Lord Berkeley (Lab)

My Lords, in moving Amendment 208 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Dubs, I will also speak to my Amendment 208A. This is a rather odd end to this part of the Bill, but it relates to the issue of saving lives across the channel, regardless of whether the people whose lives may be saved are asylum seekers, illegal immigrants, people in fishing boats who have sunk, or whatever. It comes from a very interesting report that I received earlier this year from Captain Matthew Schanck, Integrated Maritime Policy for Managing Maritime Migration in the English Channel: A Comprehensive Approach. If my noble friend has not read it, he can have my copy when I have finished with it. The captain raises two issues, both of which need further study. The first is that we have a duty in this country to save people’s lives if they are at risk in the sea. The Merchant Shipping Act 1995 already prohibits taking dangerously unsafe vessels to sea, with quite severe penalties—two years’ imprisonment and £50,000 fines, I believe. Of course, this would cover most if not all of the vessels that come across, which many people want to try to deter, shall we say. What amazes me—perhaps my noble friend can confirm this—is that there seem to have been no prosecutions since the 1995 Act, apart from one, of a gentleman called Ibrahim Abah, which led to an arrest but under different merchant shipping legislation. Those people who are coming across in whatever vessel in whatever direction for whatever purpose should have a safe captain or skipper on board, and if they do not, they are liable for prosecution. Perhaps my noble friend will be able to inform me why there have not been any prosecutions, as far as I can gather. The second amendment relates to search and rescue—SAR—enabled boats, which I am afraid are not fit for purpose. At the moment, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution does a wonderful job, mostly from the Dover lifeboat station, picking people up out of the sea, as does the coastguard, the security ships and things like that, but it is very difficult picking large numbers of people out of the sea, as some noble Lords will know. We have nothing that makes that particularly easy. Captain Schanck produced some very interesting statistics. Greece has 250 SAR-enabled boats, 8,000 staff and 8,500 miles of coastline. Italy has a similar number. We have no SAR-enabled boats, 400 staff, who of course are all shore based, and a 7,700-mile coastline. I am not being critical of the coastguard, because it does a fantastic job, as does the RNLI, but it lacks the right equipment and control to do the job properly. One example is that the coastguard, which is responsible for co-ordinating rescue, has no ships of its own, so it has to call on other ones. Reading Captain Schanck’s excellent paper, one suddenly realises that, yes, there is a lifeboat, but getting people to climb over the side of a lifeboat when they are in their 50s, or 100s, is actually very difficult. It is possible to procure or build specialist SAR equipment when it is necessary, which they have done in other countries, but we have not. My noble friend will probably say—if he is still awake and listening to me; I am sorry about this—“Well, who is going to fund this new equipment?” I think the coastguard should be put in charge of all the rescue arrangements, including having the equipment to deal with it.