CONSERVATIVE MP Joe Robertson has called on the Home Secretary to explain what the government is doing to prepare for new illegal migrant routes to the UK after a lifeboat crew in his constituency intercepted a mega-dinghy.
Speaking on GB News he said: "So what's particularly remarkable here is that a new route has been used, but it appears that it may now be setting a precedent for people smugglers to send small, actually very large boats off, not from the Calais area where the crossing is around 30 miles, but from the Cherbourg area where the crossing is 70 to 80 miles.
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"I think the Home Office need to come clean here and say whether it's their assessment that new routes are opening up, or whether they think it's a one-off.
"And regardless of those possibilities, what they're doing to prepare whole communities that haven't seen small boat crossings before to respond, so we don't see the scenes like we saw in Portsmouth yesterday.
"Now I got the opportunity to ask the minister in the House of Commons just after I sent this letter, and her answer was very confused indeed. She seems to be suggesting, actually we think the migrants were heading for Dover anyway.
"But Cherbourg to Dover is about 130 miles. I mean, that seems to be a ridiculous response. I don't think she can possibly believe that.
"The Home Secretary, the government need to tell us what their response is. My analysis is such that I saw yesterday there is a new route opening up, but ultimately it doesn't really matter what I think.
"It really does matter what the government think because they are supposed to be responding. And just leaving it to lifeboat volunteers, who don't want to get involved in this; they didn't sign up to do the government's job of policing our borders. They signed up to save lives.
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"And while the government is asleep at the wheel and doesn't really know what's happening, it's communities on the Isle of Wight and Hampshire and elsewhere are having to pick up the problem.
"I would start by acknowledging there's a problem. Stop going on and on about 'the Tory government that failed on this.' I accept the last Tory government didn't do enough.
"Accept Labour are in power now. The numbers may be coming down this year, but if the people smugglers have found new routes, they may well be going up next year. The government need to grow up, recognise they're in charge now, and tackle it, and acknowledge that they might have a far bigger problem on their hands.
"I would leave the ECHR, that is the Conservative policy. But there's another thing I'd do as well: find a third country, oh, like Rwanda, in order to have an agreement to deport these people to.
"France don't want them back, won't have them back, and their countries of origin very often won't have them back. You can't fly a plane into somewhere that simply won't let them land.
"But if you have a returns deal with a third country, then you've got an agreement. You can deport them quickly, and there's your deterrent and I would strongly suspect, in fact, I'm absolutely certain the numbers would start to decline."
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