Mohammed was 17 years old when he was shot by an Israeli sniper in Bethlehem. Two years on, his family say there is no accountability for his death. Their story is one of dozens from across the West Bank, it is claimed, with human rights organisations calling for child rights to be upheld.
Reform UK's Malcolm Offord claimed one million people came to the UK in the 20th century, and seven million people have come to the UK since 2000. This is not accurate.
Airbnb’s business practices in the West Bank have long been in the spotlight, prompting criticism from human rights campaigners. We can now reveal that the firm has lobbied the Scottish Government 52 times since 2018.
There has been renewed controversy over the UK Government’s handling of grooming gangs in recent weeks.
X owner Elon Musk made several posts about the issue, including a claim that UK politicians had shown reluctance to deal with foreign offenders.
In one related post, he shared an image that claimed to name MPs and Lords who had voted against deporting foreigners living in the UK convicted of rape. Musk told readers to “remember these names next election”.
Ferret Fact Service looked at this claim and found it False.
The scandal around the UK state’s response to grooming gangs has been ongoing for a decade, and there have been a series of inquiries into how gangs were able to exploit vulnerable children.
It has been claimed that authorities including the police were reluctant to look into exploitation allegations committed by British Asians to avoid inflaming community tensions.
Musk has made a number of interventions into UK politics since he took over the X platform, and has focussed recent criticism on Keir Starmer and other politicians for their handling of the grooming gangs scandal. His posts have sparked new interest in the issue.
Analysis from Sky News found Musk’s interest was sparked by a handful of right-wing accounts on the X platform, and posts about the issue significantly increased after he began to post about it.
This has led to calls for a fresh inquiry into the issue, which the Conservative Party attempted to add as an amendment to Labour’s child welfare bill in the House of Commons this week. The proposed amendment was voted down.
The image alleged MPs had voted down a bill aimed at deporting foreign-born people in the UK convicted of rape.
It included a number of Scottish MPs.
The UK Government already has the power to deport foreign nationals sentenced to a year or more in prison.
Section 32(5) of the UK Borders Act 2007 mandates that the home secretary must make a deportation order against a “foreign criminal”. This is defined in act as a person who has been convicted and sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment for an offence.
There are certain exceptions to this, where the deportation would breach international human rights legislation or the UK’s obligations on rights for refugees.
British citizens cannot be deported, although citizenship can be revoked if it is considered to be conducive to the public good, or if the citizenship was obtained by fraud.
The list of MPs circulated by Musk actually showed more than 170 members who signed a letter in 2020 opposing plans to deport dozens of people convicted of crimes to Jamaica, after it emerged people on the flight had come to the UK as children as part of the Windrush generation.
The letter, organised by Labour MP Nadia Whittome, urged the flight to be delayed until a then-anticipated review of the scandal around the Windrush was completed. The review was published in March of that year.
The Windrush generation were invited to come to the UK from Caribbean countries between 1948 and 1971 as part of a bid to rebuild post-war Britain.
An estimated 500,000 people arrived during this time, and were later granted leave to remain in the UK.
In 2012, changes to immigration law meant many people who had arrived as children without their own documents were now unable to prove their status, and several were detained and removed from the country despite having lived as settled citizens for decades.
The flight in 2020 that prompted the letter eventually did fly containing 17 people and the UK Government said two had been convicted of rape. Those who signed the letter were not voting against deporting people convicted of rape, but expressing concerns over the flight and issues surrounding the Windrush in general.
The claim that the listed MPs had all voted against deporting foreign rapists is inaccurate. In fact, the list contained signatories to a letter expressing concern at the removal of people to Jamaica, many of whom were children when they came to the UK as part of the Windrush generation.
Ferret Fact Service (FFS) is a non-partisan fact checker, and signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network fact-checkers’ code of principles.
All the sources used in our checks are publicly available and the FFS fact-checking methodology can be viewed here.
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Cover image thanks to Daniel Oberhaus, CC BY 2.0
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