Sam Hancock
Live reporter

We're going to end our live coverage there, thanks for following along on what's been a busy Sunday morning.

If you want to catch up on this morning's events, have a look at my colleague Anna Boyd's comprehensive round-up of the Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme. It'll tell you everything you need to know.

There was a lot to unpick from that interview with Home Secretary Suella Braverman, which Laura Kuenssberg herself has done in this very handy bit of analysis.

You can keep up-to-date with the latest news lines by following our main story, which is here.

All that's left to say now is goodbye - from myself and my colleagues Anna Boyd and Jen Meierhans. Thanks for joining us.

There's plenty of reaction coming in to the home secretary's appearance on Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg.

At the top of her interview, Suella Braverman was asked when the long queues at Dover will end, which she responded to by urging people to be patient.

Green Party MP Caroline Lucas said Braverman was "on another planet as usual".

Quoting some of Braverman's own words, Lucas tweeted: “'Generally our borders are flowing very well' - people just need to be 'patient'. Tell that to thousands waiting for 15 hours at Dover. Nothing to do with Brexit obvs, she claims - contrary to view of CEO of Dover port."

Actor and broadcaster Adil Ray took issue with Braverman "singling out the British Pakistani community as perpetrators of sexual grooming". He said: "My 2011 doc outlined a disproportionate number but as the Home Office’s own report in 2020 confirmed, the majority are white. Braverman was attorney general at the time."

That report can be found here, external.

Meanwhile Labour MP Jess Phillips hit back after Braverman said child safeguarding authorities had been turning a blind eye to sexual abuse for fear of being labelled racist. She tweeted:

Image source, .

There's been a lot of talk this morning about illegal and legal migration in the UK. Let's have a look at the current figures.

The number of people claiming asylum in the UK rose sharply in 2022.

More than 89,000 people - with the greatest number from Albania - requested asylum.

The second largest group, with just under 10,900 applications, came from Afghanistan, followed by Iran, Iraq and Syria.

Small boat arrivals accounted for about 45% of asylum applications made in 2022.

In total, 45,755 migrants, external crossed the Channel that year, the highest number since figures began to be collected in 2018.

• How many people cross the Channel in small boats and where do they come from?

Anna Boyd
Live reporter

If you're just joining our live coverage, it's been a busy morning of political interviews on the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. Here's a round-up of everything you might have missed.

Immigration

The government's plan to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda dominated the political discussion on today's programme.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman insisted it's a legal scheme and the country's safe despite being informed by Kuenssberg about an incident in 2018 that saw a dozen protesters from a Rwandan refugee camp shot dead by police.

When it came to her previous ambitions that net migration could fall to tens of thousands, she refused to be drawn on whether that was still the plan. Braverman also confirmed that "all sorts of land and sites and vessels" were being considered for migrant accommodation and the aim was to roll out the sites "very quickly".

Shadow levelling up Secretary Lisa Nandy was quick to dismiss the plan, and Braverman's claims about it, as "outlandish nonsense".

Child sexual exploitation

When it came to new laws on child sex exploitation, there was some agreement between the two.

Under new government plans, people who work with children in England will be legally required to report child sexual abuse or face prosecution. Nandy said she would "100% welcome it" but said the changes must be implemented without delay.

Artificial intelligence and a word from Judy Blume

Away from party politics, we also heard from billionaire tech engineer Jann Tallinn and his concerns about the rapid development of AI.

And author Judy Blume told of her joy at seeing her widely acclaimed novel Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret on the big screen after its publication more than 50 years ago.

Laura Kuenssberg
Presenter, Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg

It was the first time the home secretary had come into our studio live and there was plenty to talk about - and plenty of headlines from what she had to say.

First off, Suella Braverman was resolutely determined to defend her plans to send migrants to Rwanda, saying repeatedly that in her view it is, contrary to the United Nations’ view, a safe country for refugees.

In her corner, the High Court has judged that the scheme can go ahead, but it is being appealed again.

