4m hours of raw sewage discharges in England in 2023, data expected to show - The Guardian

More than 4m hours of raw sewage discharges poured into rivers and seas last year, a 129% increase on the previous 12 months, new figures are expected to reveal on Wednesday.

Total discharges from the 14,000 storm overflows owned by English water companies that release untreated sewage into rivers and coastal waters increased by 59% to 477,972, making 2023 the worst year for sewage spills, according to an early estimate of the Environment Agency figures seen by the Guardian.

Senior industry sources were preparing for the government to turn its guns on water companies after the record year of discharges. The Environment Agency said it was setting up a whistleblowing hotline for people who work in the industry to report any activity that concerns them.

The heavy rainfall over the autumn and winter is likely to be blamed by the industry for the huge rise. Storm overflows are supposed to be used only in extreme weather but for many years they have been used routinely, discharging raw sewage even on dry days in some cases. The academic Peter Hammond has shown how water companies are routinely using storm overflow discharges in their water management.

This year, for the first time every storm overflow has been fitted with a monitor, known as an EDM, but the scale of the rise in discharges is beyond what full monitoring would be expected to provide.

The scale of releases into waterways comes as rivers in England are at crisis point, suffering from a toxic cocktail of raw and treated sewage pollution, chemical toxins and agricultural runoff.

The revelations will put pressure on the water industry and the government, whose plans to tackle storm overflows have been criticised for not going fast enough. The plan aims to eliminate only 40% of raw sewage overflows into rivers by 2040 and discharges would continue being released into waterways until 2050.

In the last few weeks ministers have engaged in a flurry of announcements in anticipation of the shocking data on record sewage spills.

These included an announcement of a £180m plan to fast-track action on sewage discharges, in the face of criticism not enough is being done.

The water industry wants to invest a record £96bn to the end of the decade to tackle sewage discharges, leaks and the impending water supply crisis but has been criticised for passing the costs on to customers for investment that should have been carried out years ago.

The regulator Ofwat has to decide whether to allow companies to increase water bills to pay for the investment. Some customers will face huge bill rises to pay for vital infrastructure work. Thames Water is seeking to raise bills the highest of any company, by 40 per cent. Ofwat is the ultimate arbiter of whether the industry will be allowed to pass the cost directly on to customers as they seek to tackle years of underinvestment and the pressure of extreme weather from climate change.

When the full data from every storm overflow in England is released by the Environment Agency on Wednesday, some rivers and seas are likely to be shown to be suffering hugely from sewage pollution.

As well as total discharges increasing from just over 301,000 in 2022, the average discharge per storm overflow has increased to almost 35, a 52% increase, suggesting huge surges in spills into some waterways.

More than 60 discharges a year from a storm overflow should spark an investigation by the Environment Agency. The agency is in the middle of a criminal investigation into potentially illegal discharges by water companies and the regulator Ofwat is investigating six firms for widespread illegal sewage dumping from treatment works via storm overflows.

Industry insiders said groundwater ingress into pipes is to blame for some of the scale of the discharges.

Figures from the Met Office show 2023 had four individual months within the top 10 wettest on record and the UK recorded its sixth wettest October since 1836 last year.

Met Office assessments said Storm Babet in the autumn brought the third wettest three-day period on record for England and Wales. In November Storm Ciarán was an exceptionally powerful storm, comparable to the Great Storm of 16 October 1987. Rainfall in the autumn of last year was 410mm, which is 122% of the 1991-2020 average.

Defra has been approached for comment.

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Rishi Sunak forced into mini-reshuffle after two ministers quit amid Tory exodus - Evening Standard

As part of the changes, Nus Ghani has been selected to be Minister for Europe in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office; Leo Docherty will serve in the Ministry of Defence, Kevin Hollinrake will go to the business department, Luke Hall will be a minister in the Department for Education and Alan Mak will serve as a parliamentary under secretary.

