The Ministry of Defence has clarified the Royal Navy’s role in intercepting small boats in the English Channel following a parliamentary question from Rupert Lowe, Independent MP for Great Yarmouth.
Lowe had asked Defence Minister Luke Pollard what assessment had been made of the Royal Navy’s capacity to intercept small boats carrying individuals seeking unlawful entry to the UK.
In response, Pollard stated that the “Home Office is the lead government department responsible for border security and migration.” He further explained that the Home Office has established the Border Security Command, which aims to “strengthen global partnerships and enhance the UK’s efforts to investigate, arrest, and prosecute people smugglers profiting from the dangerous movement of people across the channel.”
While the Royal Navy has previously been involved in Channel operations as part of joint efforts with the Home Office, Pollard clarified that “Defence assets are procured for Defence tasks” and are not primarily intended for border security operations.
The Royal Navy’s involvement in channel interceptions is supplementary to the primary role played by the Home Office. The establishment of the Border Security Command reflects a shift, aiming to integrate international cooperation and intelligence-sharing to tackle human smuggling and unlawful entry.
Last year, the Ministry of Defence had already clarified its stance on deploying naval assets to tackle small boat crossings in the English Channel. Responding to a previous parliamentary question from Lowe, Pollard, reiterated that the issue falls under the Home Office’s jurisdiction.
Pollard outlined the Home Office’s efforts to address the issue through its newly established Border Security Command:
“The Home Office is the lead Government Department responsible for border security and migration. It has recently established the Border Security Command to strengthen global partnerships and enhance the UK’s efforts to investigate, arrest, and prosecute people smugglers profiting from the dangerous movement of people across the channel.”
While acknowledging the critical role of defence assets in maritime security, Pollard noted their limited suitability for addressing small boat crossings:
“Defence assets are procured for Defence tasks and are therefore not optimised for the issue the hon. Member raises.”
He highlighted the Royal Navy’s primary role in safeguarding the UK’s maritime security, including monitoring and shadowing foreign warships in UK waters.
Using the navy in UK costal waters is no different to using the Army on the streets.
That being said perhaps the Home Office should foot the bill for OPV’s in the same way that DEFRA pays for the fisheries protection squadron.
Lowe has made his career by dividing the country and focusing on the most vulnerable people, like voting against every workers right bill. His also made his career focusing on immigration and making it sound like they are all evil.
Using the royal navy is just a stunt, as that doesn’t solve anything. The RN can’t shoot at the small boats and sink them as that would be against international law. They can’t take them over to another country as that would breach that countries sovereignty. All they can do is pick them up and deliver them to the UK, which is the reverse of what Lowe wants. Just proformative policite, saying something that looks good for newspaper stories and the under educated but which would zero actual chance of doing anything in releality. See ryanda scheme and the billions wasted with it.
Nothing wrong with returning illegals to the country they have departed from… others do…. failing that just make it that non citizens/permanent residents are not eligible for welfare…
If they are illegal yes, but first you have to process them and understand if illegal.
P.s. many illegal immigrants are retuned every year by the uk. The last government just didn’t process them to make the problem look way worse.
But most aren’t?
Yes because they are legal asylum seekers running away from terrible places. Returning them would breach all sorts of international and local laws, not to mention moral ones.
The joy of Brexit means we lost the ability to send them back to france. As confirmed by the ex immigration minister in a recent oospie I said the quiet bit out loud as reported by the daily express of all papers.
Legal asylum seekers? Who enter illegally.
Legal ones would walk into a British embassy.
How many throw their documents away.
Who are overwhelmingly male of a certain age.
Who know full well they will be caught up in the system, subject to endless legal challenges, and not deported.
I suggest the majority are actually economic migrants, not refugees.
Yes, was that the Dublin agreement or something?
Starmer was left with egg on his face yesterday when Albania told him to do one, and rightly.
On the RN being involved. Agree with the government, it is not a job for the RN at this time.
