Priti Patel posted this on Twitter last night:
https://twitter.com/pritipatel/status/1412425971395878922?s=20
I did some research on the Bill. Amongst the reading was this from Free Movement:
As advertised, some of the criminal offences connected to immigration are being toughened up.
On our reading of clause 37, it looks like any asylum seeker knowingly arriving without entry clearance or entering the UK without permission (“leave”) to enter will have committed an offence. If this reformed offence is actually enforced and prosecuted (unlike the overstayer offence, for example) it looks like we are talking about thousands of additional convictions every year and a significant growth in the prison population.
So, simply arriving to claim asylum is now an offence. That has to contravene our obligations under international conventions. I am shocked.
Clause 37 gets worse in some ways though
On “facilitation”, or assisting unlawful immigration, clause 37(4) appears to close off a defence currently relied upon by those prosecuted for piloting small boats across the Channel.
Helping an asylum seeker enter the UK will no longer need to be “for gain” to attract criminal liability. The core of the offence will read as follows:
A person commits an offence if–
(a) he knowinglyand for gainfacilitates the arrival or attempted arrival in, or the entry or attempted entry into, the United Kingdom of an individual, and
(b) he knows or has reasonable cause to believe that the individual is an asylum-seeker.
It depends on how one interprets “facilitates”, but removing the stipulation about gain is an odd look for a Bill that professes to target organised crime. While someone working for an organisation that “aims to assist asylum-seekers” cannot be charged with this offence, someone who works for a more general-purpose charity like the RNLI and who helps an asylum seeker enter the UK may, on the face of it, be criminalised by this change.
The maximum sentence for the general assisting unlawful immigration offence is raised to life from 14 years by clause 38.
So, saving life at sea could now be a criminal offence. For simply doing what they have always done, the RNLI's volunteer crews could now face life imprisonment.
I have been a long time supporter of the RNLI. It is a passion inherited from my father and two grandfathers who served in the professional navy. I am deeply shocked by this move. I am shocked by the Bill as a whole. But to find that saving the life of an asylum seeker is now to be criminalised is profoundly shocking. What sort of mentality is required to create such a possibility?
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I share your sense of shock and add my own outrage. Your interpretation of the words looks reasonable to me. One can only assume that the Home Office is looking to plumb new depths of venality or the civil servants have not thought through the full implications of the changed wording.
Seafarers have a duty and common bond in helping their fellow man in peril on the sea. It seems to me this act would strike at anyone at sea offering help and could lead to people in trouble being left to their own devices. It should absolutely be stopped in it’s track by any MP who professes an ounce of decency.
I am beyond angry.
For many years it has been the custom to go to the assistance of those in trouble at sea…. and that applies to ALL vessels, not just the RNLI. Indeed, the Coastguard will often ask nearby vessels to offer assistance when there is a Mayday call…. and they ALWAYS respond positively. Are we all to be criminalised?
Apparently so
What sort of mentality is required to create such a possibility?
Answer: 1. Priti Patel. 2. The modern Conservative Party. 3. Followers of far right political parties.
The modern Conservative party is a far right political party, both libertarian and nationalist. And it has an 80 seat majority in Parliament and no effective political Opposition: indeed Labour is now flourishing flags and appealing to white red wall voters by abandoning its Muslim supporters. I felt the shadow of this when Thatcher was elected and my blood ran cold. Now it has arrived – facilitated by democratic processes.
The mind-set of Patel seems as unlovely an area of speculation as any – even in these unpropitious times.
However, horrific as your chosen example is, I fear that these proposals are, potentially, even worse. The term “facilitates” is scarily imprecise. Past experience of the attitudes of the Home Office to myself as a neighbour giving friendly practical help and advice to an asylum seeker who was trying to contest moves to deport him, leads me to believe that this term could be used as a ‘catch-all’ to threaten/intimidate a very wide circle of people who had done nothing more than follow decent, humanitarian impulses, when presented with real life circumstances of unjustly imposed misery. Vagueness in terms used to criminalise and precision in terms used for incarceration is a, potentially, lethal legal cocktail.
I agree with you
Saw Bridgen trying to justify this yesterday on C4 News and failing miserably. Yet more incoherent thinking being put into law.
Utterly ridiculous (the maritime tradition of coming to the aid of people is well established) until you consider that this is a long line of ‘traditions’ that this bunch of extremists has walked all over since coming to power.
In other words what do we expect? This is what extremists do – mould the world to their will.
The new Tory voters in the red wall are going to be hit hard by Brexit as they have been hit hard by Covid. But the Government is appeasing them by giving them all they want by way of jingoistic bombast and racist anti immigrant gestures.
I have been a passenger on two ships when they carried out successful rescues, the 1966 Ben My Chree – passenger overboard off the Mull of Galloway & PS Waverley – Dinghy off Weston Super Mare.
I have also got a MCA Basic Sea Survival certificate from my days as a volunteer stoker.
I cannot imagine anything worse than consciously allowing someone to die at sea, are we governed by psychopaths?
I can see no reason why an exemption for saving life could not be added but clearly they have decided not to.
I am absolutely certain that Patel IS a psychopath or sociopath. The relevant test would determine which. But since 1:100 of us would be diagnosed as psychopathic, and considering they feature disproportionately amongst those in positions of power and influence, there are probably a fair number in politics. Since a main feature of psychopaths is a lack of empathy or feelings of guilt or remorse, most of those certainly exist on the right politically.
As a sometime sailor (though not very frequently anymore) and also long time supported of the RNLI, I find this quite scary. And it isn’t just the Lifeboats, it is also the case that there is an obligation on any seafarer to provide assistance at sea, irrespective of who the persons in distress might be.
The International Convention for Safety of Life at Sea (IMO 1974) states that “the master of a ship at sea, on receiving a signal from any source that a ship or aircraft or survival craft there of is in distress, is bound to proceed with all speed to the assistance of the persons in distress informing them if possible that he is doing so.”
A second convention (The International Convention on Search and Rescue – IMO 1979) also contains language imparting a duty on its signatory states to render assistance. This includes the following: “Parties [to the Convention] shall ensure that assistance is provided to any person in distress at sea.”
With these proposed new regulations, what is an ordinary lifeboatman, yacht sailor, fisherman etc supposed to do if they meet a sinking boat in the middle of the channel? Check the passports of the occupants and throw them back in the water if they don’t have one?
Not to mention driving a coach and horses through international conventions which the UK is signed up to.
From Jo Maugham on Twitter:
“The maximum sentence for sending someone money to come to England to escape sex traffickers will be life in prison.”
[…] As Murphy wrote: […]
[…] blog post I wrote yesterday on the risk to the RNLI from the new Bill on asylum got a lot of attention on Twitter yesterday. […]
Yes, to the above.
Pretty Dreadful is, however, only following the approach of the EU border force, the Greeks &c. – and the French government which, particularly undr Micron, has been prosecuting anyone helping illegal immigrants to enter – though happily the courts have not always viewed this as appropriate.
But maybe I am unfair – she could have though this up on her own, rather than copying the wicked continentals.
Congratulations on managing to insert an element of anti-europeanism into a thread which is directed at the increasingly isolationist trend of the UK government.