It is up to France to stop refugees crossing the Channel in small boats, Priti Patel has said after 27 people, mostly Kurds from Iraq or Iran, drowned trying to reach the UK in an inflatable boat. My colleague Sarah Marsh has all the latest developments on this story on a separate live blog, here.
Asylum claims made in the UK have risen to their highest level for nearly 20 years, according to new figures from the Home Office, as the head of the Refugee Council calls for less “nationalist posturing” over people fleeing war zones. Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, has announced a radical reorganisation of the British army, with an additional £8.6bn to be spent on equipment and a new ranger regiment created to help counter extremist organisations and hostile state threats. Labour has said that this will leave the army “too small” and “too thinly stretched” and that it confirms Boris Johnson has broken a pre-election promise not to cut the size of the armed forces. (See 1.43pm.) HM Revenue and Customs has struck a deal to relocate tax officials into a new office complex in Newcastle owned by major Conservative party donors through an offshore company based in a tax haven, the Guardian can reveal. Downing Street has insisted no decision has yet been taken on a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics. Earlier Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the Commons, prompted speculation that the government might stay away when he told MPs that “no tickets have been booked” for ministers for the event. But No 10 said: We have said that the prime minister’s long-standing view is that boycotts don’t work. Our position is the same: no decision has been made on government representation at the games. Labour is calling for an investigation into the conduct and honesty of the Conservative peer Michelle Mone after she repeatedly denied any association with a PPE (personal protective equipment) company it has since emerged she recommended to the government. Hundreds of thousands of parents are missing out on help paying for childcare and billions allocated to the government’s flagship “tax-free childcare” scheme is going unspent, data has revealed.