Sunak should fire those who let migrants on to the Bibby Stockholm

Placing people on the Dorset barge despite knowing there was a serious health risk is hugely negligent, writes Sean O’Grady. The first thing the PM should do, now he is back from his holiday, is find those responsible – and get rid of them

The least Sunak can do is to issue a full statement on what happened and who was culpable (Getty/AFP)

You may have noticed that last week was “small boats week.” Devised by the government’s communications team, the idea (presumably) was to highlight the successes of the government’s drive to end the flow of people making the dangerous journey across the English Channel in unseaworthy vessels. It didn’t quite end up like that, however.

It started with a relaunch of a barmy plan to send migrants to Ascension Island. Then, there were record arrivals and potential outbreaks of TB and Legionnaires’ disease on the infamous barge. It ended with the Bibby Stockholm being evacuated and the deaths of six more refugees in the Channel.

It’s fair to say that “small boats week” probably fell below the hopes of the ministers concerned – Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick. Neither figure is noted for their compassionate ways. The PR disaster couldn’t have happened to a nicer couple, you might say.

Now Rishi Sunak is back from his break in California, he may have some questions about how things have been going in his absence. In particular, he may well want to know why a group of blameless refugees were ordered on a “no choice” basis to take their places on the barge before the results of vital health and safety tests had been received and the Bibby Stockholm cleared for its unwilling and (as it turns out) unfortunate passengers.

There’s been a good deal of buck-passing in recent days about who knew what and when, but the fundamental facts are not in doubt.

Ministers, we’re told, didn’t know the results of the tests until Thursday night, according to the health secretary Steve Barclay’s latest update. So, that was the earliest point at which anyone should have been allowed onto the vessel; yet the first of the refugees were on board as soon as Monday.

After weeks of delays, it very much looks as if someone, somewhere, took the decision to put the migrants there simply in order to launch “small boats week”, without waiting for proper health and safety clearance. Could it be that the PR and the need for some good headlines about the migrant crisis took precedence over the lives of the refugees themselves?

If so, it should be a resignation if not a firing matter, and finding out the degree of negligence or incompetence of his Home Office ministers concerned should be the first thing that Sunak gets done now. He needs to know who took these decisions, when and why. The least Sunak can do is to issue a full statement on what happened, who was culpable and require those responsible to quit.

The questions are clear and unavoidable. The fact that no one was made ill as a result of this negligence or blunder is really beside the point. They could quite easily have succumbed to it. According to the NHS website, Legionnaires’ disease is “a lung infection you can get from inhaling droplets of water from things like air conditioning or hot tubs. It’s uncommon but it can be very serious.”

Indeed so, and it’s appalling that ministers and officials at every level could have been so callous and unprofessional in handling the risks posed to the lives of their fellow human beings. It is, one has to reflect, in part a consequence of the “othering” of asylum seekers that derives from the dehumanising language used by politicians and sections of the media – “illegals”, “invaders”, “fighting-age men” and so on.

They are routinely regarded as a burden, a threat, disease-ridden and intent on anything from petty crime to acts of terror. The painful irony is that the UK authorities pose a greater risk to their health and safety than they pose to the UK.

Among those Afghans forced to make the perilous journey to the UK are people who fought alongside British forces during the conflict there and were thus doing their bit to help the Western allies in their war against terrorism, al-Qaeda and the Taliban. They were fighting for our safety.

Yet such facts are rarely acknowledged by ministers who are too busy trying to manipulate the news agenda with contemptible results. No one believes the spin. It’s unlikely, but it might be a good idea for Sunak and his colleagues to have a “stop the boasts” campaign. It would do them much more good than underlining their own failure.