think everybody knows one of my five priorities is to stop the boats, and as part of that, we’ve got to reduce the pressure on hotels in communities up and down the country.
“We are spending, as a country, £6 million a day housing illegal asylum seekers in hotels – that can’t be right.
“I’ve committed to reducing that number, moving asylum seekers out of hotels and that means we need to find alternative sites, including barges like the one we’ve brought forward today.
“That’s going to save the taxpayer money, reduce pressure on hotels and it’s part of our broader plan to stop the boats.”
Tory-run Dorset Council opposed the move and said it had “serious reservations” about Portland Port’s suitability as a location for the barge.
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“Big questions” are to be asked of the SNP leadership, Labour said on Wednesday, after Nicola Sturgeon’s husband Peter Murrell was arrested as part of the ongoing investigation into party finances.
The 58-year-old, who quit as the party’s chief executive last month, was taken into custody and questioned as officers and forensic experts, some carrying shovels, searched the couple’s South Lanarkshire home and back garden.
Ms Sturgeon has come under pressure to reveal whether she knew about an impending arrest before her shock resignation in February – at which time she cited the pressures of almost a decade in the job – amid reports that senior party figures were interviewed by police in the days before she stood down.
A spokesperson for Ms Sturgeon said that she would “fully cooperate with Police Scotland if required” and added that she “had no prior knowledge” of Wednesday’s police activity.
In extraordinary scenes on Wednesday:
Police searched SNP headquarters in Edinburgh
SNP said it is cooperating fully with the probe
New leader Humza Yousaf called it “a difficult day”
It came only days after Mr Yousaf, the candidate most closely aligned with Ms Sturgeon, won the contest to replace her as party leader and first minister of Scotland.
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said Mr Murrell’s arrest was “extremely serious”, adding: “There are big questions to be asked of both Humza Yousaf and Nicola Sturgeon.”
His deputy, Jackie Baillie, said: “We need Humza Yousaf and Nicola Sturgeon to urgently state what they knew and when.”
Police Scotland are currently investigating the matter of £660,000 that was raised by the SNP for Scottish independence campaigning, following allegations of donations fraud. The inquiry, codenamed Operation Branchform, was launched in 2021 after it was alleged that money had been diverted from a “ring-fenced” fund to fight a second Scottish independence referendum – sparking the resignation of several senior people from the SNP’s ruling body.
A Police Scotland statement said: “A 58-year-old man has today, Wednesday, 5 April 2023, been arrested as a suspect in connection with the ongoing investigation into the funding and finances of the Scottish National Party.”
It added: “The man is in custody and is being questioned by Police Scotland detectives. Officers are also carrying out searches at a number of addresses as part of the investigation ... As the investigation is ongoing we are unable to comment further.”
Officers stand beside police tape outside Nicola Sturgeon’s home on Wednesday
Ms Sturgeon is now facing questions about how much she knew at the time of her resignation. Grilled about the police inquiry last month, Ms Sturgeon indicated that she had not been interviewed by police. Asked if she had heard about a police interview, she told Sky News: “No. I wouldn’t comment on any ongoing police investigation, and I am not going to comment on this one.”
Former party treasurer Douglas Chapman was among those interviewed in connection with the inquiry shortly before Ms Sturgeon’s resignation, according to Scotland’s Sunday Mail.
It emerged in December that Mr Murrell had given a personal loan of £107,000 to the SNP in June 2021. His loan was aimed at helping the SNP out with a “cash flow” issue after the last Holyrood election, the party said.
Nicola Sturgeon and her husband Peter Murrell
Mr Yousaf said he had first become aware of the arrest after it happened, as he admitted events were “not great” for trust in his party – describing it as a “difficult day”.
Asked if the investigation was the real reason Ms Sturgeon had resigned, Mr Yousaf said: “Nicola’s legacy stands on its own ... I believe her very much when she says how exhausted she was. So, no, I don’t think this is the reason why Nicola Sturgeon stood down.”
Asked if the arrest would hurt the SNP in the polls or at a potential by-election, he said: “It certainly doesn’t do us any good ... There will be some concerns. Our party membership will have concerns, too. What I can commit to as party leader is that we want to be absolutely transparent.”
Peter Murrell greets Queen Elizabeth II in 2017
Mr Murrell resigned from his top job last month after a row erupted over transparency in relation to party membership numbers. SNP media chief Murray Foote quit after journalists were misled about the true figures, with Mr Murrell taking responsibility for the misleading statements.
Mr Yousaf defended Mr Murrell at the time of his departure. “I don’t know why somebody would demand getting rid of somebody who’s been the chief executive of the party, who’s won countless elections in the last few years,” he said.
