Essex: Major Incident

Lord Sterling of Plaistow Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell]

The noble Lord will forgive me if I do not speculate on this investigation in the way that he invites me to do. The nationality of the victims has not been confirmed. Although there is widespread press speculation, it is up to the coroner to indicate the nationality for the coroner’s own purposes. We will wait for that to be done formally rather than speculate. However, he is right that international people trafficking is a massive business. It is ingenious, clever, ferocious and reckless. We have seen in this instance its horrible costs and the Government are determined to crack down on it.

[Lord Sterling of Plaistow (Con)]

My Lords, when all this happened, I remembered like yesterday the 58 Chinese people who died. Noble Lords might remember that at that time, in July, around 2000, the outside temperature was 96 degrees Fahrenheit. When these trailers come over—in this case, it was on a P&O ship coming from Zeebrugge—of course, they do not have any drivers at all. Let us think of that heat when the air conditioning broke down; I want to comment not only on what we are talking about now but on the fear factor. When the doors were opened, those people had been fighting; they had torn their clothes off in fighting to get to an area around 18 inches deep.

If you want to go back to an even earlier example of the fear factor, in the Nazi days they experimented on people’s reactions. In Auschwitz and so forth, if you think that people just died in five minutes, they did not. That fear factor has been huge. When I saw everything that had happened the other day, I thought to myself, “For goodness’ sake, these people froze to death, but not immediately”.

I would like to ask the Minister to ask the Justice Secretary that we can be assured that whoever is caught for trafficking—instead of putting them up against the nearest wall and shooting them, to put it bluntly—is given the highest possible sentence?

[Lord Bethell]

My noble friend speaks very movingly about an incident that many in this House will remember, and the image that he describes is difficult to imagine. One does not like to think about the similar situation in Purfleet and the circumstances in which the victims of this horrible crime died. It is very moving indeed. One can only hope that there may be some kind of positive outcome and that the renewed focus and determination of the law enforcement bodies to track down the perpetrators of this crime will lead to an improvement in the circumstances for those seeking asylum and refuge in Britain.