Who else returns people from international waters or their own costal water please, I was under the impression this was illegal under international law.
How are you proposing we return people to France from international waters without their permission or would you propose the navy just enters French territorial waters without permission to intercept boats.
No one that would be a breach of the other countries sovereignty, effectively an act of war and breach un asylum laws, plus of course UK ones.
But you are playing by the rules Steve, it’s those very rules that created this situation. Do you think France looks out for our interests? No they take our policing money, substantial amounts, and turn a blind eye. The crossing is seen as a good gamble, likely picked up and likely to accept your refugee story, which will be as well prepared as per the payment for the crossing. If you are desperate you going to take that gamble. The problem is 3 fold:
1. What qualifies as a refugee now is too wide and creeped considerably in the last decades, opening up it to victims of abuse and now covers victims of criminal activities or identity persecution, a definition that literally applies to 100s millions people in this unfair world, so it’s simply a standard that will attract many in this world here.
2. Bizarrely we say it’s illegal to cross but it’s legal if you get refugee status from it.
3. The French.
The only solution is to take away the gamble completely, no exceptions.
It means not playing by the rules being used against us. Because this issue needs fixing.
1.No one who crosses the channel uninvited can apply for refugee status or can stay here, no applications can be made here if the route in was illegal.
2. People intercepted in the channel should be picked up by us, that’s everyone, no one gets through, brought to our shore and taken to a nearby secure area, fed with a food package to take back, watered and medical attention aid given if needed, then within hours, taken back to France respectfully. You cannot allow people to stay more than a few hours as that opens up massive problems of how to manage it. We would need a few custom ships for this.
3. We tell France we have identified a safe area to disembark people and we do it, they can help and designate a port or make a huge scene about it. We offer to pay France to help with the process but the real benefit to France is that if there is 100% failure for a migrant or desperate person to try it, the criminal business model collapses in weeks; and these people will stop travelling to France to get to Britain.
If France resists this proposal then let’s see how tasty it gets with ship blocking and fiery rhetoric, but this would hit international news and again influence those making the gamble, the spat would in itself would reduce the people risking lives to get here.
It’s about confidence as a nation, we’ve lost it and now we don’t set the rules anymore, fair enough in some respects but not on this issue regarding our own land and its social cohesion.
2.
Australia returns many many back to indosnesia….. intercepts them at sea, and turns them around, seize the boat they are on… they then get placed onto a seaworthy boat which is then gps locked and returns them to indosnesia safely…. If they make it to the mainland then get sent offshore, Naru I believe, and they can settle there…. But many don’t want to settle there as Australia’s welfare is far more generous…
Agree. Pick them up. Confiscate their boats and take them back to the country they departed from (France)
How do you return them to France?
Put them in the next cross-channel ferry?
French border control will simply refuse entry, so you end up with ferries full of migrants who are refused entry in both UK and France. (Before you say ‘better than in hotels’, the UK needs those ferries to be operational.
I’ve sure there’s an unpatrolled stretch of French Guyana, all we need do it convey them by the hundeds in an amphibious attack ship like the Albions and… oh, bugger.
An MP is asking the Royal Navy why it’s not stopping illegal immigration. Seriously?
^ Sorry, meant that to be its own post, not a reply.
Perhaps RN should and international law be damned. Is the UN’s PC Plod going to try and arrest us?
So you think the Royal Navy, with its limited number of ships that mnlany of us bemoan should be assigned to border patrol?
Seems like a massive and pointless waste of money to me, and not what the sailors signed up for.
Well if you face too many directions at once, you risk tripping over. The new woke agenda pushing for female Royal Marines, regardless of whether it makes operational sense, crashes into the populist anti small boats rebellion shown over the Runcorn byelection & 600+ council seat gains for Reform. RN needs to walk the tightrope between these two views.
Where’s this woke agenda pushing for women in the Royal Marines. Can you share where I can find it please.
I did see an interview on forces news with the one woman who has tried and thus far failed to pass the test to enter the RM because it’s a physical test to enter rather than checking if someone has a ball sack.