The SNP released a statement on Wednesday following Mr Murrell’s arrest. “Clearly it would not be appropriate to comment on any live police investigation, but the SNP have been cooperating fully with this investigation and will continue to do so,” it said.
The statement added: “At its meeting on Saturday, the governing body of the SNP, the NEC, agreed to a review of governance and transparency – that will be taken forward in the coming weeks.”
Officers were seen searching the home Mr Murrell shares with former first minister Nicola Sturgeon
It comes as new polling shows that Labour has slashed the SNP lead for the next general election to five points among Scottish voters. If there was a general election, 36 per cent said they would vote for the SNP and 31 per cent said they would vote for Labour, the Redfield & Wilton survey found.
A week after entering office as first minister, Mr Yousaf’s first approval rating among Scottish voters was -7 percent. The polling also showed a 6 per cent lead for No if Scotland was to hold another independence referendum.
Alba Party leader Alex Salmond, a former SNP leader turned party critic, said the news of the arrest was “very sad”.
“It’s a very live investigation, so I couldn’t really comment on the specifics,” said Mr Salmond, who was walking into the BBC’s Edinburgh office just 25 metres away from the headquarters of the SNP.
“I led the SNP for a long time, so I’m very sad about what’s happening to it and, indeed, what it’s become.”
The barge, docked in Portland Port, is to accommodate single adult men while their asylum claims are processed.
The United Kingdom government announced it had leased a barge to house approximately 500 asylum seekers on England’s south coast as it seeks to cut lodging costs for migrants and refugees arriving on its shores.
The Home Office said on Wednesday that the accommodation barge will be used “to reduce the unsustainable pressure on the UK’s asylum system and cut the cost to the taxpayer caused by the significant increase in Channel crossings”.
The barge, docked in Portland Port, is to accommodate single adult men while their asylum claims are processed, with the first residents due in the “coming months”.
“The use of expensive hotels to house those making unnecessary and dangerous journeys must stop. We will not elevate the interests of illegal migrants over the British people we are elected to serve,” said Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick.
“We have to use alternative accommodation options, as our European neighbours are doing – including the use of barges and ferries to save the British taxpayer money and to prevent the UK becoming a magnet for asylum shoppers in Europe,” he added.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has pledged to stop crossings of the Channel, which numbered more than 45,000 last year. Last month, he unveiled controversial legislation to stop migrants and refugees from making the treacherous journey in small boats.
Almost 88,000 people have made the crossing of one of the world’s busiest waterways since 2018. More than 160,000 people were awaiting a decision as of the end of December 2022, with most having waited more than six months, according to official figures
The UK’s contentious new law, which would allow authorities to deport people arriving on its shores via small boats across the Channel, faced heavy criticism from several charities and human rights groups. They said the plan – known as the Illegal Migration Bill – criminalises the efforts of thousands of refugees.
The British government is also hoping to send thousands of asylum seekers more than 6,500km (4,000 miles) away to Rwanda as part of a 120-million-pound ($148m) deal to deter people from crossing.
The plan was announced in April last year, but the first deportation flight was blocked by an injunction from the European Court of Human Rights.
One in three young teachers in England are skipping meals and spending less on food because their pay has failed to keep up with the rising cost of living, while others are taking second jobs, a survey has found.
More than 8,000 state school teachers in England contacted by the National Education Union revealed that 34% of teachers aged 29 or younger said they have been forced to skip meals to make ends meet, with one in five saying they have taken on a second job in addition to teaching full-time.
The results underline the vote by NEU’s annual conference for a further five days of strike action this summer, and a ballot to authorise further strikes in autumn, in an effort to wring improved pay from the government for state school teachers in England.
More than one in 10 young teachers said they expected to no longer be working in education in two years’ time, with an excessive workload, a lack of trust from the government as well as pay among the main reasons for leaving the profession.
“The constant goodwill required in order to do the job is no longer viable, I feel like I’m constantly living on the edge of a breakdown but I have no choice but to carry on. My wage no longer lasts the month and I am constantly overdrawn,” one member reported as part of the survey, taken in February.
Mary Bousted, the NEU’s joint general secretary, said: “It is a stark reality for current education staff that so many are having to take on a second job in order to survive. That so many should be leaving the profession or intend to do so in the very near future, can come as no surprise. This doesn’t prevent it from remaining a tragedy, and a waste of talent.”
One NEU member said: “I regularly use food banks because my salary doesn’t cover my outgoings, including rent, electric and gas bills. It’s embarrassing that I’m a teacher, thought to be a respectable well-paid job, but I can’t afford to live.”
