Migrant Crossings — House of Commons, 2019-01-07
Topic: Immigration
Diane Julie Abbott (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Home Secretary for prior sight of his statement. Opposition Members join him in sending our thoughts and prayers to those injured in the attack at Manchester Victoria station, and we thank the emergency services for their courage Does the Home Secretary share my concern that we should be careful not to heighten a potentially toxic atmosphere on migration as the Brexit debate reaches its climax? However, the whole House agrees that the public deserve the assurance that our borders are secure. Nobody in this House believes that these crossings should be just a fact of life, not least because these desperate people are putting their lives in terrible danger. However, is he aware that his predecessor—the then Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May)—took the decision in 2012 to scrap an aerial surveillance programme of the entire coastline, presumably because of the dictates of austerity? Does he accept that this decision, in the words of the then Security Minister, Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, left us "more naked than we would otherwise have been", and that we are now scrambling to catch up by using the armed forces The Home Secretary knows that a little over 200 people arrived here crossing the channel in the entire final three months of last year. One migrant making that dangerous crossing is one too many, but does he appreciate that some people might think that describing this as a major incident is an overstatement, when we consider that, at the height of the Mediterranean crisis, Greece was seeing hundreds of people a day landing on its beaches The Home Secretary is correct to make the point about the risk to human life. We know that ruthless people smugglers put desperate people in unseaworthy craft, with no one on board who is any type of seaman, and they distribute fake lifejackets—and all this in the busiest shipping lanes in the world. These people smugglers are putting people’s lives at risk for mere financial gain. However, does the Home Secretary accept that there can be no question of turning back asylum seekers who have reached British waters? That would be to put this country outside international law May I also remind the Home Secretary that in this country we operate under the rule of law? In this case, we are bound by the 1951 convention relating to the status of refugees. Does he accept that under the convention, to which we are a signatory, refugees have a right to seek asylum here? Taking the failure to claim in the first safe country into account is one thing; claiming that it entirely nullifies the asylum claim is quite wrong. Refugees may have cultural, family or language reasons to claim in this country. Does he understand that it is not for him as Home Secretary, or anyone else, to claim that someone is not a genuine refugee without examining their case I welcome the increased co-operation with the French and the French action plan outlined on Friday. The important thing is not bellicose statements, but to stop people making dangerous crossings in the first place On the deployment of the Royal Navy, it seems to some that the Home Secretary was in some type of competition with the Defence Secretary as to who can appear more bellicose towards groups of Iranian refugees in their rubber dinghies. Serious questions arise, however. What will be the total cost to the Home Office of this deployment and how will it be funded? What will be the cost per person rescued? How many of the people smugglers have been prevented and detained? What of the operations that were taking place in the Mediterranean which have apparently now been suspended? Can the Home Secretary explain what contingency measures will be put in place, so as not to leave a gaping hole in existing co-ordinated rescue and interdiction efforts? I ask the Home Secretary please to tell the House that all of those issues have been considered and addressed or are in hand, otherwise unkind people might be forced to conclude that this major incident had little to do with a national crisis but more to do with positioning for the forthcoming Tory leadership battle.