Major Incident in Essex

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I thank the Home Secretary for early sight of her statement.

Any death under these circumstances is truly appalling. The fact that there are 39 reported deaths in this incident makes it a terrible tragedy—one of the worst of its kind. Each of the 39 will have partners, family and friends who perhaps even now do not know how their loved one died and in what horrible circumstances. I am sure I speak for the whole House when I say that our thoughts, prayers and wishes go out to the bereaved and all the loved ones of the victims.

I commend the emergency services for their work and share with the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) the horror that these emergency service workers will have seen sights that will live with them forever.

It is important to remember that these 39 poor, unfortunate people are the victims in this; they have been preyed on by the greedy, the unscrupulous and people with a wilful disregard for the lives of others. However, we should take account of the wider context. Nobody leaves their home on such a journey, with so much risk and fear, on a whim. They often do it because they are desperate; they can be the victims of economic privation, war, famine, catastrophic climate change. There are many adverse conditions that people flee from, but we should not lose sight of the fact that these people are victims.

I would like an assurance from the Home Secretary that the co-operation with the EU27 on people trafficking, which is vital to ensure that such events do not happen in the future, will not become harder or be imperilled by our leaving the EU.

It is important to raise the general conditions of refugees and asylum seekers. The Opposition have long argued that the Government should establish safe and legal routes for genuine refugees to make their way here. If they do not, I fear there may be further tragedies like this. When one thinks about the events of this incident, when one thinks about how these people died and how terrifying their deaths must have been, it should remind us that whenever we talk about migration, refugees and asylum, these people are people. There is an obligation on us to ensure that where people are moving legally, we provide safe and legal routes.

[Priti Patel]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her comments and reflections following the tragic incident this morning. She was, of course, right in a number of the points she made, such as about our emergency service workers who are dealing with the incident on the ground. We will work collaboratively with the investigation teams—not just with Essex police, but with the National Crime Agency, Border Force and many others—to further the investigation into this appalling incident.

It is important to emphasise a few other points. This is now a murder investigation. We are still ascertaining various facts, but given the sheer humanity that we all feel following the deaths of 39 individuals in such circumstances, some fundamental points arise: potential links to criminality, and also what we should be doing as a country to make sure we stand by those who really should not be trafficked in any way.

As a country, we lead the world in many of our ways of working internationally, on modern-day slavery and through our own legislation. Fundamentally, there is always the point of international co-operation and collaboration—we must never lose sight of that—whether it is with our EU counterparts, as the right hon. Lady said, or with other international counterparts through the many multilateral forums we work with to prevent upstream migration, illegal human trafficking and all the terrible things we want to stop and prevent. At the end of the day, we must do the right thing as a country and uphold the right kind of values, to ensure that particularly for those who are fleeing war zones, conflicts and some of the most horrendous situations we see in the world, we are able to give people asylum in the right kind of way, which is exactly what we do.