Suella Braverman has insisted that the government will “end these crossings” after confirming that four people had died after their small boat capsized in the Channel.
The UK home secretary said she would set up “safe and legal routes” for asylum seekers only after dealing with the small boats crisis, amid demands from MPs for new pathways to apply for refugee status.
Braverman addressed the House of Commons on Wednesday hours after a damaged vessel was rescued off the Kent coast carrying dozens of people who had set sail from France for the UK.
To a sombre chamber, she said: “These are the days we dread. Crossing the channel in unseaworthy vessels is a lethally dangerous endeavour. It is for this reason above all that we are working so hard to destroy the business model of the people smugglers, evil, organised criminals who treat human beings as cargo.”
Referring to the deaths of 27 people in the Channel last November, Braverman said Wednesday’s tragedy served as a “sobering reminder” of why the government had to end these crossings. She added that she had spoken with her French counterpart, France’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin.
Opening her statement on the incident in the Channel, Braverman said: “This is an ongoing search-and-rescue incident but I can confirm at the time of making this statement tragically there have been four fatalities.”
“This morning’s tragedy, like the loss of 27 people on one November day last year, is the most sobering reminder possible of why we have to end these crossings.”
Some of the survivors were still “fighting for their lives” in hospital and some survivors were women and children, MPs were told.
Under UK law, someone claiming asylum has to be in the UK unless they qualify for one of a handful of tailored routes, refugee charities have said. There is no visa to reach the UK so that they can then apply, forcing many claimants to travel by small boat.
In the past year, 85,902 people made conventional asylum applications after reaching the UK, but only 1,391 people were resettled to the UK through resettlement schemes.
Asked by the Scottish National party’s Alison Thewliss about the lack of safe and legal alternatives to Channel boat crossings, and urged to bring them in now rather than “at some vague point in the future”, Braverman said: “I strongly dispute suggestion that our system is somehow inadequate.”
Braverman said a five-point plan announced on Tuesday by Rishi Sunak, which includes plans to draw up laws to criminalise and send back those who travel to the UK by small boats as well as employing more people to reduce a backlog of nearly 150,000 claims, would help to end the small boats crisis.
She told the Commons: “We will extend safe and legal routes once we have dealt with the appalling people-smuggling gangs risking people’s lives, as we have seen this morning.”
One Tory MP appeared to suggest migrants crossing the Channel “willingly put themselves at risk” as he called for the home secretary to make the Rwanda plan work in order to deter criminal gangs.
Marco Longhi, the MP for Dudley North, said: “Let us remember this: these are people who willingly put themselves in harm’s way, and criminal gangs would disappear if demand for services went. When will the home secretary make the Rwanda plan work?”
Braverman replied: “As he knows, I believe in the groundbreaking partnership that the United Kingdom has struck with Rwanda.”
Responding to the statement, the shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said that the UK and French governments and authorities had failed to stop the criminal and smuggler and trafficking gangs.
“They need to be caught, they need to be prosecuted, they need to be jailed for the loss of life in the cold sea. We need comprehensive action.
“The responsibility for the lives that have been lost in the Channel lies with the criminal gangs,” she said, but added: “We need action before more lives are lost in peril on the sea”.
