Illegal Seaborne Migration

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Viscount is straying into territory that is perhaps not in my purview; however, I am not seeking to evade the question other than to say that I recognise the point he makes and it is clear that a lot of arrivals in the country at the moment are Iranians.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, I feel sympathy for the Minister because it is quite clear that our system is not working. We declared an emergency about this situation last year and it has not got any better; if anything, it has actually got worse. Clearly, we have to work closely with the French, but we should have enough ships and assets ourselves to ensure that we can tighten up the Channel—I would call it the English Channel rather than the short straits; I do not recognise the term used in the Question. It is clear that we need to stop these boats when they set off from the French coast. We are allowed to operate our ships, drones and other things there. We can do that and stop them before they get across. Clearly, they think that they can get away with it, otherwise they would not keep coming. They keep coming and putting themselves at risk because the system is not working.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord will recollect what I said to his noble friend Lord Kennedy about the bilateral effort we are making with the French. He is absolutely right that people should be stopped before they get into a boat—in fact, stopped upstream even before that—because they are making such dangerous journeys. It is not only the ships; intelligence, surveillance and sharing of information through the CCIC is very helpful in this. He is right, it is a pressure and we have to deal with it.