The National Association of Head Teachers became the third teaching union to overwhelmingly reject the government’s pay offer. In an online ballot, 90% of NAHT members voted not to accept the offer, with almost all saying the offer was “unaffordable” for school budgets.
Teachers also reported severe problems with recruitment, with some vacancies unable to be filled or needing to be advertised multiple times, resulting in posts being empty for extended periods and classes being taught by non-specialists or cover teachers.
“We have gaps trying to be filled everywhere across the school. This was not the case five years ago,” one said. Another reported: “We cannot fill our posts; kids are taught by different short-term supply [teachers] for multiple subjects, including GCSE students.”
Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, said: “Thousands of both experienced and newly recruited teachers are leaving classrooms in their droves, while too few new teachers are coming in to replace them – and our children’s education is paying the price.”
Around one in 10 school support staff, including teaching assistants, who were surveyed by the union, said they were on benefits such as universal credit to supplement their income.
NEU members said teaching assistants were often arriving early at school to keep warm and staying late to charge appliances because of soaring energy costs.
Peter Murrell, Nicola Sturgeon’s husband, has been arrested by Scottish police in an investigation into the Scottish National party’s fundraising and finances.
Police Scotland said a 58-year-old man had been “arrested as a suspect” on Wednesday and added that its officers were carrying out searches at a number of addresses linked to the investigation.
The investigation was launched after complaints about the SNP’s handling of £600,000 in donations raised by the party ostensibly to campaign for and hold a second independence referendum.
It is alleged the money instead was used to help with the party’s day-to-day running costs.
In a short statement, the police said: “A 58-year-old man has today, Wednesday, 5 April 2023, been arrested as a suspect in connection with the ongoing investigation into the funding and finances of the Scottish National party.
“The man is in custody and is being questioned by Police Scotland detectives. Officers are also carrying out searches at a number of addresses as part of the investigation.
“A report will be sent to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. [As] the investigation is ongoing we are unable to comment further.”
At the time that Nigel Lawson, Lord Lawson of Blaby, who has died aged 91, resigned as chancellor in October 1989, his departure was immediately interpreted by the more perceptive political analysts as the beginning of the end of the Thatcher years.
And so it proved. The man whom Margaret Thatcher once called “my golden boy”, the politician who was credited as the main architect of her government’s economic success, had lit a touchpaper that would smoulder across the months and lead to her ignominious departure a little more than a year later.
The specific cause of Lawson’s resignation was a spat over the prime minister’s employment of an independent economic adviser, Alan Walters, whose views on the then European monetary system (EMS) chimed with hers but differed from those of the chancellor, who sought to use foreign exchange rates, rather than interest rates, to achieve economic stability. At root, Thatcher had become increasingly suspicious of Lawson since the credit for the Conservatives’ 1987 election victory had been attributed to the success of Treasury policy and she feared a loss of political authority if she dismissed Walters.
One of the letters Lawson received after his resignation was from the former deputy prime minister, Lord (Willie) Whitelaw, who commented that Thatcher could not bear to be on the losing side of any argument and added: “That failing may ditch us all.”
Lawson had taken office as chancellor in 1983, only nine years after his first election to parliament, and on resignation was the longest serving in that post since David Lloyd George (a record later eclipsed by Gordon Brown).
He had joined the government as financial secretary to the Treasury when Thatcher formed her first government in 1979 and had already made his mark in that post by abolishing exchange control, doubling VAT and introducing the Medium Term Financial Strategy.
As a radical tax-reforming chancellor in pursuit of monetarist policies alongside a massive programme of privatisation and deregulation that helped emasculate the trade union movement, he won praise but not popularity, respect but not regard, from his Conservative colleagues.
It mattered little to him. His fierce intellectual approach to all aspects of policy meant that he always gave a higher priority to achieving his aims than to what others thought. His indifference to opposing points of view was often interpreted as arrogance, but in reality his personal convictions were such that he was simply not prepared to submit himself to what he saw as the indignities his fellow politicians endured in pursuit of public approbation.
“A popular chancellor is not doing his job,” he said once. He believed that a politician who was confident enough to be able to face a barrage of hostility was someone who could make things happen.
In this regard he had much in common with Thatcher. She admired him: once calling him “brilliant” three times in five minutes. He in turn admired her readiness to push forward the boundaries of what was politically possible and also shared much of her vision. He recognised her political skills and saw how she was able to extend her empathy with the Conservative party to embrace the silent majority of the electorate. But he himself was a loner: he did not cultivate political friends and he had no clique of supporters or acolytes, even at the peak of his political authority in late 1987.