Is that the woke Agenda?
and there you have it. Attack rather than reason & compromise.
I’m surprised you think someone asking for evidence to substantiate your own claims is an attack. Especially when it seems others have tried already themselves to substantiate them for you… Your defensive reaction suggests to neutral observers you might be posting “alternative facts” – and then getting triggered – rather than actual facts.
How is Jim meant to reason with your confused conflation of unrelated issues?
What does the sex of a RM have to do with illegal migration?
What is wrong with seeking the best candidates for the RMs regardless of sex, race, religion, class, etc? If they pass, they pass. If they fail, they fail. But it ensures we find the best the country has to offer, and not limit ourselves to just recruiting for a single section of society.
Rejecting people for any other reason other than lack of ability is simply self-defeating.
What a confused load of cobblers.
I want an answer to Jim’s reasonable questions. If you say something you need to be able to back it up.
Off topic but I hope of interest, there are rumours this morning that the Chagos Islands deal has been longrassed. Fingers crossed.
UKDJ?
Maybe it should be remembered defence assets are used for defence task next time an asset is sent on disaster relief or to the carribean in hurricane season.
Im sick of years I’d excuses from the uni party MPs.
If terrorists are using the channel crossings to get into the UK, as appears to have happened with the Iranian bomber, then it’s a defense task!
What would you have the navy do, in order to stop the boats? Please be specific.
And if there was a disaster in the UK would you expect the armed forces to sit around and say “not our job”. Would you be annoyed if our allies refused to send their military assets to assist us in casualty rescue and recovery?…
Your use of “uniparty” originates in the conspiracy theory subculture (anti-vaccine, climate-change denial, 5G death rays, chemtrails, Putin is saviour, flat-earth, migrants are secret UN army, etc).
Do you want to associate yourself with these?
The US of course operates a Coast Guard as a branch of the armed forces to carry out these kinds of tasks under the authority of the Dept. of Homeland Security (effectively Home Office equivalent). HM Coast Guard only does SAR, and the police aren’t exactly equipped to deal with law enforcement across our EEZ.
Do not need them, border Force can give enough lifts at the half way point. RN ships would simply be used to ferry people as they would never use force or turn any back. Stupid idea by some who clearly does not under stand the realities of things. Sound bite going no where.
An excellent answer to a nasty question. What exactly did the MP want… to blow the small boats out of the water? As many comment here, the Navy is also far too stretched anyway. Nobody gets in an inflatable to cross Le Manche unless they are utterly desperate. Unless you understand that you can’t begin to have anything useful to say. Of course we can’t house everybody to who turns up at on our shores, but the problem with being rich as a country is that we are our brother’s and sister’s keepers. Like it or not. Turning them back is no solution It never was, it never will be. They will just keep coming until we deal with the causes and well as the effects. That is amoral, duty, and just plain good self interest too.
This old chestnut again, eh?
Reminds me of any Royal Navy posts on Facebook; whenever they post a photo of any vessel, be it a frigatr, destroyer, aircraft carrier or even a submarine, there are always some idiots saying “put it in the Channel to stop the boats!”
I mean, seriously, what do they expect HMS Vanguard to do about the boats; nuke the Channel?!
The Royal Navy is not there to stop immigrants; they’re to defend our country and our allies. As much as some think otherwise, a bunch of peasants on dinghies are not a threat to our national security.
It’s the job of Border Force, the Coastguard and Immigration to stop illegal Immigration, and to sort genuine asylum seekers from the chancers and economic migrants. By all means, give them extra resources e.g. more boats, more staff etc, but leave the Navy out of it. It’s not their job!
Unfortunately quite a few who would have the RN slaughter illegal migrants in the Channel also push the narrative that they are all “fighting-age men” and part of a secret UN army to take-over the UK.
Complete nonsense, but when people adopt one conspiracy-theory they tend to fall right down the rabbit hole.