Mea Culpa: friends and family at border control

Questions of style and language in last week’s Independent, reviewed by John Rentoul

Keep on running: it was acceptable to talk about Kevin Sinfield being encouraged by the ‘loved ones’ of people with motor neurone disease as he completed a series of fundraising marathons (PA)

We used the phrase “loved ones” in a front-page story on Tuesday about the government’s plan to reduce legal immigration, which we said included banning “overseas social care staff from bringing loved ones to the UK”.

The phrase actually used by James Cleverly, the home secretary, in his statement was “family dependants”, which is ungainly, but we could just say “family” or “relatives”. Not only is “loved ones” twee, the wrong tone for a serious news report, it is also imprecise.

You can see why journalists use “loved ones” in articles about Christmas presents and seasonal activities, where we want to include people who are treated as family even if they are not actually related. Even then, I would prefer, having become sensitised to “loved ones”, to use a phrase such as “family and friends”.