Con Coughlin:
People-smuggling gangs will now target our borders – and we cannot rely on the EU to defend them
For the past year the migration crisis that has brought chaos to large tracts of southern Europe has, so far as Britain is concerned, seemed a problem that was unlikely to pose a direct threat to our own shores.
The hundreds of thousands of migrants fleeing war-torn countries have entered Europe by making perilous crossings of the Aegean or Mediterranean seas. Britain’s territorial integrity, though, has not been directly compromised, not least because of our opt-out from the Schengen Agreement. Thus our main contribution to resolving the crisis has been to support the newly established EU naval force, which has been set up to disrupt the lucrative activities of people-smuggling gangs.
The Government’s other priority has been to resist calls from the EU to accept a larger quota of migrants, thereby easing the pressure on those countries, such as Greece and Italy, that have been overwhelmed by the flood of refugees.
It now appears that the Government’s assumption that the migration crisis is really an EU problem, rather than one that could directly affect Britain, has meant that it has paid scant regard to protecting its own shores.
The folly of this approach, driven as much by domestic budget considerations as a naïve confidence in the EU’s crisis management capabilities, has now been laid bare by the arrival of the first batch of illegal immigrants from Albania over the bank holiday weekend.
The numerous coastal inlets of southern England have for centuries provided a wealth of opportunity for smugglers. From the days of traditional contraband – brandy, tea and tobacco – to the more recently fashionable enterprise of smuggling drugs and illegal immigrants, the Government has had a fundamental obligation to protect the nation from illegal imports.
But, as the political row over the rescue of 18 Albanian migrants off the Kent coast has highlighted, the authorities seem singularly illequipped to protect the 11,000-mile coastline of mainland Britain.
After Chris Grayling, the Leader of the House of Commons, warned yesterday that the English Channel could soon resemble the Mediterranean “with fleets of small boats coming over” to Britain crammed with migrants, it emerged that the Home Office, which has responsibility for protecting the coast, was suffering a severe shortage of patrol boats.
The reason the Border Force, the Home Office agency responsible for policing Britain’s ports, does not have enough boats is because half its fleet of purpose-built cutters has been sent to the Mediterranean, where they are supporting the EU naval operation to prevent a fresh wave of migrants reaching Europe this summer.
It could be argued that having the boats deter migrants in the Mediterranean is preferable to having British rescue teams saving them in the Channel where, once safely ashore in Britain, they are likely to remain indefinitely at great expense to the public purse.
This argument might hold water if we could rely on the EU, in return, to prevent the people smugglers operating from the shores of northern Europe.
But no action has been taken to prevent French fishermen earning £1,000 per migrant to sail them across the Channel, which suggests the EU does not regard the protection of Britain’s coastline as a key priority.
The other drawback to providing effective protection of the British coast is that the Border Force boats are in the Mediterranean because the Royal Navy, which has seen the number of its surface combat ships radically reduced by recent defence cuts, does not have enough ships for this kind of mission.
The Government’s insistence on squandering billions in foreign aid while cutting the strength of the Armed Forces is one contributing factor to this disastrous state of affairs.
But the Navy, with its insistence on only buying the most expensive kit available, must also share some of the blame. Left to its own devices, the Navy would equip itself with a fleet of state-of-the-art frigates and destroyers, thereby allowing it to reclaim some of the global stature it enjoyed during the Battle of Jutland, whose 100th anniversary was commemorated yesterday.
But many modern threats – including pirates and peoplesmugglers – could be handled with cheaper alternatives, such as the new Offshore Patrol Vessels being brought into use. If we had enough of these, Whitehall would not have to send HMS Sutherland, the Navy’s most powerful frigate, to deal with migrants crossing the Channel in rubber dinghies.
It is time the Government woke up to the fact that people-smuggling gangs are now going to target the British coastline directly. And if we cannot rely on Europe to defend our borders, then it is imperative that we have the means – and the boats – to defend ourselves.