It’s not immoral to stop the small boats

‘Of course we cannot take everyone and nor should we,” said the Archbishop of Canterbury in the House of Lords yesterday. Peers were debating the Second Reading of the Illegal Migration Bill and Justin Welby was implacably opposed to its provisions, calling them morally unacceptable.

Perhaps it is unwise to challenge the Primate of the Anglican Communion, who has recently crowned our King, on a question of ethics; but in what way is it moral to allow a dangerous crosschannel trade in people to continue with all the attendant risks to life and limb?

Over the weekend, more than 250 migrants were rescued as journeys began to resume after a period of bad weather, and they will likely grow in number as the summer progresses. The Archbishop and his supporters, mostly on the Labour and Liberal Democrat benches, maintain that there is an alternative in the form of “safe legal routes”.

But his statement that “we cannot take everyone” undermines this very point. What are the people who are not accepted for a safe passage supposed to do? Will they not continue to pay the criminal gangs to get them across the Channel? And if so, and they are then deemed to be illegal under the Archbishop’s “safe passage” rule, what should happen to them? Should they be removed and where to?

The otherworldliness that underpinned the Archbishop’s and other speeches was startling. There was no acknowledgement that the country from which the migrants are crossing is already safe and therefore there is no need to leave France if sanctuary is being sought.

Indeed, many of those crossing the Channel – who may well be fleeing war-torn areas – will have passed through at least two safe countries en route to the coast. The Archbishop would be on a firmer moral footing if he sought to use his influence to prevent these people risking their lives rather than denouncing those who are trying to find a way to stop this dangerous enterprise.

Few peers seemed to understand the nature of the problem, blithely promoting new international agreements and other measures that would not address the immediate issue and are almost certainly unachievable.

The bigger picture was also, by and large, ignored other than by Lord Green, founder of Migration Watch UK. He pointed out that net migration into the UK is now at levels never seen before. The next set of figures may show that it is running at 500,000 or more a year.

The population of the country has grown by eight million in 20 years, placing huge pressure on the public services and house capacity that the same critical peers blame the Government for not providing.

The Illegal Migration Bill concentrates on what is the most visible but a small part of migration. The traffic in small boats only began because other routes, such as climbing into the back of a lorry, were cut off. How on earth can it be judged immoral to try to stop this? Arguably, it could be said to be unworkable insofar as the Bill will make no difference unless the boats are stopped from putting to sea in France.

Moreover, the Government’s critics maintain that the Bill is an affront to international law and principally the 1951 Refugee Convention which the UK helped draft. This states that people fleeing persecution in their home countries should be allowed asylum in a safe port of call. It was not envisaged, however, that it would be used by young men claiming to be children to travel thousands of miles to the UK for a better life. That is an abuse of refugee status.

Another canard is that the UK would be isolated from the rest of the world if the legislation is passed. But every country is trying to grapple with illegal migration. Britain’s difficulties are more pronounced and more visible because it is necessary to cross the Channel to get here.

As a contribution to the discussion of how to deal with this serious issue, the Archbishop and his supporters provided little in the way of practical solutions. The Bill was given a Second Reading but the real fight will begin in its committee stages. It is almost certainly flawed, as many legislative measures are. But the Lords should try to improve it, rather than indulge in pious hand-wringing.