i morning briefing: Marquees, money and migrants

Welcome to Friday’s Early Edition from i.

Last week, after a long series of battles, the Illegal Migration Bill passed through Parliament, pushing forward Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman’s plans to “stop the boats”. The victory for the Government was short lived, with the PM’s spokesperson admitting the laws “needed to be paired with the Rwanda partnership which is being challenged in the courts”. Due to that legal action, which will come up in the Supreme Court in October, any deportation flights to east Africa –if they happen – are unlikely to take off until next year. But forcing asylum seekers out of the country the minute they arrive isn’t the only plan making headlines. Attempts to reduce the number of asylum seekers in hotels are also causing controversy, and Suella Braverman is being accused of scoring another “own goal” over the new law. We’ll take a look at why, and the latest stories, after the headlines.

Today’s news, and why it matters

Fuel poverty campaigners have angrily criticised energy watchdog Ofgem after its decision to allow increased bills saw British Gas record bumper profits costing every customer an extra £66 in the first half of this year. British Gas revealed a 900 per cent increase in profits to £969m for the first six months of 2023 after the regulator maintained the price cap on domestic energy bills at a level to allow energy supply companies to make more money.

Rishi Sunak and his family will travel to Balmoral at the end of August to stay with the King and Queen, setting up a potentially awkward encounter over the Prime Minister’s watering down of the Government’s net zero agenda. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a former member of Charles’ staff said: “The King won’t lobby, but Rishi will likely say something and he will respond.”

As many as 6,000 shops have vanished from UK high streets in the last five years, according to latest figures. Shop vacancy figures highlight the fate of retailers, especially smaller, independent stores, buckling under economic pressure.

The Ministry of Defence has launched an investigation after officials accidentally sent emails containing classified information to a close Russian ally instead of the US, because of a typing error. A “small number” of emails intended for the Pentagon were sent to Mali because of the accidental omission of an “i” from an email address, meaning they went to the west African country’s .ml domain, rather than the US military’s .mil.

BBC anchors axed during a revamp of its news channel could return to screens after chief presenter Yalda Hakim quit to join rival Sky News. Rising star Ms Hakim is leaving just four months after being named one of the five £230,000-a-year “faces” of the revamped BBC News channel, merging domestic and international news.

It could take several weeks to hear the results of Sinead O’Connor‘s autopsy, a coroner’s court in London has said, after no medical cause was given for her death. Police earlier confirmed that O’Connor was found unresponsive at a home in south-east London and pronounced dead at the scene.

Three stories on how Suella Braverman’s policies are going:

The tents: Reports last night said that the Home Secretary had purchased tents in recent days that could accommodate up to 2,000 asylum seekers. The marquees are part of contingency plans to cope with an expected surge of small boat crossings in the Channel, and also feed into the government’s plans to avoid using hotels to house asylum seekers. The Times, which first reported the tent purchases, cited Government sources who said a similar proposal was rejected last year because of warnings it would trigger legal challenges based on inhumane treatment of asylum seekers. The newspaper was told some in government had even compared it to concentration camps. Read the full story here. It also added that Home Office sources said there was “nothing wrong” with using tents to house migrants and said other European countries, including Ireland, did so. Last year the Manston processing centre used marquees as it became overcrowded. One unaccompanied teenager said at the time he had caught scabies in Manston, and that it was so severely overcrowded people were forced to sit all night as there was not enough room to sleep. One worker told i at the time that staff at Manston were “frantically flinging up more tents” to house migrants, and that portaloos were regularly blocked up, increasing the risk of disease and outbreaks of norovirus and diptheria. It’s not yet clear exactly where the newly purchased tents would be used.

The barge: Next Tuesday, 50 people are expected to be sent to the Bibby Stockholm, the government’s controversial floating barge that will be able to house up to 500 male asylum seekers at a time. Refugee charities say the use of barges and former military bases to house asylum seekers is damaging to the needs of vulnerable people, and also raised concerns for migrants’ safety. Conservative MPs representing areas where the facilities are being established have expressed concerns about how their constituencies will be impacted. Read the full story here. Earlier this month, West Dorset MP Chris Loder said the planned capacity is double than what it had been designed to hold. He wrote to Ms Braverman demanding the three-storey vessel should be stopped or be confirmed as “safe to cope with double the weight that it was designed to bear”. “For months, I have been asking for sight of the safety risk assessments that should have been done to allow the Bibby Stockholm to be used in Portland Harbour with 500 people on board whilst it was designed for 250,” he wrote in a letter to Ms Braverman and transport minister, Baroness Vere.

