EU Action Plan Against Migrant Smuggling (EUC Report)

Lord Jay of Ewelme Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jay of Ewelme (CB)]

My Lords, I speak as a member of the Home Affairs Committee and as a former member of the External Affairs Committee. Migration is a huge global problem, but it is particularly acute in Europe, whose stability and economic success act as a magnet for people from poorer and less stable parts of the world. It is particularly acute now, with the crisis in Syria creating the worst humanitarian disaster since the end of World War II, compounded by civil war and strife in Iraq, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Sudan and Libya. The EU is right to try to formulate a new, comprehensive and coherent response to this crisis, not least because its existing policies and structures were designed for a different era and are no longer fit for purpose. Hence the descent into national responses that we have seen—noble as far as Angela Merkel’s is concerned and less noble, if understandable, as far as other countries’ were concerned.

The bold and, at least for me, unexpected EU decision to send migrants back from Greece to Turkey in return for settling Syrian refugees in the EU has had a marked effect on the level of migration from Turkey to Greece, but it has not had any effect on migration across the Mediterranean—indeed, there may have been some diversion from the Aegean to the Mediterranean. As the report makes clear, smugglers are ruthless, entrepreneurial and flexible, seeking out the weakest and most profitable routes irrespective of the consequences for the people whom they smuggle.

Against that background, Operation Sophia was never on its own going to deter the smugglers. Indeed, the prospect of rescue may have been an incentive to send people out to sea on fragile boats in the hope that they would be somehow picked up. However, to say that Operation Sophia is only, or even primarily, a humanitarian mission is not in any way to belittle it—that is a crucial task and a task in which the Royal Navy is rightly involved; I speak as the son and grandson of naval officers who used to sing in church every morning “Eternal Father, Strong To Save” with the lines:

“Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,

For those in peril on the sea!”

It does not matter how people get into peril; what matters is that they are saved.

What for the longer term—for this is a longer-term, perhaps a generational, issue? There are no easy solutions, but it seems to me that the aim should be to work with EU partners and others for stability in the Middle East and north Africa and for economic development in sub-Saharan Africa, difficult though that is, not least for the reasons that have just been explained. A second aim should be to support those countries, notably Lebanon and Jordan, which are bearing the brunt of the refugee crisis, as the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, said. Thirdly, we should try to establish safe havens or camps for refugees in north Africa, too, ideally under UN auspices, whenever political stability makes that possible. Fourthly, we must try to distinguish—because it is extraordinarily difficult—between economic migrants and those fleeing from war or civil strife, and to work to return economic migrants to their home countries and establish legal routes for genuine refugees, thereby reducing demand for smugglers. Finally, we must ensure that genuine refugees are properly settled within the EU, including within the UK. That is a long-term, imperfect and difficult agenda, but I find it hard to see a better way forward.