May Bulman
@maybulman.bsky.social
Investigations editor @lhreports.bsky.social, formerly social affairs corro at The Independent DMs open | email: may@lighthousereports.com | Signal: 00447919210950
Shabana Mahmood’s plans to tighten UK modern slavery protections will mean denying support to people on the basis of factors that can sometimes be a direct result of their exploitation… i.e. criminalisation, confiscation of passports/documents and fear (and thus delay) in asking for help
The UK Resettlement Scheme (UKRS) was supposed to be the flagship global resettlement scheme. When announced in 2019, 5,000 people were supposed to arrive in the first year. seven years later and fewer than 4,500 have arrived in total.
Zofia Duszynska @duszdemon.bsky.social · last mo.And important to stress - which the Guardian doesn’t- that resettlement numbers are down because routes were all closed inc the Ukrainian route which made up most of the numbers. We haven’t had proper resettlement routes for years. And need them.
Not to labour a point, but this is not a "new scheme", or a "Canada style scheme". It's an existing scheme which has been around for years that Labour are just tweaking, and is designed to take responsibility for supporting people seeking safety away from the state. 1/ www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Facial age estimation tech is being rolled out in the UK asylum system ⚠️ A damning investigation from @lighthousereports.com reveals that the Home Office’s own assessment of these tools found them to be deeply flawed. Yet it's being rolled out regardless of the potentially dangerous consequences.
Home Office knew AI age checks for migrants were flawed — but rolled it out anyway
Exclusive: Government advisors describe the tool as ‘hideously flawed’ amid concern facial age estimation has ‘baked-in racial bias’ — and can wrongly identify a 14-year-old as an adult
independent.co.uk
Soon, when a 15-year-old asylum seeker arrives in the UK, there’s a good chance that a border officer will feed a picture of their face into an AI age estimation tool that will guess whether they are an adult or not. New @lighthousereports.com investigation shows that tool is deeply flawed
NEW: The Home Office is ploughing ahead with using AI to conduct asylum seeker age assessments despite knowing it's wildly inaccurate Its own internal report & our audit of public data find the tech often predicts kids to be adults, & performs worst on the top nationalities arriving on small boats
Lighthouse Reports@lighthousereports.com · 2mo agoBritain will use AI to assess ages of asylum seekers in a world-first, with other countries likely to follow suit But our investigation, based on a leaked report and our own algorithmic audit, finds the technology is deeply unreliable
Britain will use AI to assess ages of asylum seekers in a world-first, with other countries likely to follow suit But our investigation, based on a leaked report and our own algorithmic audit, finds the technology is deeply unreliable
Asylum by Algorithm
The UK has turned to AI to determine the age of asylum seekers, and other countries are likely to follow suit. Our investigation finds the technology is deeply unreliable.
lighthousereports.com
Just wrote this for the @theguardian.com about the ongoing war between Reform and Restore and the increasing racialisation of our politics. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
An horrific murder – and a civil war threatening to tear apart the British right | Joe Mulhall
After the conviction of Henry Nowak’s killer, the right is embracing racialised language. This tragedy is now just part of a political tussle, says Joe Mulhall of Hope Not Hate
theguardian.com
In November 2023, police discovered the decayed corpse of Tracey Turnell in Walthamstow Market. She had no phone, job, passport, friends or lovers. There wasn’t a single photo of her. It was as if, in her far too public death, she entered the public record for the first time. Who was she?
The body in the wheelchair: How did a troubled family get lost by the state?
A decayed corpse was found being wheeled through the centre of Walthamstow. Who was she? And who is to blame for her death?
the-londoner.co.uk
The Home Office has today announced it will use AI to ‘clamp down on fake age claims at the border and increase removals’ In the same breath it admits this AI tool has an error margin of at least 2.5 years for teenagers, and higher rates of error for females + some ethnicities What could go wrong?
If I’m understanding the Home Office’s trial age assessment tech, it gets people’s ages wrong by an *average* of 2.5-3 years, is inaccurate for the most crucial cohort (teenagers) and is worse in assessing women/girls and non-white people (umm…) but they’re going for it anyway, because computer
Jonathan Kingham@jonkingh.bsky.social · 2mo agoMost European citizens will likely never have heard of VFS Global. But across much of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, the visa giant has become notorious An investigation coordinated by @lighthousereports.com has found that VFS has made huge profits by subjecting people to exploitative practices
The Visa Empire: Borders as a Business
Outsourcing giant VFS Global has made huge profits by exploiting people around the world whose ‘weak’ passports require them to apply for visas to travel
lighthousereports.com
And the Home Office provides virtually zero routes through which these nationalities can claim asylum in the UK without making the dangerous and illegal crossings that it so hates 🫠
Sam Freedman@samfr.bsky.social · 4mo agoOf course no one from *checks notes* Sudan or Afghanistan could be in genuine danger.
Of course no one from *checks notes* Sudan or Afghanistan could be in genuine danger.
Interesting read www.theguardian.com/news/2026/ma...
AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is far more worrying
LLMs-gone-rogue dominated coverage, but had nothing to do with the targeting. Instead, it was choices made by human beings, over many years, that gave us this atrocity
theguardian.com
The use of AI in asylum decision-making is likely unlawful. These tools rewrite interviews, choosing what to include and exclude. Without knowing this, asylum applicants can't be sure accurate information is used to inform decisions. 📺️ ORG's @sarahalsherif.bsky.social explains the legal opinion.
For all of the excitement in Westminster around the Danish model of social democracy the Danish Labour Party is heading for its worst election result since 1901. They’ll likely remain in power but the red bloc won’t have a majority. Meanwhile radical left and right parties gain.
Since Ofcom seems to have given up, we asked 20 experienced journalists from a range of backgrounds to watch multiple hours of @gbnewsonline.bsky.social . Their conclusion: the channel has, in effect, become Reform TV. How did it happen? www.thenewworld.co.uk/alan-rusbrid...
Screen scandal: How Ofcom lets GB News get away with it
SPECIAL INVESTIGATION: A channel constantly breaking the rules has effectively become Reform TV, while our useless state regulator does nothing
thenewworld.co.uk
Meanwhile, refugee family reunion continues to be paused, the Afghan schemes have been shut, and only 537 people came through the UK's flagship resettlement scheme last year.
Sunder Katwala (sundersays)@sundersays.bsky.social · 5mo agoThe Home Secretary says three new "safe and legal" routes for asylum and refugees (1) new student refugee route, opens Autumn 2026, from Autumn 2027 for those And (2) a refugee worker route Also (3) community sponsorship I don't think there are timelines for 2 and 3
As the analysis starts of the Gorton and Denton result, I wanted to flag some aspects that my experience yesterday suggests are being over or under-played (Caveats - I went to Longsight, Gorton and Denton town centres and spoke to as many people as I could, but it was mostly during the working day)
Quite amazed at how the Today Programme just grilled Zack Polanski then had Reform’s chairman on immediately after and asked him zero difficult questions
Lobbyists for the Tony Blair Institute privately urged the EU to support and join Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, an initiative which started life as a council to oversee Gaza & sprawled since into a rival to the UN
It's not often we get to report on hopeful news Alaa Hamoudi won in the EU's top court against Frontex! This opens doors for many survivors of Frontex pushbacks. @bdeeb.bsky.social tells how he reported on Alaa's case back in 2020 with @bellingcat.com. And how this evidence ended up in court.
Pls read whole piece. Neither Mandelson or Mosley were asked about Mandelson’s role in fixing Starmer’s visit to Palantir & subsequent £240m deal. It finally made headlines on Weds when a q was asked in Parliament. But honestly, BBC also has qs to answer open.substack.com/pub/broligar...
Peter Thiel's New Model Army
The Palantirisation of the UK military is a national security disaster
open.substack.com
I've been doing some reporting on conditions inside Brook House IRC. I'm keen to speak to anyone who's been held there or who has worked there. Please get in touch if you might be able to help. Story based on accounts of force used in a month last year: www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...
Inside UK’s most notorious immigration detention centre
Brook House near Gatwick airport was the subject of an independent inquiry after G4S guards were filmed abusing detainees in 2017. Now, The Independent has obtained stark written accounts from officer...
independent.co.uk
Another absolute must-read on what looks a lot like the Oracleisation of the Tony Blair Institute
May Bulman@maybulman.bsky.social · 7mo agoICYMI: The Tony Blair Institute is building its own AI tools with the view of selling them to authoritarian govts, in what insiders describe as a bid to rival controversial US tech firm Palantir democracyforsale.substack.com/p/blair-bids... Note the wild response we got from TBI's press team ⬇️
ICYMI: The Tony Blair Institute is building its own AI tools with the view of selling them to authoritarian govts, in what insiders describe as a bid to rival controversial US tech firm Palantir democracyforsale.substack.com/p/blair-bids... Note the wild response we got from TBI's press team ⬇️
Peter Geoghegan@petergeoghegan.bsky.social · 7mo ago🔴Tony Blair Institute talks lots about democracy But his week I contacted them for comment on this story The response? "You are an organisation with a long-standing and partisan anti-TBI agenda and we will not engage with your disingenuous questions." democracyforsale.substack.com/p/blair-bids...
🚨 Exclusive: Tony Blair isn’t just a big fan of AI — he's now trying to build and sell AI tools to governments Tony Blair Institute staff have described the plan as 'insane' and compared it to Palantir New by D4S and @lighthousereports.com 🧵 democracyforsale.substack.com/p/blair-bids...
Blair bids to build own AI tools to rival Palantir
TBI insiders warn of “'insane” plan to transform think tank into a tech company
democracyforsale.substack.com
Where have we got to when a European govt is telling Afghans who are at risk of being killed for work they did for said govt that they will not be brought to safety as promised because there’s “no longer any political interest” in helping them? Terrifying shift www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...
Germany drops promise to resettle hundreds of Afghans
Interior ministry will tell 640 people awaiting sanctuary ‘there is no longer any political interest in their being admitted’
theguardian.com