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2024-03-27 01:40:42Z
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Churches risk undermining asylum system after Clapham attacker's conversion, says Home Office - The Telegraph

Churches risk undermining the integrity of the asylum system, Home Office sources have said, as it emerged the Clapham chemical attacker was allowed to remain in Britain despite lying and failing a Christianity test.

Immigration files published on Tuesday showed that convicted sex offender Abdul Ezedi was granted asylum after he claimed he had converted to Christianity and his application was backed by a Baptist church minister.

The minister’s evidence was critical in persuading an immigration judge to allow his application, despite a Home Office warning that he was “using religion for his own ends” after he gave incorrect answers to questions about Christianity. Evidence presented in court also showed that he had lied persistently about his background.

A source close to James Cleverly, the Home Secretary, said he had called a meeting with the “vast majority” of Christian churches following Ezedi’s death.

The source said: “We wanted to relay the potential damage to those churches of being seen, rightly or wrongly, as acting against the integrity of our asylum system, where Christian conversion has been brought up at appeal. In this case, the consequences were appalling.

“That reputational risk is only amplified by the fact someone who denied knowledge of Ezedi at the time had in fact known of him within their church, and had supported and vouched for him.”

Ezedi, a 35-year-old Afghan national, had twice been refused asylum by the Home Office, and was considered so dangerous by the Baptist Church that it drew up a “safeguarding contract” for the safety of parishioners over his sex assault and exposure convictions.

Abdul Ezedi died in the Thames while on the run Credit: Metropolitan Police/PA

He came to the UK illegally in 2016 and died in the River Thames while on the run after attacking a 31-year-old mother and her two daughters with a corrosive substance in Clapham on Jan 31.

Ezedi was granted asylum by the immigration tribunal judge on his third appeal in November 2020 after he claimed he had converted to Christianity and would be persecuted if he returned to Afghanistan.

Tim Loughton, a member of the home affairs select committee, called for a full investigation. “The details of this shocking case go to underline the suspicions we have had all along that migrants are playing the Christianity card to game the system in too many cases,” he said.

“But there is a worrying disconnect here between the Home Office who look at these cases rigorously and decide there is not a credible claim, then on the same evidence tribunals seem to think they know better and overrule the detailed work that the Home Office has already done.

“Clearly the system is not working properly. We need to have a full investigation into why it is that in too many cases, tribunals think they know better and are overruling the experts in the immigration service.”

Church accused over ‘conveyor belt’ of baptisms

The comments come after the Church of England faced accusations from a priest that it had become complicit in a “conveyor belt” of asylum seeker baptisms used by migrants to remain in the UK.

Rev Matthew Firth, who was priest in charge at a parish in the North of England, told The Telegraph earlier this year that he had discovered around 20 cases where failed asylum seekers sought baptisms at his church to support their appeals for leave to remain.

The Church of England had previously said that “it is the role of the Home Office, and not the Church, to vet asylum seekers”.

The files show that Ezedi persistently lied about his background, including about whether he had worked in the UK before. A judge who rejected his asylum appeal in February 2017 ruled that he had fabricated accounts of his background that created a “wholly unreliable and inconsistent” picture that was “lacking credibility”.

He gave differing accounts of how his brother died, changed his story about whether he was a Sunni or Shia Muslim and claimed he had never worked in the UK when he had had a job as a car mechanic, according to the documents. He also claimed that he had depression and suicidal thoughts, and that he had been shot by the Taliban.

The Home Office also told the tribunal that Ezedi had been unable to explain the reasons for his conversion, or demonstrate a clear understanding of Christian principles and beliefs during an interview. 

Despite concerns about his honesty, Judge William O’Hanlon believed his conversion was “genuine” and allowed Ezedi’s appeal on asylum and human rights grounds, overturning the Home Office’s rejection of his claim.

Judge O’Hanlon conceded that while Ezedi had been discredited on multiple occasions, he decided to allow the appeal on the strength of the “most compelling evidence” from Rev Roy Merrin, a Baptist minister.

