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Why UK can't just return migrants to France, as Reform says courtesy from BBC 21-09-2024
Ahead of the start of the party's conference, Reform UK's MPs have been repeating their claim that migrants who are intercepted while crossing the English Channel can just be taken back to France.
It's part of the party's four point plan to "stop the boats", external.
Both the party's leader Nigel Farage and deputy leader Richard Tice have claimed that the UK is legally entitled to do this.
But BBC Verify has found no evidence that this is the case.
What did they say?
Earlier this month, Richard Tice tweeted, external: "Starmer needs to explain why he does not have leadership & courage to use 1982 UN Convention of Law at Sea to pick up & take back".
On 19 September, Nigel Farage told BBC Radio Kent that part of Reform's plan for migrants crossing the Channel in small boats would be to "take them back to France".
In June, he said on Question Time: “We’ll pick them up in the Channel and take them back” to France.
He said he would use the Royal Marines to do this, if necessary.
But it is not clear how Reform could do this without breaching international law.
What does the law say?
According to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), external and the International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue (SAR Convention), external, states are allowed to pick people up from boats if they are "found at sea in danger of being lost".
But these laws do not allow them to be taken to another state without that country agreeing.
In fact, Article 19 of UNCLOS says that if a "foreign ship" enters another country's territorial waters it will "be considered to be prejudicial to the peace" if "it engages in the loading or unloading of any... person contrary to the immigration laws" of that country.
BBC Verify spoke to two experts in maritime law.
James M. Turner KC, a shipping lawyer at Quadrant Chambers, told us: "The French would have to grant express permission for UK vessels to carry rescued people through their territorial waters and to leave them ashore in France".
Ainhoa Campàs Velasco, a maritime law expert from the University of Southampton, said migrants could not be returned to French shores, "unilaterally, and without prior agreement with France".
22 сен 2024
