Migrant Crossings: Role of the Military

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

No. There is no power to enter another country’s sovereign waters to return people. This evolution in the capability of command and control means that there is a more robust response at sea so that nobody lands on their own terms and they enter a process in the United Kingdom that may take them to return or to some other outcome. The evidence in Australia and elsewhere is that that very quickly has a deterrent effect. I am answering questions on merely a part of the plan, and the House can sense my discomfort at being unable to illuminate it fully.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

Let me start by underlining what a worrying development this is from the Government, both operationally and morally. The motivation to militarise this situation, in which desperate people make perilous crossings to reach safety and security, is immediately apparent, to say the least: this is the use of military camouflage to disguise a political crisis at the heart of the Government. We are talking about the Ministry of Defence, which is charged with the defence of the state and its people against external state or terrorist malign activity, threat or attack; not in any recent cogent assessment has the MOD or our armed forces been reconfigured to protect the state against civilians.

Will the Minister update the House on the admiralty’s critical analysis of whether to undertake significant maritime operations in respect of civilian subjects that are fraught with operational and reputational risk to the Royal Navy? Will he confirm that the Home Office request goes way beyond the realms of military aid to the civil authorities and instead represents an alarming politically expedient morphing of a civilian crisis into an entirely inappropriate military operation that is doomed to fail?

[James Heappey]

I take issue with the premise of the hon. Gentleman’s question, which was that people need to get into a small boat to find sanctuary. They are coming from France, which is a safe country. Those who continue their journey do so because they want to be in the United Kingdom, not because they are scared of where they are.

As for the idea that the MOD is not configured to protect against civilian threats, we have just been through two decades of counter-insurgency and reconfiguring to deal with the emergence of sub-threshold threats. Threat no longer wears a uniform or drives around in a painted military vehicle that flies a flag; it is increasingly likely that the threats posed to the United Kingdom come not from military sources. Of course the Ministry of Defence, which is charged with the defence of the homeland, has a role to play in ensuring that our borders are more robustly protected.