There was a rumour that the prime minister was considering moving him to the Foreign Office, but nothing came of it. His name was infrequently included in lists of potential future party leaders.
He came into politics as the MP for Blaby, in Leicestershire, at a relatively late age, in February 1974, just before his 42nd birthday. But by then he had already had a successful career in journalism and had much experience in politics. It seemed that running the Treasury was the summit of his ambition.
In his maiden speech in the Commons on 1 April 1974, speaking on that year’s budget, he attacked the new Labour chancellor, Denis Healey, for embarking on a social contract with the trade unions instead of limiting union power in order to control wage inflation. Thatcher was impressed. She was elected Tory leader in 1975. He was on the frontbench the following year as a whip, and appointed as a Treasury spokesman a year later. He became a close adviser to Thatcher on the strategy she should pursue. His course was set.
He had been born into a middle-class Jewish family, a household that supported a nanny, cook and parlourmaid, in Hampstead, north London. His father, Ralph, was a commodities broker, specialising in tea, and his mother, Joan (nee Davis), the daughter of a stockbroker. The pianist Dame Myra Hess was a great-aunt. His paternal grandfather, Gustav Leibson, who was born in Latvia and escaped the east European Jewish purges of the early 20th century, prospered in London sufficiently to send Ralph to Westminster school and changed the family name to Lawson in 1925.
Nigel spent his early school years dodging the London blitz – he went to seven different primary schools – before following his father to Westminster. He would often describe himself as suffering from laziness, but this had no impact on his academic life. He won a maths scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford, where he took a first in philosophy, politics and economics.
His university years were spent partying and playing poker. He skied, fenced and acted and had nothing to do with politics. He did national service for two years in the Royal Navy from 1954 and, promoted to lieutenant-commander, took command of HMS Gay Charger. He was turned down for a career by the Foreign Office in 1956 and instead decided on journalism, joining the Financial Times. He became city editor of the Sunday Telegraph in 1960.
In 1963 his political career began. He was recruited by Conservative central office to help the ailing Harold Macmillan with speech-writing and thereafter continued working for his successor, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, through the 1964 election. After that, “I felt I ought to get out on the field and play,” he wrote later. He tried for a series of parliamentary seats, before eventually securing selection for the Labour marginal, Eton and Slough, in 1968. He lost to the popular Labour politician Joan Lestor in 1970, and then in 1972 was triumphantly selected for Blaby from a list of 170 candidates.
He had turned down the opportunity to become director of the Conservative research department in 1964 and instead returned to journalism, first as a columnist at the FT and then, in 1966, as editor of the Spectator.
Under his editorship, the magazine took a surprisingly liberal line, most notably on the Vietnam war. In a signed article Lawson wrote: “The risks involved in an American withdrawal from Vietnam are less than the risks in escalating a bloody and brutal war.” He was fired while fighting the 1970 election by his then proprietor, Harry Creighton, who wanted more personal control of the magazine.
Now an established journalist, Lawson had plenty of work and political interests to pursue. In 1972 he became a research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, which led to the publication of a book, The Power Game, jointly written with Jock Bruce-Gardyne, on power and decision-making. Its conclusions included the proposition that “so often it is pure hazard which tips the scale of decision in the end”.
In 1973 he returned to Conservative central office and wrote the “crisis package” of the party’s manifesto for the February 1974 “Who Governs Britain?” election – lost by Edward Heath because of the miners’ strike and the three-day week. Lawson believed that Heath could easily have won the election if he had decided to call it earlier.
At Westminster, Lawson, a man who always kept his watch five minutes fast, was an early star, despite his uncompromising approach. He knew what he thought was right and pursued political solutions to that end. His instincts were rightwing, but could be egalitarian, for example supporting the Rooker-Wise amendment in 1977 on inflation-proofing income tax allowances, helping two Labour backbenchers prevail against their own government.
Once in government himself, he kept a distance from his cabinet colleagues, but there was always a plan. During his two years as energy secretary from 1981, the only job he held outside the Treasury, it was Lawson who was responsible for building up the coal stocks at power stations that would enable Thatcher to confront the striking miners and bring Arthur Scargill to his knees and the coal-mining industry effectively to its end.
By the late 1980s, however, although his own political star was in its ascendancy, and he had created the circumstances that led to the so-called “Lawson boom”, there was growing disquiet within the cabinet. The atmosphere of public optimism Lawson was delighted to believe he had created was in contrast to the private antagonism among his colleagues.
