A senior Tory parliamentarian has called for illegal migrants to be quarantined on army bases and disused cruise ships amid claims they are flouting anti-coronavirus rules.
Tim Loughton, a former minister in the Cameron-Clegg liberal coalition government and Acting Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, made the call amid claims by a Border Force source that illegal migrants housed in hotels at the taxpayers’ expense are not being monitored properly, and in some cases are even going shopping using food vouchers.
The thought that “people who have entered illegally should be treated more leniently than tourists returning legitimately is complete nonsense and makes my constituents’ blood boil,” Loughton told The Telegraph — although Home Secretary Priti Patel’s Home Office has denied the Border Force source’s claims.
“Since we introduced quarantine measures in June, those who have come to the UK in illegally facilitated crossings have been placed in accommodation which allows them to self-isolate for 14 days,” a spokesman insisted.
“Food, toiletries and essential items are provided so that [migrants] do not need to leave [their] accommodation. They are not issued with food vouchers and do not have to shop for food,” they claimed.
Either way, Loughton insisted that the only real solution to Britain’s ongoing migrant boat crisis is the obvious one; namely taking the boats’ occupants back to the safe, first world EU member-state they set sail from immediately.
“If the procedure was that when the French saw a boat they would forcibly take them back, or if they made it into British territorial waters the Border Force could do the same and take them back, then that would be the most effective thing,” he said in comments to The Telegraph.
“People would soon start to realise that they had paid people smugglers £4,000 only to end up where they started,” he emphasised.
Such a policy was implemented in Australia under former prime minister Tony Abbott, under the name Operation Sovereign Borders.
Under the policy, migrant boats are intercepted as soon as possible and taken back to where they came from or to a third country for processing, with migrants found to be legitimate refugees housed in countries other than Australia at Australia’s expense.
The policy virtually eliminated illegal boat migration and the drownings which had come with some attempted crossings going awry.