Rev Roy Merrin supported Abdul Ezedi's asylum application Credit: NNP

Rev Merrin admitted he was aware of people who fraudulently claimed conversion with “ulterior motives” but told the tribunal he did not consider Ezedi as such a person. Rev Merrin had attended tribunals on four previous occasions to support Christian convert asylum seekers and wrote in support of Ezedi’s conversion.

Judge O’Hanlon granted asylum after concluding Ezedi’s conversion was “genuine”.

He said: “Having considered all of the evidence before in the round, notwithstanding my concerns as to the honesty of [Ezedi] in relation to certain aspects of his account, I find that [Ezedi] has been consistent in his evidence with regard to his conversion to Christianity.”

Ezedi only revealed that he had converted to Christianity after his first asylum appeal had been rejected in 2017, claiming he had “forgotten” to tell officials about his alleged attendance at Grange Road Baptist Church in Jarrow, Tyne and Wear.

Ezedi’s claim was supported by letters from a Catholic church Justice and Peace Refugee Project, the British Red Cross, and Grange Road Baptist Church representatives. It included pictures of him distributing Christian leaflets in Newcastle city centre and of him being baptised.

Pictures of Abdul Ezedi handing out leaflets on Christianity in Newcastle city centre were included in his asylum claim

Abdul Ezedi only mentioned his conversion to Christianity in his third appeal for asylum

Multiple mistakes on Christianity questions

In its evidence to the immigration tribunal, the Home Office said Ezedi had been unable to explain the reasons for his conversion, or demonstrate a clear understanding of Christian principles and beliefs.

Home Office officials told the tribunal that they did not accept his conversion was “genuine and long-lasting”, that he previously lied and continued to be “dishonest” and was prepared to “use religion for his own ends”.

In his Home Office interview, he insisted he had read the bible every day for three years, but asked what the Old Testament was about, he replied: “Jesus Christ.”

Asked to name Jesus’s main followers, he replied: “Simon, Peter, Jacob, Andrew…12 people, Disciples.” Grilled about what God created on the third day, he answered: “Good Friday and Easter Sunday and Resurrection Day.”

A few days after the Home Office interview, Ezedi’s immigration lawyers sent a statement on his behalf blaming the interpreter for his mistakes and correcting some of the factual errors. In the statement, he wrote: “The interpreter was Kurdish Iranian and I could not understand the dialect. I couldn’t understand his pronunciation.”

Ezedi’s claim for asylum had been initially rejected in May 2016, with an appeal dismissed in February 2017. However, Ezedi lodged a further appeal in March 2019, a year after he was convicted of sexual assault and indecent exposure in 2018 and handed a two-year suspended jail sentence.

Because he was not jailed, he was still eligible to claim asylum. However, it was only on his third appeal that he revealed he had converted to Christianity.

Asked by the judge to explain why he did not mention it in his 2017 appeal, Judge O’Hanlon said his “response was somewhat vague, namely he had ‘forgotten’ to do so”.

However, the judge said he “did not find anything adverse” to Ezedi’s asylum claim as he “had only started attending the church in February of 2016”. He was baptised in June 2018 after attending the evangelical Alpha course.

Judge O’Hanlon admitted Ezedi had “not been honest” in “several” aspects of his account but said: “I remind myself of the fact that [Ezedi] may not have been honest about certain aspects of his claim does not necessarily mean that he is lying about other matters, in this case his claimed Christian conversion.”

He cited a previous Supreme Court judgment involving a Somalian asylum seeker, saying: “We must be very careful not to dismiss an appeal just because an appellant has told lies. An appellant’s own evidence has to be considered in the round with other evidence.”

Abdul Ezedi pictured on CCTV after the chemical attack in Clapham Credit: Metropolitan Police

Church agreed to let sex offender attend services under contract

Ezedi was allowed to continue attending church under a special contract drawn up by the Baptist church, newly released documents show.

A 2019 Baptists Together contract set out “agreed boundaries for the welfare and safety” of Ezedi and other worshippers at a church in Newcastle Upon Tyne.

