Visiting Calais: A Fresh Perspective
Last week I returned from my first visit with the Home Affairs Select Committee to see what action is being taken along the French coast to defend our sea borders and reduce the numbers of dangerous crossings in inflatable boats.
What I saw was a highly coordinated and effective police operation, funded by the UK Government, involving drones that patrol the beaches to identify boats and then disable them before they reach the water’s edge.
This approach means that most boat crossings are now being successfully foiled as recent numbers illustrate. This winter there were no recorded arrivals by boats on the UK coastline for almost a month – the longest uninterrupted period without crossings since 2018.
However, the challenge facing the French and British authorities is one of shifting sands. The Dunkirk dunes themselves enable smugglers to hide the boats they intend to use to transport their human cargo from overhead surveillance. And as police action becomes more effective at disabling boats before they reach the sea the smugglers are adapting their modus operandi.
Increasingly, people smugglers are now attaching their flimsy dinghies to the roofs of stolen cars and driving them to the water’s edge to avoid the risk of interception on the beach. They are also increasingly deploying “taxiboats” which hug the coast collecting groups of refugees waiting in shallow water.
And although the number of crossings that are now successfully prevented has increased significantly, the smugglers have responded by sending fewer but larger boats, carrying more people in each crossing, with the risk not only of drowning but of being crushed to death due to the sheer numbers on board. In September this year three refugees, including two children, were crushed to death at the bottom of a boat carrying 38 people off the coast of Sangatte.
These are not petty crooks at work. The smugglers on French beaches are the foot soldiers in a highly-organised network of professional criminals stretching across Europe and beyond, in much the same way as cartels run international drug networks. Engines, for instance, are smuggled in through Turkey and Germany and the vast sums of money generated by this trade in human misery are funnelled back to kingpins in the Middle East.
Which is why the UK, even working in close collaboration with our French partners as we are now doing, cannot defeat the smugglers alone. It is a sophisticated global trade, requiring global solutions that reach way beyond what is taking place on French beaches. The key to breaking this model has to lie in greater cooperation across Europe, with our EU partners, and indeed across continents.
The answer also lies in recognising that among those crossing on small boats are people with a genuine claim to asylum who must be protected, according to the UK’s commitments under the Refugee Convention of which the UK was a principal author. While tackling the people smugglers, all along the chain of misery they have created, the UK also has obligations to those fleeing war and torture to offer compassion and sanctuary. The UK cannot become the end of the line for the economically impoverished and our borders must be protected, but we can take our fair share of refugees. Lone children seeking family reunion in the UK, for instance, should never feel they have no choice other than to risk their lives in flimsy boats.
There were at least 73 confirmed drownings in the Channel last year. Estimated figures for this year are much lower. The tide is turning, but there is always more work to be done.
