Navy on call to stem flow of illegal migrants
THE NAVY could be called upon to help stop the influx of illegal migrants from across the Channel as 235 reached the UK in a new record for a single day.
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, has ordered a review of the UK’S current sea capability in the Channel, which could result in the Navy being summoned to help tackle the crisis for the first time since Sajid Javid, her predecessor, requested military aid in January 2019. “We are looking at what other assets might be needed including potentially the Navy,” a government source said.
“We would need to decide their exact role, but we don’t want them to become a taxi service.”
Around 1,100 migrants arrived in the UK in July, taking the total to 3,800 this year, more than double the 1,850 who made the crossing in 2019.
The move was backed by Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative chairman of the Commons defence committee, who said: “The Navy’s fleet is a national asset, and if there is a spike in the Channel then a supportive arrangement from the MOD to the Home Office should be triggered in order to protect our shores.”
HMS Mersey, an offshore patrol vessel, was deployed in January 2019 at a cost of £20,000 a day to support Border Force cutters, with other Navy vessels recalled from the Mediterranean to provide further support.
Ms Patel was last night due to hold
crisis telephone talks with her French counterpart Gérald Darmanin, France’s new interior minister, “because clearly more needs to be done to stop the boats leaving France”. She also held “gold” level calls with Border Force officials.
Next week the Home Office has chartered a plane to return a “small number” of the migrants to France after deciding their claims for asylum should not be pursued in the UK but, under EU rules, in the first country in which they arrived. It is likely to provoke a court battle with asylum lawyers.
Only last month, Ms Patel criticised her French counterparts for failing to stop the migrants at sea and return them to France, saying there could be “stronger enforcement measures on the French side”.
She is seeking a new agreement with the French under which any migrants picked up anywhere in the Channel or on land should be returned to France as the only way to deter more from making the perilous journey. Yesterday’s migrant arrivals surpassed the previous record of 202 in a day last month. More than 120 men, women and children including one baby were reportedly seen being taken on board rescue vessels.
Another boat reached Dungeness, where a witness described seeing what appeared to be three family groups, and two men on their own sitting and lying down, exhausted, on the beach.
The Home Affairs committee, which is led by Labour MP Yvette Cooper, yesterday announced it would be carrying out an inquiry into the surge in migrants. It expressed alarm at the jump in the number of crossings in recent years, compared with fewer than 500 people detected entering the UK by boat in 2018.
The role of both UK and French authorities will be examined by the inquiry, including how they are combating illegal migration and supporting legal routes to asylum.
A statement said yesterday: “The committee will also investigate the conditions experienced by people gathered in northern France seeking to enter the UK.
“This will include the risk to life when attempting to cross the Channel, the world’s busiest waterway, in small boats and the response of UK authorities when they reach the UK, in particular unaccompanied children.”
It will also examine “future arrangements for safe, legal routes for family reunion” and those claiming asylum in the UK.
In recent weeks the Home Office has hit out at “inflexible and rigid” asylum regulations that it says are “not fit for purpose”. Ms Patel’s department criticised the Dublin Regulation, which determines which EU member state is responsible for examining an asylum application.
It said it was “not fit for purpose” and said the UK will no longer be bound by EU laws and can negotiate its own returns agreement at the end of this year.