He himself was an implacable opponent of the poll tax, which he regarded as absurd, but he angered some of his colleagues by failing to help alleviate the impact of the tax, having apparently decided that it could not be rescued. He and Geoffrey Howe, the foreign secretary, whom Thatcher demoted in the summer of 1989, had both angered the prime minister with their views on the EMS, which they supported and she did not.
Although Thatcher had repeatedly described Lawson’s position as “unassailable” – even after he had resigned – she managed to fulfil the words of a French saying, of which Lawson was particularly fond as a political lodestar. It was: “Tout s’arrange, mais mal” (“Everything will work out, but badly”). Walters resigned as well. And Thatcher’s authority did begin to look under question.
After his resignation, Lawson opined that Thatcher had become an electoral liability. He bitterly resented that what he termed the “No 10 black propaganda machine” blamed him for all the government’s problems and later, in a book of memoirs, The View from No 11 (1992), a majestic overview of the economy under his stewardship, was specifically critical of Thatcher’s loyal press secretary, Bernard Ingham. He tried unsuccessfully to persuade Howe to stand in the leadership election that followed Thatcher’s fall, finally precipitated by Howe in November 1989. Lawson publicly backed Michael Heseltine in that contest.
In retirement, Lawson was honest in acknowledging mistakes, such as announcing the end of mortgage interest rates before the policy came into force, thus overheating the housing market. He also said that he should have tightened monetary policy earlier and admitted that the “big bang” deregulation of London’s financial markets inadvertently led to the financial crisis of 2007-08.
Even though he was not a charismatic orator, he always spoke succinctly, as, for example, when challenging from the backbenches yet another consultation on what to do about the poll tax, he recalled the words of the French politician Pierre Mendès France, who once said that to govern was to choose. “I agree with that,” said Lawson. “To appear to be unable to choose is to appear to be unable to govern.”
His main interest, however, was a campaign to counter the case for global heating. He set up a thinktank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, designed to challenge international attempts to mitigate the impacts of global heating. Lawson claimed that economic growth should not be slowed down to prevent a possible eventuality, but that policy should be made pragmatically in response to what had already happened.
He also accepted a post, as president of Conservatives for Britain, to campaign in favour of Britain leaving Europe.
Lawson had become plump during the course of his career, but lost about 30 kilos (5st) in the year after his resignation, and wrote The Nigel Lawson Diet Book (1996), in which he reported that he had resolved that dieting would be his retirement job. After stepping down from his parliamentary seat in 1992 he was made a peer, and for many years he divided his time between attending the Lords and a home in Gascony in France.
Lawson was married twice and had six children, three of whom were named after him; five survive him. In 1955, he married Vanessa Salmon, the daughter of the J Lyons Corner House dynasty, and they had four children, Dominic, Nigella, Thomasina (who died in 1993) and Horatia. The marriage ended in divorce in 1980 and later that year Lawson married Thérèse Maclear, a former member of the Commons Library staff, with whom he had two children, Tom and Emily. The couple divorced in 2012.
A pregnant woman allegedly pushed to her death off Arthur's Seat by her husband plunged between 40-50ft, a court has heard.
Kashif Anwar, 29, is accused of murdering Fawziyah Javed, 31, in September 2021 by pushing her from the hill in Edinburgh's Holyrood Park.
The fall is said to have caused her multiple blunt-force injuries and ultimately her death, and her unborn child's.
Anwar, from Leeds, denies all the charges against him, including one of acting in a threatening and abusive way towards his wife at a hotel in Edinburgh the day before the alleged murder.
Sergeant Alastair Paisley, 41, a crime scene manager, told Anwar's trial at the High Court at Edinburgh on Tuesday he estimated Ms Javed had fallen "between 40 and 50ft".
Image:Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh
Drone footage showed a cone on the side of the hill, indicating where Ms Javed first landed, and images of a tent placed over her body on the hillside after she died.
Detective Sergeant Christopher Edmund told the jury that mountain rescue had been called to help recover the body as it was in an "extremely difficult location to get to".
Defending, Ian Duguid KC said that during his client's police interview shortly after the incident, Anwar said he and Ms Javed had left the summit of Arthur's Seat because it was busy and Anwar thought they should go home.
Sabeen Rashid, 43, a crime analyst, also gave evidence, going through a 97-page telecoms report with advocate depute Alex Prentice KC.
Pictures from Arthur's Seat were shown, timed between 8.06pm and 8.30pm taken on the phone attributed to Ms Javed, which included selfies of herself and her husband.
As part of the report, Ms Rashid told the court that a six-second call was made from the phone attributed to Ms Javed at 9.19pm to the device attributed to her father, and at 9.20pm there was a call to the number associated with Anwar's father's phone, which lasted one minute.
