Europe (Rescue of Migrants)

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 6 May 2015.

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Photo of Patrick Harvie Patrick Harvie Green

I add my thanks and congratulations to Alex Rowley for bringing this important debate to the Parliament. He and other members have used the right language in it: we have talked and heard about human beings facing danger. How different that is from the rhetoric that represents those people as a threat to us, which we hear not only in this country but in a number of other European countries. They are not a threat to us; they are human beings and we must reach out in a spirit of compassion rather than have a response to the crisis that is driven by fear, as so many seek to make it—especially in this frenetic election period.

Alex Rowley also said that our policy response must place greater priority on protecting lives than it does on protecting borders. That is absolutely right and—once again—contrasts with much of the rhetoric in our political debate at the moment. A response that is geared towards protecting lives will not only re-establish the search and rescue operations but will establish safe routes for people to flee from persecution, conflict, poverty and other factors.

I am not convinced by the arguments of people who call for a security-led response—a military response. I have heard calls for boats to be destroyed and for other approaches that are primarily about deterrence and protecting borders. If we take such an approach and disrupt the unsafe routes of passage, it will only make the human beings who use them more vulnerable to the threats and dangers that they face. We have to place safe routes of passage before them rather than merely disrupt the unsafe ones. That is a critical difference.

Frontex and operation Triton are geared towards deterrence and protecting borders. Simply putting search and rescue operations into their remit is not enough. We need to change that remit entirely and place the emphasis on protecting lives and people, as Mr Rowley said, and not principally on protecting borders.

We must look at the causes of people fleeing—the things that we should label as threats. They include conflict, poverty and persecution. Already, climate change is a driver of migration. It will continue to grow as a significant driver of migration during this century and may become a dominant driver. As Kenny MacAskill said, we must take responsibility for the contribution that we have so shamefully made to those problems, threats and things that cause fear.

We must recognise that people have a right to seek to migrate, whether for asylum or because of conflict, climate change, persecution or poverty. The criminals who exploit them, whether through trafficking or exploiting their labour when they reach a country of safety—in which they often do not experience the same degree of safety that we would expect to experience in our lives—must be treated as criminals. However, the causes of that migration must be recognised and, fundamentally, the rights of people to flee those causes of human suffering must be our priority. I commend Alex Rowley again for his motion and for his choice of topic for debate.