Why don't we just arrest the driver of every migrant boat? asks ROBERT HARDMAN
As Yvette Cooper told The Mail on Sunday yesterday, she is worried about women and children being 'crushed at sea', warning: 'If you storm a boat, trampling over the bodies of tiny children, you are complicit in putting other people in danger.'
I'd love to know which beaches she has been on lately. The ones I have just visited in Northern France – and the makeshift camps just beyond the dunes – have precious few women and almost no children at all.
The crowds who come charging over the sands each dawn when the latest 'taxi boat' looms into view are almost entirely adult young men.
And in response to her latest proposal, I would simply ask the Home Secretary why she is bothering with any 'new laws' when she already has perfectly good laws at her disposal.
Both the French and British authorities have the power to apprehend the driver of each and every migrant boat that takes to the Channel. France has particularly draconian laws. Its 'Transport Code' declares that anyone navigating a boat without the correct licence faces a fine of 3,750 euros, rising to 4,500 euros and six months in prison if the boat is carrying passengers.
The most basic licence governs engines above six horsepower and these inflatable tubs have at least 50hp on the back. Meanwhile, Britain's Merchant Shipping Regulations dictate a 'substantial fine' and other penalties for unqualified skippers of a passenger vessel – which is anything with more than 12 people on board. Every smuggling boat I have seen has at least 50 people.
'It should be very simple. Anyone seen with their hand on the tiller should go straight to prison,' says the Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Philp.
Reform Party leader Nigel Farage agrees. 'It is very easy to spot who is driving a boat – I have taken plenty of photographs of them myself,' he says.
'If you or I or anyone goes to sea in a private fishing boat, there is a whole raft of regulations we have to follow. The French rules are a lot stricter than ours. So what's stopping them?'
A week on from asking the French authorities that question, I have received no reply.
Seven days ago, I asked both our Department for Transport and the Home Office if anyone had been prosecuted in the past year for breaching the rules – and if not, why not?
While the Home Office has yet to say anything, after several chase-up calls and emails, the DfT managed to come up with the following: 'International passenger vessels (i.e. a ship that carries more than 12 passengers, which visits foreign ports) need to comply with the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS). Border Force carries out enforcement when vessels reach UK shores.'
For now, that enforcement seems to be a one-way ticket to places like The Bell Hotel, Epping.
Of course, enforcement of these rules would not solve the problem overnight. However, in next to no time, you would find that no one is going to pull the starter cord on a small boat engine, let alone put it in gear and head to sea.
Even if the traffickers get a migrant to drive the boat (as often happens), who will risk the fine – and a prison sentence leading to instant deportation?
But, as long as the French simply wave off these illegal skippers and the British help them ashore, nothing will change.
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