Channel Crossings in Small Boats

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Thursday 3rd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, I would never wish to finish someone else’s sentence, but what I can say about the clandestine channel threat commander, Dan O’Mahoney, is that he has been appointed, as the noble Lord says, and has overall operational and policy responsibility for this rather serious problem. Since there is a multiagency responsibility here which requires working with the French authorities and UKVI, we felt that it needed a single person empowered and accountable to seize control of that situation and get it fixed. What I assume will be in the joint action plan is an explanation of how the multiagency response will work. Of course, these things work best in a multiagency way.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister not agree that the best way to stop the criminal exploitation of those desperate to seek sanctuary in the UK and to ensure that they do not risk their lives crossing the channel is to enable refugees to claim asylum without being physically in the UK and to provide safe and legal routes into the UK?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I am glad that the noble Lord recognises the need for legal routes. Of course, we have a number of those. Under Dublin, someone can claim asylum in the first safe country that they arrive in, which is of course all the states of the EU. We have our national resettlement scheme, under which we have resettled more people than any state in the EU, and 46,000 children have received our refuge since 2010. We also have family reunification visas, of which we have issued 29,000 in the past couple of years. That is not to say that what is happening is right; it absolutely has to be tackled. With what has been happening with small boats, the only people who benefit are people traffickers and criminals.