Migrant Crossings: Role of the Military

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

I believe that it could, as part of a wider system that is under development.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The Minister calls it Operation Isotrope—not Isotope—which means having properties that apply in all directions. That pretty much sums it up. The honest truth is that it is Operation Red Meat, and it has no beef in it whatever. Nothing has changed. There is no plan—he admits that himself. The Government have completely failed to tackle the real issue, which many of our constituents worry about, and the people who bear the brunt of all this danger are those who are being illegally trafficked, many of them in miserable situations. The Government need to sort out the relationship with France and make sure we have a proper deal with the whole of the European Union so people can go back to the country where they originally landed. The Minister has used one phrase repeatedly today—that they will stop people landing “on their own terms”. What on earth does that mean?

[James Heappey]

First, there are a lot of questions coming from the Opposition about the incompleteness of a plan. I would just reflect that Labour is routinely and continually silent on what it would do to ensure that our borders are protected and illegal migration is stopped. As for the UK-French relationship, no one has pretended that the part of the plan that I am answering questions on today is, in and of itself, the answer to that challenge. Before it, there is a responsibility to have relationships with France and the EU within which that can be discussed; there is a requirement to attack the criminal networks that do the trafficking; and there is a requirement to deal with migration flows in the first place.

What “land on their own terms” means is that nobody gets to set foot on United Kingdom soil without having been intercepted and brought ashore by the Royal Navy or other agencies. They are then put into a system that I have every confidence will act as a deterrent to make the cross-channel route collapse thereafter.