UK commander responsible for migrant crossings can’t say if doomed boat was in contact with UK

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Home Office commander in charge of stopping English Channel migrant crossings has failed to disclose to a UK parliamentary committee if the boat that attempted to cross the Channel on November 24 made contact with UK authorities prior to the drowning of 27 people.

Dan O’Mahoney, the Home Office’s Clandestine Channel Threat Commander, told the committee that there were multiple migrant boats in the water on the day of the sinking.

“I can’t speak on behalf of the French rescue services but I can certainly say the UK coastguard received dozens of calls that day and they responded to every single one of them,” O’Mahoney explained to the Joint Committee on Human Rights on Wednesday.

Chair of the committee, British Labour Party politician Harriet Harman QC, who introduced the session by saying that her thoughts were with the 27 who drowned in the Channel last week, pushed the commander on whether there was a call from the boat, and what the actual response was.

“At this stage, I can’t tell you with any certainty whether we definitely received a call from that boat or not”, the commander responded, adding that “it may never be possible to say with absolute accuracy whether that boat was in UK waters or French waters prior to that.”

A dinghy with around 34 people onboard travelling on Tuesday night, November 23, experienced loss of air in the English Channel “around 1:30 British time”, according to a family member who spoke to Rudaw, and was in contact with those onboard, “talking until 2:40.”

Multiple sources including two survivors told Rudaw that the British and the French coastguards failed to respond to their requests for help in time. 

Rudaw has spoken to the two survivors of the incident, a relative of two of the men who was tracking the boat’s movement on his Facebook live location, and two other family members who have all said that the boat reached British waters and made contact with the British authorities.

Rudaw’s questions to the UK Home Office and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency about whether there was a distress call from this particular boat have gone unanswered nine days after the incident.

Wednesday’s session was the first time a government minister has attended the committee, which is holding an inquiry into the government’s proposed Nationality and Borders Bill; legislation which would criminalise all asylum seekers who arrive in the UK illegally, for whatever reasons and with any methods.

The legislation would also empower authorities to strip Britons with dual nationality of their citizenship without the need to inform them beforehand, with many warning of a two-tier citizenship with significant consequences for British citizens stranded in Syria.

Tom Pursglove, the Home Office’s parliamentary undersecretary of state responsible for foreign national offenders and immigration, told the committee that he felt a huge weight of responsibility as the minister for tackling illegal migration, and that there is a profound duty to tackle the “evil, criminal gangs that are responsible for this human misery, that treat human individuals as cargo, and are only interested in making a profit.”

Speaking about the migrant tragedy last week, Pursglove said it only stiffened his resolve to render the route and such crossings untenable, “with the ultimate objective in my mind of preserving life.” 

Asked by Harman whether Home Office officials would work to establish whether there had been contact with the boat in question, he responded that it was a question for the coastguard.

“What we definitely know about that boat, is that the French authorities alerted us to the presence of that boat which was, had been damaged and there were people in the water at 12:58 [PM], at which point it was well within French territorial waters and the French search and rescue, and we responded immediately to that,” he said - meaning that the first known time British authorities have claimed to have responded to the boat is around ten hours after those who were on it claimed to have made contact.

Published on Wednesday, the committee’s second report on the Borders and Nationality bill argues that "a policy of pushbacks would likely be incompatible with the UK's obligations under international human rights law and maritime law" and “do the opposite of what is required to save lives.”

"Pushbacks are known to endanger lives at sea. This is even more so when dealing with people on small, unseaworthy vessels, in a busy shipping lane, often with rough waters, without appropriate life-saving equipment, as is the case for migrants in small boats in the Channel," the report concluded.

The Nationality and Borders Bill will complete its remaining stages in the House of Commons - its report stage and third reading - next week, on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Commenting on the Bill, Harman warned that, “Current failures in the immigration and asylum system cannot be remedied by harsher penalties and more dangerous enforcement action.”

The full session is available to watch here.