There's no question that there's public desire to stop the terrible trade of people trafficking across the Channel. Many governments, not just the UK, are grappling with what to do. But there are plenty of practical and political problems about the home secretary’s approach, and huge jeopardy in her and the prime minster’s slogan to "stop the boats".

It was also notable that Braverman wouldn’t repeat her previously stated hope of getting legal immigration under 100,000, not least because there is tension in the Cabinet over what is realistic, and what the economy needs.

Braverman likes to style herself as a politician who tells the truth without fear, even if that provokes strong reactions - she likes to "get things done", she told me, not least when it comes to tackling grooming gangs. She said it was one of the "biggest national scandals", and accused parts of the British Pakistani community and some Labour councils of turning a blind eye. She says that’s being honest.

The opposition welcomes the changes to make the idea of reporting child abuse mandatory but shadow levelling up secretary Lisa Nandy claims it's a "joke" that the change is only just being made.

Here's the moment Home Secretary Suella Braverman told Laura Kuenssberg she was "convinced" Rwanda's safe for refugees.

It came after she was asked about a particular case from February 2018.

According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), a group of Congolese refugees living at the Kiziba Refugee Camp in Rwanda were shot dead by police for protesting against their living conditions.

Braverman said she wasn't familiar with the case. And when shown a video of the aftermath, she added: "That might be 2018, we're looking at 2023 and beyond."

Now the programme's over, let's recall what the panellists had to say about Home Secretary Suella Braverman's interview.

Mayor of West Yorkshire Tracy Brabin asked Braverman where she'd been "because certainly some of the suggestions she was making are already in train".

"That already hard working professionals should call out when they hear about child sexual abuse - this is already happening," she told Laura Kuenssberg, adding that the blame game is "not helpful... we want solutions"

NFU president Minnette Batters said the UK doesn't have enough unemployed people to do the jobs that are available, which is "holding our economy back". She also accused the Home Office of failing to "engage with business".

Murray Lambell, the general manager of eBay UK, said he was glad to hear the home secretary make a clear definition between illegal and legal immigrants - and that he hoped all could be treated "with care and dignity to make sure wherever they get resettled, they can do so successfully and happily".

Sam Hancock
Live reporter

Phew, that was a busy hour. Thanks for following along.

We're going to bring you a bit more analysis from the programme now, including what the panel had to say about Home Secretary Suella Braverman's Rwanda claims.

A round-up of all the key issues raised by Laura Kuenssberg and her guests is also on the way.

Stay tuned.

Blume finishes by talking about censorship - specifically moves by Republican officials to bar public schools in the US from teaching about sexual education and gender identity.

Ron DeSantis’ so-called Don’t Say Gay proposals have drawn a lot of criticism from people across the political spectrum.

Blume says politicians are “drunk with power” and that she doesn’t understand what they are trying to prove. What are parents trying to protect their children from, she asks. “Talking about things? Knowing about things?”

There's more on all of that here.

In this clip, the 85-year-old author describes how it felt when she saw Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret as a film more than 50 years after it was first published as a novel.

US author Judy Blume’s much-loved novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret was first published in 1970. The protagonist is an 11-year-old girl dealing with puberty, friendships and faith.

Its frank look at adolescence courted controversy and in the the 1980s, it was banned from some American school libraries.

Asked today why it took so long to bring the book to the screen, Blume says she was waiting for someone who she could recognise as having the passion to deal with the project.

“It was the right moment because it was the right team,” she tells Laura Kuenssberg.

Blume says her son once told her she should wait until “all those people who grew up with your books are in power in Hollywood and... see what happens”.

“And I’m so glad that I’m around to see it,” she adds.

You can watch the trailer for the film here, external.

We’re onto the final guest of this morning’s programme, and it’s American author Judy Blume.

She’s here to talk about the long-awaited film adaptation of her 1970 novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

Let’s see what she has to say.

Nandy says she's been working on this issue for more than 20 years and that: "You won't find anyone who is more concerned about child sex exploitation than me."