The money: While the debate over how best to tackle migrants arriving on small boats rages, Whitehall faces another crisis. The UK has been warned by an international watchdog that it may no longer be able to take billions from its aid budget to pay the costs of asylum seekers in Britain. The Home Secretary’s critics have accused her of a “massive own goal”, Rob Merrick reports. Sarah Champion, the Labour chair of the Commons International Development Committee, said: “This is a massive own goal by Suella Braverman, which does nothing for the taxpayer, nothing for refugees and nothing for our international standing.” Three different departments are now battling to avoid paying detention and accommodation costs predicted to reach £9.6bn over three years, two separate sources say. Read the full story here.

 Around the world

The leader of the Wagner mercenary group has been photographed looking relaxed in jeans and a T-shirt at a peace summit with African leaders in the Russian city of St Petersburg. Yevgeny Prigozhin’s whereabouts have been subject to global speculation since the botched mutiny he attempted on Moscow last month, after which he is believed to have headed to Belarus.

Donald Trump is accused of pressuring an employee to delete Mar-a-Lago security camera footage, new charges allege. In a revised indictment, the former US president is charged with three new counts, one of wilful retention of defence information and two of obstruction. Another person, Mar-a-Lago staff member Carlos de Oliveira, has also been indicted in the case.

A Sicilian animal rescuer has recalled the moment he was woken by a neighbour at 3am just in time to escape his home with his wife, daughter, 15 dogs and two cats as “every mountain in Palermo was on fire”. Salvatore Libero Barone, 43, told i that if it weren’t for his neighbour he might not have realised the wildfires ripping through the city were within a few metres of his home.

It was referred to in ancient Roman texts but never found. Now, the ruins of Nero’s Theatre have been discovered under the garden of a future Four Seasons hotel, steps away from the Vatican.

Watch out for…

the High Court, where a judge is due to hand down a ruling over Sadiq Khan’s proposals to expand London’s ultra low emission zone (Ulez).  

Thoughts for the day

British people increasingly recognise Brexit is a mistake – so why the silence? Like shameful family secrets, Britain suppresses the realities of how badly Brexit has gone, writes Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.

Whether we like it or not, Nigel Farage still has the power to unsettle the establishment. One wonders what he might set his sights on next, says Eliot Wilson.

I managed to take Radio 1 off air – and loved every minute of it, writes Greg James.

Culture Break

Sinéad O’Connor was the voice of Ireland – she played by her own rules. In Ireland, there was always a strange juxtaposition between O’Connor’s status as an international icon and the familiarity we felt with her, writes Ed Power.

 The Big Read

How the UK must change to avoid the ‘global boiling’ era of climate change. Summer heatwaves, heavy rainfall and long droughts are set to become the norm, but the country is well behind on the necessary adaptations to survive those changes, reports Daniel Capurro.

Sport

Pernille Harder: How England plan to stop Denmark’s ‘outstanding’ goal threat. England’s Alex Greenwood, Lucy Bronze and Keira Walsh hail the former Chelsea superstar as she prepares to do battle with her former WSL rivals at the World Cup, writes Katherine Lucas.

 Something to brighten your day

 It lay undiscovered in a field for more than 500 years. Now, a rare medieval seal mould made of cast copper-alloy which promised a “fast track to heaven” is going on display. The seal was found by a metal detectorist in the parish of Lockerley, Hampshire, which had been the site of a former medieval market. The matrix is inscribed in Latin with ‘sigillu[m] officii prioris p[ri]oretas sce trinitat[is] de Motesfont’, which means Seal of the Official of the Prior of the Priory of Mottisfont. Mottisfont, which is now run by the National Trust, is where it is to go on display.