14-11-22, 15:54
|
#12
|
Join Date: Feb 2011
Posts: 47,568
Thanks: 27,629
Thanked 14,458 Times in 10,262 Posts
|
re: 60 Migrants Inc,Newborn & 12 Children Dead After Boat Falls Apart Near Italy
Migration Plan to End Hotel Britain
UK Strikes Revised Deal With France on Channel Migrants
BBC News 14 NOV 2022.
The UK will pay France £8m more a year under a revised deal to try to stop people crossing the English Channel in small boats.
The money will pay for increased surveillance of French beaches, while UK police officers will also be able to observe patrols within France.
French officers patrolling the coast to try to stop people setting off will rise from 200 to 300 over five months.
PM Rishi Sunak said he was "confident" the crossings could be brought down.
However, he warned there was no "single thing" that could "fix" the situation, promising "even greater cooperation" with France in the months ahead.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer called the deal a "small step in the right direction," but said more need to be done to tackle people smuggling.
The government is coming under increasing pressure to reduce journeys across the Channel, which have risen to record levels this year.
More than 40,000 people have crossed in small boats so far this year, including 1,800 this weekend alone, according to official figures.
Under the new agreement, signed by Home Secretary Suella Braverman in Paris, the UK will pay France £63m this year, up from £55m last year
It will cover:
investment in drones, night vision equipment, and CCTV in French ports to try and prevent crossings
funding for detection dogs at ports to identify people trying to enter the UK in lorries
investment in reception and removal centres in France
UK observers will be embedded in French control rooms, and French observers embedded in UK control rooms, to help inform each other's deployments.
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said the UK wanted to "significantly" reduce the number of crossings - but declined to set a target for reductions.
Analysis by Dominic Casciani, home and legal correspondent
Today's announcement may shift some officers closer to frontline decision-making - but it's not clear how the deal helps the UK to solve three pressing issues.
Firstly, those new British teams (on top of those deployed since 2018) will only be observers.
They have no operational powers, so even if more boats and smugglers are intercepted, they can't tell the French what to do with individual migrants who we know may try more than once to cross.
Secondly, some critics say the UK needs to look for a bigger continental-wide deal. But it chose not to be part of the EU's irregular migrant management policies, as part of Brexit.
The final big challenge is on the UK side of the English Channel. The Home Office's day-to-day battle to find somewhere to accommodate those who survive the sea is directly linked to the department's huge backlogs and the delays in dealing with those who arrived before them.
Sir Keir Starmer welcomed the deal, but said there was "much more that needs to be done". "We need the National Crime Agency working upstream to tackle the people smuggling in the first place," he told reporters.
He also criticised the "desperate state" of asylum application processing in the UK, adding most people would be "shocked" by official figures showing that only 4% of asylum claims by migrants who crossed the Channel last year have been processed.
Franck Dhersin, mayor of Teteghem near the coastal town of Dunkirk, said the increase in crossings this year had come despite "a lot of police" watching the coast.
"We are talking about 175km of beaches and dunes, where it is very easy to hide," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
Natalie Elphicke, the Conservative MP for Dover, called the new deal "more of the same," adding it "falls far short of what is needed".
"The only thing that will tackle this issue is making sure that the boats are stopped in France before they get in the water," she added.
Graphic showing the number of Channel crossings
|
|
|