Responding to accusations from Suella Braverman that Labour councils have turned a blind eye to the issue, she agrees that historic reports have shown politicians across the spectrum failed to act in certain situations.

But she rebuts the home secretary's claim that there has been some kind of wilful blind eye by Labour on the matter, saying it's "an absolute joke".

She also highlights the low number of convictions on this issue, which she says is Braverman and her government's fault.

And that's it from the shadow levelling up secretary.

Nandy’s now being asked about Labour’s plan to freeze council tax for a year - if it wins the next General Election - fresh after Sir Keir Starmer made the pledge earlier this week.

Kuenssberg asks how Labour plans to give councils and local authorities more powers if the party's telling them how to do things like pause council tax.

"We're not," Nandy replies. "What we are doing is proposing that the government uses some of the money from the windfall tax in order to compensate councils for the lost revenue that's been taken from them from government so they don't have to put up taxes on working people."

Council tax for millions of households in England will rise on 1 April, with many councils due to raise rates by 5%. Labour leader Sir Keir said freezing the current rate could be paid for with funds from an increased windfall tax on energy firms.

Nandy says the reason councils of every political persuasion are putting up taxes is because they have no choice because they've lost funding from the government and the only other alternative is to cut services.

Nandy's asked whether Labour would keep the government's Rwanda policy, providing it works.

The shadow levelling up secretary says this is "so far a policy that has cost the taxpayer a huge amount of money and hasn't seen a single person go to Rwanda", and adds that the evidence so far "is that [the policy and its potential] is just another outlandish nonsense claim by the home secretary".

Nandy says the truth is that the government is failing to process asylum claims and has an enormous backlog. She says Braverman complains about a broken asylum system but insists it's the Conservatives who broke it.

She says the government has added millions of pounds to the issue by coming up with plans that don't work - and that the entire Rwanda plan will probably never materialise.

The country needs a working asylum system, Nandy adds, and Braverman "can't do the basics of her job".

We’re now hearing from shadow levelling up secretary Lisa Nandy. The Labour MP for Wigan wrote a column , externalin her local paper yesterday, promising that a Labour government would prioritise “putting police back on our streets”.

Will she asked about that? Let’s listen in and see.

We've just been hearing from Jaan Tallinn, an Estonian billionaire computer programmer and co-founder of Skype, who spoke to Laura Kuenssberg about the dangers of AI.

This week, along with more than 1,000 other leaders in the tech field, including Elon Musk, he signed an open letter calling for companies like OpenAI, Google and Microsoft to pause training more powerful AI systems so the industry can assess the risks they pose.

Tallinn says, as things stand, we can “still pull the plug” on computers - but that may not always be the case as they grow more “competent.”

“It's not guaranteed that we can continue to control them in a way that we would like," he tells the programme.

Read more here.

Braverman ends by saying she wants to be a home secretary who gets things done - "a doer, someone of action and [who gets] results overwhelmingly".

She adds that she wants to speak for the "patriotic, law-abiding, often silent majority" and be a home secretary who "tells the truth about the problems we are grappling with in our society, without fear of offending celebrities or media outlets".

And that's it from the home secretary.

Braverman's now explaining how the policy will work.

She says authorities have "roundly failed to take action to safeguard vulnerable girls", signalling a need to change the system.

Kuenssberg asks Braverman if she believes people in the authorities are complicit in abuse.

Braverman replies that it's down to "concerns about political correctness, worries about being called bigoted" and "cultural sensitives and not wanting to come across as racist".

She says there has been a "wilful turning of a blind eye, a failure to act and that silence has enabled this abuse. She adds that the Conservative policy will make it clear "they can't get away with inaction".

Braverman's now talking about a new policy she's announcing today, which will make it a legal requirement for people who work with children to report child sexual abuse.

Data from the Ministry of Justice shows the average number of days between a defendant in CSA cases in England and Wales being charged and the criminal trial starting has risen by 43% in four years, from 276 days in 2017 to 395 days in 2021.