Helen Hayes – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Helen Hayes on 2016-06-08.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what further steps the Government plans to take to reduce the incidence of drownings of refugees and migrants in the Mediterranean.

Mr David Lidington

The Government’s focus is on addressing the root causes of irregular migration so as to reduce the need for people to make perilous journeys to Europe. We have taken action to tackle smugglers and save lives at sea: HMS Enterprise is deployed as part of the EU’s counter migration operation, Operation Sophia. The UK has rescued almost 18,000 people, and disrupted suspected people smugglers, in the Mediterranean since 2015. At the G7 Summit in Japan on 27 May, the Prime Minister announced that the UK will work on a plan to boost the capability of the Libyan coastguard to stem the flow of illegal migration across the Mediterranean into Europe. Once a detailed plan has been agreed with the Libyan authorities, the UK will send a training team to assist in its implementation, and as soon as the relevant permissions and UN Security Council Resolution are in place, we will deploy a naval vessel to the South Central Mediterranean.