Small Boats Incident in the Channel

Lord Bishop of Coventry Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I am very grateful for the noble Lord’s intervention because he is absolutely right. I cannot go into a lot of detail about extraterritoriality, but I praise the NCA for its work both nationally and internationally, with Governments across the world to try to cut this off upstream before it gets to our shores.

[The Lord Bishop of Coventry]

My Lords, the sense of grief that has been hanging over this House for most of the afternoon is testimony to our sense of common humanity. I assure the families of those who died—whoever and wherever they are—of the prayers of this Bench, and I am sure that many other prayers have been offered around your Lordships’ House. We have heard, quite rightly, from the Minister, echoing the Home Secretary, that this requires a co-ordinated international effort. It also clearly has a European dimension. Can the Minister confirm that if, as the French President has suggested, high-level European crisis talks take place on migration, the UK will take a full part and even encourage those conversations to happen?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

Indeed; I might be conflating the debates I have taken part in today, but I did earlier mention the G7, which is a really important forum to bring international partners together. It has to be an international effort, because it is an international problem.