Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-04-11-Speech-4-158"
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"en.20020411.8.4-158"2
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"Mr President, my constituents in south-east England will be delighted that this House has found the time to discuss the repeated closures of the Channel Tunnel. Very few people outside my region appreciate the seriousness of the situation. The regular stoppage of freight transport is now reaching crisis proportions. Businesses are unable to ship their produce, the transport infrastructure of the southern English counties is clogged, the single market is violated as the circulation of goods is impeded, the police forces of Kent and Sussex are over-stretched and the influx of illegal migrants is placing a serious burden on local authorities and their ratepayers.
It is all very well to demand greater security at the Calais-Fréthun freight terminal but this is to address the symptoms of the problem, not the cause. If we are serious about bringing the situation under control, we must stand back and ask the question: what is making tens of thousands of people so desperate to get out of France? France after all is not a country that persecutes its citizens. On the contrary, it is one of the oldest and freest democracies in the world. In short, it is hardly a country from which we would reasonably expect people to claim political asylum and yet, night after night, hundreds of people are risking their lives in order to enter Britain through the Channel Tunnel.
The British Government must take primary responsibility for this state of affairs. The chief difference between Britain and France in this field is that when an asylum claim in the United Kingdom is refused, deportation almost never follows. Consequently, and quite understandably, illegal migrants are determined to reach the one EU State from which they know they will almost certainly not be repatriated. As long as this state of affairs continues, there will be a limitless supply of young people in the Sangatte camp seeking by any means to cross the Channel.
This is an international problem, but it has an essentially domestic solution. The British Government must amend its approach to asylum. It must cease to entertain asylum claims when the last point of embarkation is a manifestly safe State, such as France. Doing so will reduce the pressure, not only on the Channel Tunnel, but by extension on France's eastern borders as fewer migrants seek to make the journey. Without urgent action from the British Government, the strain on the south-east can only become heavier."@en1
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