Diana Johnson – 2022 Comments on the Small Boats Incident in the Channel

The comments made by Diana Johnson, the Labour MP for Kingston upon Hull North, in the House of Commons on 14 December 2022.

On behalf of the Home Affairs Committee, I express our sincere condolences to all those families who have lost loved ones. I pay tribute to the emergency services that were operating in such appalling conditions, and carry on doing so today, and I highlight the work of the RNLI and the fishing boats that came to the rescue of the dinghy. Many of us on the Committee have met Border Force officials, immigration officers and contractors who work at Western Jet Foil and at Manston, and we know how distressing these events must be for those people at those places.

Obviously, we need to wait for a full statement about what has happened, but I wondered whether the Home Secretary might be able to share whether she thinks there are any more actions that can be taken to pursue the evil individuals who facilitate and organise these trips across the channel in these dinghies. What more can the Government do to make sure those people are brought to book?

Suella Braverman

What more we can do forms part of the plan that the Prime Minister announced yesterday: focusing on the operational command and our resources at Dover, and working with the French. We want to investigate 100% of the small boats, and we want to arrest all of the pilots that we can identify. The Nationality and Borders Act 2022 brought in new offences designed specifically to deal with illegal arrivals, and there have been considerable numbers of investigations, arrests and prosecutions relating to those new offences. But of course, when there is a tragedy like this, it focuses all of our minds on what more we can be doing so that this does not happen again.