Operation Sophia: A Failed Mission (EUC Report)

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, on these occasions it is customary to thank the chairman of the relevant committee, to note the significance of the contributions and often to point out that it is a timely debate. Naturally, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, and the European Union Sub-Committee on External Affairs for their excellent report. Slightly perversely, I want also to thank the usual channels for conspiring to produce a debate that is actually of significant timeliness, despite the fact that it has come a whole 11 months after the report was completed and nine months after the Government responded to it, which is quite extraordinary. Often when we debate committee reports, we hear expressed the frustration that the Government have not made their response—“It has been more than two months and we still have not had a response”. Given that on this occasion the Government have given their response, the questions I wish to put in this debate relate not only to the report but to some of the comments made by the right honourable Sir Alan Duncan in his response because, some nine months on, there are questions about what the Government have been able to achieve.

The noble Baroness, Lady Verma, thanked the committee secretariat. We in the International Relations Committee have poached one of the clerks, Eva George, but she is present in spirit because she is currently in Washington with some members of that committee. I am a member of that committee but I am speaking in this debate because she sent a note to remind members of our committee that, if we were not in Washington, we could debate this excellent report. We are grateful that the EU sub-committee has allowed Eva to come to the International Relations Committee because she has reminded us about an issue that is of significant importance internationally; it is not simply a European matter, rather it is one of global significance.

Several noble Lords have pointed out that mass migration is not going to go away and that it is not simply a European question. It is a matter of great humanitarian concern. Some three years ago when Operation Sophia was first introduced, we were seeing pictures of tragedies occurring in the Mediterranean. Our television screens were full of images of people drowning. There were significant reactions. In 2016 the television screens were somewhat similar. But in the intervening period one could have been forgiven for assuming that the migration crisis had been solved. Where were the pictures of people drowning? We did not see them or hear about them because the 24/7 media coverage had moved on. Other issues came to the fore. President Trump’s latest tweet about whatever it might be took up the front pages of the newspapers. Brexit was taking up the bandwidth in the United Kingdom. Migration and the tragedies we had seen of people coming through north Africa and trying to get to Europe through the Mediterranean did not go away.

As the report so admirably points out, Operation Sophia’s activities have had a partial success in reducing the number of people who drowned, but they have not done the fundamental job of breaking the people traffickers’ business models. The models have adapted. What seems to have been suggested by at least one of the contributors to evidence in the report, Mr Hobart, the migration envoy of the European directorate of the Foreign Office, was that something needs to be done. The inference was that Operation Sophia is something, therefore this is what we should be doing. We have heard this evening that Operation Sophia, which has had an impossible challenge from 2015 onwards, is not capable in and of itself of dealing with migrant smuggling and people trafficking.

The questions that arise for Her Majesty’s Government and the EU as a whole relate to what work is being done to deal with activities upstream. The right honourable Sir Alan Duncan suggested in his response of September last year that the Government are aware of the need to deal with the issue, but I was slightly concerned when reading responses from the Minister for the Armed Forces, Mark Lancaster, in the House of Commons. He essentially suggests that the Government are considering what impact we are having through Operation Sophia, but he did not get any further. He did not say whether that meant that the Government’s policy needs to change.

I wonder whether the Minister can tell us what Her Majesty’s Government are thinking about for the British contribution to Operation Sophia and what they envisage the contribution will be when the United Kingdom leaves the European Union. The right honourable Sir Alan Duncan pointed out that, while the United Kingdom is leaving the European Union, it remains the case that we are still working with other European countries through Operation Sophia. In September 2017 he did not seem to suggest in any way that the United Kingdom’s position would change once we left the European Union. Could the Minister tell us what the Government are thinking about how they would like to contribute to Operation Sophia or its successors? How do they envisage co-operating in the longer term with other Governments of the European Union? The challenges facing the United Kingdom and the humanitarian crisis we are seeing will not go away when the UK leaves the European Union, but some of these questions appear to be on hold.

What are Her Majesty’s Government doing? What negotiations are the Government having with the EU 27? The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and my noble friend Lady Suttie pointed out that in Hungary and Italy we are seeing some populist challenges. In the light of those, what bilateral conversations are the Government having? Are they working with other member states to see what collective solutions might be available? What do the Government think their role is, and that of the United Kingdom, after 2019? Do they still plan to and seek to play a role? If so, do they expect to have a seat at the table? If so, what is David Davis asking for in that regard?

Finally, in line with the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, what role is DfID playing in the Government’s thinking about upstream responses? As so many noble Lords have said, naval solutions might deal with the immediate problem of people drowning but they do not deal with the upstream problems: those require much more activity in-country in countries such as Nigeria or in countries of north Africa, not least Libya, a failed state, as the noble Lord, Lord McInnes, pointed out. What is DfID going to be doing? What are Her Majesty’s Government going to be doing? What role will we play in future in working collectively with other European countries to deal with these humanitarian crises?