The two-page document outlines how he was not allowed to be alone at Grange Road Baptist Church and had to be chaperoned at all times.

The contract, renewed every six months, says: “This agreement is being put in place because of a conviction of sexual assault and exposure.”

It required Ezedi “to be accountable” to “carefully chosen individuals”, all of whom were men, who would “support” him.

It adds: “They are aware of the conviction and will endeavour to pastorally listen to you, care for you, advise you and pray for you.”

Ezedi was given a suspended sentence in 2018 for grabbing a woman’s buttocks and exposing himself at a Newcastle bus stop.

The full indictment said he “intentionally touched” a woman in “circumstances being that the touching was sexual” and non-consensual between Feb and June 2017.

The second charge stated that he “intentionally exposed his genitals intending that someone would see them and be caused alarm or distress” on June 5 2017. The indictment clarified the offence as involving “masturbating”.

At the time of the offences, he was living at a hostel in the Fenham area of Newcastle, working in a pizza take away in Jarrow and attending church there.

He was required to sign a document pledging only to go to the church on Sundays if he stayed “in the vicinity of at least one of the male supporters”.

He vowed: “I will only come to church for the Sunday service. I will not enter the church without one of my male supporters being present. I will stay beside my supporter all the time. I will leave the church when my supporter leaves or before them.”

His pledges included agreeing to “not sit alone in the church at any time” and “any concerns” about his behaviour would be “shared securely” during “pastoral care meetings”.

The suspended sentence Ezedi received at Newcastle Crown Court was not severe enough to reach the threshold for deportation.

The victim of his assault later revealed how he began pestering her for sex soon after they became friends.

“If he’d been jailed for attacking me then surely he would have been deported,” the woman told The Sun. “But the failings didn’t end there because someone from a church gave him a reference so he could gain asylum.”

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2024-03-26 20:45:00Z
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China cyber-attacks: this growing threat to UK security will not go away - The Guardian

In March last year an integrated review of the UK’s defence and foreign policy said it would protect the country’s “democratic freedoms” from Chinese state attacks.

A few months later the Electoral Commission confirmed why democratic institutions and processes were on the threat list as it revealed that a cyber-attack – by a then unidentified assailant – had accessed the data of 40 million voters.

On Monday the UK government said an unnamed Chinese state-backed actor was behind the sortie and that a Beijing-affiliated group, called APT31, was likely to have been responsible for targeting the email accounts of four British parliamentarians who have been critical of China.

The list of targets cited by the integrated review went beyond democratic institutions and processes however, and outlined the scale of the Chinese cyber-threat. The economy, critical national infrastructure and supply chains were also mentioned. Last year the all-party intelligence and security committee of parliament said China had the resources to target the UK “prolifically and aggressively”, referring to “hundreds of thousands of civil intelligence officers” and a “highly capable and increasingly sophisticated cyber-espionage operation”.

The Electoral Commission was just the latest target of a data-gathering operation that is global and is “being done on an industrial scale”, according to Alan Woodward, a professor of cybersecurity at Surrey University.

While names and addresses on their own are not enough to pose a substantial threat to electoral integrity, they could be combined with other data to target specific voters in swing seats, he said.

“The attackers were able to walk off with what on the face of it does not sound like high-value data. But when you combine it with information elsewhere, like social media accounts, you can start to narrow it down to specific individuals or groups that should be targeted,” he said.

In a recent report, the US cybersecurity firm Secureworks said it had seen Chinese hackers attack organisations around the world deemed a high priority for Beijing’s economic strategy including biotechnology, aerospace, renewable energy and microchips. The aim of the attacks was to secure data and intellectual property.

Defence industry supply chains in the western world have also been targeted. In 2022 the director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, warned western companies that China was trying to “ransack” their intellectual property. In the same year a Chinese government intelligence officer was sentenced to 20 years in prison in the US for crimes including an attempt to steal aircraft engine technology from General Electric.

