News / Politics

Welsh Tory MP under fire for calling on army to stop migrant crossings

Wednesday, 19 August 2020 5:58 PM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 19 August 2020 5:58 PM ]

Sarah Atherton's trenchant views on a military solution to the migrant crisis are not entirely out of step with the Home Office's preferred approach

A Welsh Tory MP has attracted sharp criticism after she called for the British army to be deployed to stop migrant crossings across the English Channel.

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Wrexham MP, Sarah Atherton, called for the army’s deployment to end the “unacceptable” boat crossings.

Venting her incendiary views on Twitter, Atherton wrote: "What we are seeing on a huge scale with the boats crossing the [English] Channel is precisely that, flagrant violations of our immigration law by economic migrants and human-trafficking gangs".

"It is time for tough words to be matched with tough actions so that fairness may be restored to our immigration system, and the constituents of Wrexham may feel secure in the knowledge that this a government which finally takes concerns about immigration seriously", Atherton added.

Atherton’s controversial views attracted immediate criticism from advocacy groups and legal specialists alike.

Dan Sohege, director of the human rights advocacy group Stand for All, accused Atherton of "playing politics with peoples' lives" and demonstrating a "staggering level of ignorance".

"Not only is her letter full of inaccuracies, but her very suggestions would lead the UK to violate the fundamental principles of human rights law and open the UK up to international legal action at a time when it is trying to demonstrate that it can be part of the wider international community without being an EU [European Union] member state", Sohege added.

Meanwhile, a leading barrister specializing in immigration law, Colin Yeo, said there needs to be "some serious thought into how to prevent people risking their lives in this way [crossing the English Channel on small vessels]".

"Misleading contributions like this [Atherton’s remarks] which are simply wrong in legal terms are counterproductive", Yeo added.

However, it is worth adding that Atherton's views are broadly speaking in keeping with the Home Office's proposal to deploy the Royal Navy as part of a deterrence strategy against migrants and human smuggling networks.