By James Simons
Four people have died after a migrant boat ran into difficulties crossing the English Channel in the early hours, the government has said
The boat is likely to have been carrying migrants crossing from France, a day after the prime minister announced new measures to “stop the boats”.
A government spokesman said authorities were alerted at 03:05 GMT to a small boat in difficulty off the coast of Dungeness, 30 miles west of Dover.
The UK coastguard, the French Navy, the RNLI and an air ambulance were all sent to help with the rescue operation.
A fishing boat in the area and coastguard helicopters from Lydd and Lee on Solent were also involved.
South East Coast Ambulance Service said it was called following reports of the incident, and sent crews to Dover, in Kent, to help with the follow-up operation.
A number of politicians have expressed their condolences, including Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who said that her “heartfelt thoughts” were with those involved.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said it was “heartbreaking” that there have been more deaths in the Channel, and Dover MP Natalie Elphicke said she was “very saddened” to hear of the tragedy.
Nearly 45,000 people have made journey this year so far.
The Archbishop of Canterbury said he was “praying for the victims of today’s terrible events”, tweeting that debates about asylum seekers “are not about statistics, but precious human lives”.
Tim Naor Hilton, from the charity Refugee Action, said the tragedy was predictable and inevitable, and more people would die trying to reach safety if the government did not create more routes for people to claim asylum.
Natalie Roberts, Executive Director at MSF UK said:
”We are distressed to hear reports of a shipwreck in the Channel, where it has been confirmed that at least four people have lost their lives. Our thoughts are with the victims of this disaster, and the emergency services that are working to rescue the survivors.
The government needs to now take urgent measures to ensure tragedies like this do not happen again.
This means recognising that a cruel and punitive approach, such as that outlined by the Prime Minister yesterday, will not stop Channel crossings and will simply cause more suffering.
As the Home Office’s own research shows, an approach built on deterrence only pushes desperate people into yet more dangerous routes. Men, women and children seeking safety will be forced into make even riskier journeys to get here, causing harm to their health and well-being, and inevitably resulting in more deaths.
The horrific incident that occurred in the Channel today was a consequence of a lack of safe routes. The Prime Minister’s proposals would effectively end the right for people fleeing war, persecution and violence to seek asylum in the UK, breaking with the Refugee Convention and shirking our international legal and moral obligations”.
Yvette Cooper said : ”the responsibility for the lives that have been lost in the Channel lies with the criminal gangs.
They need to be caught, they need to be prosecuted, they need to be jailed for the loss of life in the cold sea. We need comprehensive action.
We gathered in this House just over a year ago to lament the loss of 27 lives. None of us want to do so again.
We need action before more lives are lost in peril on the sea.
It is, of course, why the UK and France both need to act to stop these dangerous boat crossings.
Day after day, week after week, criminal gangs are putting lives at risk for money. The other brutal truth is that far from stopping those criminal gangs, those gangs have grown and grown.
The UK and French governments and authorities have failed to stop the criminal and smuggler and trafficking gangs proliferating around the Channel.
The action against those gangs has been too weak. There have been barely any prosecutions or convictions and barely any inroads into the smuggler gangs.