The UK has a duty to aid refugees making the perilous crossing from north Africa to Europe, the bishop responsible for migrants said this week.
Bishop Patrick Lynch spoke out as MPs debated the Government’s proposal to pull funding for search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean.
Labour (Co-op) MP Mark Lazarowicz raised the Urgent Question after the Guardian revealed the UK would not support a limited joint EU operation intended to replace the official Italian mission.
“While efforts are being made to find lasting solutions to these challenges, we have a duty to heed with compassion the cries of our wounded brothers and sisters, and not to pass by on the other side,” Bishop Lynch said.
Britain was still Europe’s leading naval power, he added.
“To refuse to join in Mediterranean search and rescue operations would be a misguided abdication of responsibility to those thousands of men, women, and children who have been driven from their homes by persecution and war and forced to risk death at sea.”
Earlier this week the Catholic MP Sarah Teather, chairwoman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Refugees, accused the Government of “plumbing new depths of inhumanity” by pulling support for rescue operations.
The Guardian revealed that Lady Anelay, a Foreign Office Minister, had told the House of Lords: “We do not support planned search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean,” because of “an unintended ‘pull factor’, encouraging more migrants to attempt the dangerous sea crossing and thereby leading to more tragic and unnecessary deaths”.
Ms Teather said today that the situation in the Mediterranean was the biggest refugee crisis in half a century. “We should all be ashamed,” she said. “We would rather let people drown for nothing other than baseless political motives. It shows that when it comes to immigration, the Government has plumbed new depths of inhumanity.”
“We cannot pretend this problem has nothing to do with us and wash our hands as people die. It is the policies we are pursuing, attempting to turn Europe into a fortress with no safe routes in, that is forcing migrants into risking their lives. We are forcing people to choose between dying in their own war torn country and drowning in the sea."