Don Smith, the vice-president of threat research at Secureworks, said China could run the “full gamut” of cyber operations. The latest incidents outlined by the UK government on Monday were consistent with a wide-ranging strategy, he added, which covers intellectual property theft, targeting rival states such as the UK and attacking non-governmental organisations.

“The Chinese are involved in the full gamut of cyber operations,” Smith said. “These range from traditional cyber-espionage for reasons of national security, to carrying out cyber-espionage for commercial advantage and targeting those perceived to be enemies of the Chinese state.”

In a statement on Monday, the US deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, said China’s global hacking operation aimed to “repress critics of the Chinese regime, compromise government institutions and steal trade secrets”, as the US charged seven alleged Chinese hackers with conspiracy to commit computer intrusions and wire fraud in a day of joint action with the UK.

China wants to be a world-leading power in the field of artificial intelligence. According to some observers, this could be where the Electoral Commission hack, and others like it, have serious consequences as half the world heads to the polls this year.

Darktrace, a British cybersecurity firm, said on Monday the adoption of generative artificial intelligence – which can create plausible audio, text and image from a simple hand-typed prompt – has the potential to “increase levels of disruption and allow for more sophisticated techniques to sow misinformation, access sensitive information and influence voters”.

Oliver Dowden, the deputy prime minister, said on Monday the UK “will not hesitate to take swift and robust actions wherever the Chinese government threatens the United Kingdom’s interests.”

Those threats will undoubtedly continue – and not just for the UK.

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Cody Fisher: Family call for stricter security and bleed kits at nightclubs - BBC.com

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Cody Fisher: Family call for stricter security and bleed kits at nightclubs  BBC.comView Full coverage on Google News
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Judges didn’t see what the fuss over Garrick Club was about – they do now - The Guardian

In October 2011, Brenda Hale, who was then the only female judge in the supreme court, gave a speech to a diversity forum, organised by the law firm Norton Rose, and expressed her dismay that so many of her colleagues were members of the men-only Garrick Club.

At that time the club’s members included the president of the supreme court, three supreme court justices who sat alongside Hale and an estimated 25% of the most senior male judges in England and Wales. “I regard it as quite shocking that so many of my colleagues belong to the Garrick Club, but they don’t see what all the fuss is about,” she said. Hale became the third person and first woman to serve as president of the supreme court.

It has taken 12 and a half years, but four judges seem to have finally grasped what she meant – and resigned their membership.

What happened to change their minds? Why did they feel able to ignore the clear, consistent, repeated warnings of the most senior woman in British legal history for so long?

All four resigned a few days after the Guardian published the names of 60 people with influential roles in the British establishment who were members of a club that has for decades attracted criticism for its refusal to admit women, among them leading figures within the arts, politics and Whitehall.

Harriet Harman, Labour MP, a lawyer and former deputy leader of the Labour party, said it was clear that the decision was prompted by the discomfort of being named as members in the media.

“If the individuals feel embarrassed by their names being associated with a men-only club, that tells you that time’s up for the Garrick,” she said.

As for why it had taken so long, she said: “These kind of male privileged positions are deeply entrenched. But the pattern is always that once this kind of thing is challenged, very quickly people can’t ever believe that it used to be like that.”

Other senior male lawyers became sensitive to the Garrick’s no-women members policy decades ago. Leading human rights lawyer Anthony Lester resigned his club membership after a vote to admit women was defeated in 2006.

Helena Kennedy said she was “very glad judges are reflecting on why it is so inappropriate for them to belong to a club that excludes women”.

She said she was struck by how far Britain lagged behind the US in this regard. “I remember being taken to a Washington club by a federal judge; I commented on the presence of women and he was very clear that it was impermissible for a judge in the USA to belong to clubs excluding women – and that was decades ago. The representatives of justice have to be visibly living up to the values on which we are trying to base our society.”

Female lawyers have been trying to attract attention to this issue for years, arguing that the strong concentration of senior male barristers, judges and solicitors regularly gathering in the club was symptomatic of wider diversity issues across the profession.

