Royal Naval Deployment: Mediterranean Debate
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Andrew Bridgen
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Royal Naval Deployment: Mediterranean
Andrew Bridgen Excerpts(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Michael Fallon
We will certainly keep our deployment under review. As I said, we have Mounts Bay now and the three Border Force cutters in the Aegean, as well as HMS Enterprise in the Tyrrhenian sea helping to police the route between Libya and Sicily. We can do that and still fulfil our other standing commitments, to which the hon. Gentleman might be referring, in both the Gulf and home waters. The Border Force cutters have the assistance of military personnel on board, supplementing the Border Force, and Royal Marines to add force protection.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Chancellor Merkel’s unilateral and ill-advised announcement that Germany’s borders were open and that everyone was welcome hugely compounded the migration problem by creating a huge pull factor. What assurances has my right hon. Friend had from the German Chancellor that she will not repeat that mistake, and what EU laws allowed her to make a decision in the first place that ultimately caused a lot of misery and cost an awful lot of lives?
Michael Fallon
The German Chancellor is in Brussels today, engaging with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in a search for better control of migration policy. So far as the legal basis for what is happening inside Europe at the moment is concerned, it is of course the Schengen area, of which we are not part. We still retain control of our own borders, but that does not absolve us of the humanitarian responsibility to help where we can, and it does not absolve us as one of the larger countries in Europe from continuing to call on European countries to get some grip on the migration crisis.