When Jonathan Sumption, then a supreme court judge (and also a Garrick club member) said in 2015 that any attempt to speed up the process of achieving gender equality in the senior judiciary could lead to “appalling consequences” and could make male candidates feel the cards were “stacked against them”, there was an outcry among female lawyers.

In 2022 more than 300 senior lawyers signed an online petition at womenatthegarrickclub.org claiming the club contributed to “the gross under-representation of women at the top of the legal profession”.

Although an equal number of men and woman have been studying law for decades, equality has not been maintained through lawyers’ careers. Only 20% of king’s counsels (KCs), the most senior barristers in England and Wales, and just two of the supreme court’s 12 judges, are women. Bar Council research has shown that male lawyers’ earnings are higher than women’s at every level of the profession.

Harman noted how many male commentators had dismissed the noise over the Garrick’s membership as insignificant.

“Why is it that we seem to think everything that’s about women’s advance, is trivial and unnecessary to change?” she asked. “The idea that men tell women that it doesn’t matter that women are being excluded is patronising, condescending and objectionable.”

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Farmers ride tractors into central London in major protest over trade deals - The Independent

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Tractor-riding farmers have descended on Westminster to protest against trading arrangments they claim will “decimate” British farming and jeapordise UK food security.

Campaign groups Save British Farming and Fairness for Farmers of Kent have assembled a “go-slow” convoy around parliament with organisers expecting 50 to 100 tractors as well as other farm vehicles.

A few hundred people and six tractors sounding their horns were seen by The Independent at College Green at around 6.30pm on Monday.

One tractor could be seen in front of Big Ben with a banner reading “Save UK food security” draped over its front, as farmers stoodby holding placards.

Another could be seen with a banner reading: “Stop substandard imports” as protesters held placards saying “Beep for freedom”.

Farmers are protesting at Westminster over trading arrangements they claim will ‘decimate’ British farming

(AFP/Getty)

Wiltshire beef and arable farmer Liz Webster said: “In 2019, this government was elected with a mandate to uphold our standards and deliver a ready-made deal with the EU which would see British agriculture boom. It is now entirely obvious that they have totally betrayed us all.

“Polling shows that the public back British farming and food and want to maintain our high food standards and support local producers.

“We need a radical change of policy and an urgent exit from these appalling trade deals which will decimate British food.”

Farmers loop around Parliament Square in Westminster

Organisers have also criticised labelling that allows products to bear a union flag when they have not been grown or reared in Britain.

Ms Webster claimed the current situation was “like going out with the English football team to the World Cup and saying ‘off you go, you’ve got chains on your legs and chains on your hands’. We are completely and utterly disadvantaged”.

Trade deals with New Zealand, Australia, and 11 other countries after entry to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, an Asia-Pacific trade bloc, along with a lack of import checks, were allowing lower standard foods into the country, she added.

Organisers claim British farmers are ‘utterly’ disadvantaged within current trade deals

Jeff Gibson, founder of Kent Fairness for Farmers, said: “It’s so important that our message about substandard imports, dishonest labelling and concerns for food security is heard.

“With an election looming, we want to ensure the next incoming government takes up our cause.”

Geoffrey Philpott, a cauliflower farmer in east Kent, who is bringing three tractors to the rally, said: “I hope to be farming for many years to come, but if things don’t change, I won’t be and I won’t be employing the 14 people who work for me.

“Then we will be reliant on foreign produce that will not have the high standard of UK production. Once that happens, we could be held to ransom over supply and pricing.”

Farmers take part in a tractor ‘go-slow’ through Parliament Square

It comes after similar demonstrations in Kent saw dozens of tractors clog roads around the port of Dover in a protest against cheap imports in February.

French farmers also moved tractors to block routes in Paris earlier this year, urging the government to do more to protect the country’s agricultural sector from foreign competition, rising costs and low pay.

The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs was approached for comment.

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2024-03-26 00:41:39Z
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