16 2GM Friday August 7 2020 | the times
News
The home secretary is discussing using
the Royal Navy to help to tackle the
cross-Channel migrant crisis after a
record number of almost 250 arrived
yesterday.
Priti Patel has held talks over what
vessels and other assets could be
deployed in the next few days to deal
with the growing number of people
making the 21-mile crossing. The navy
would be expected to stop migrant
boats and send them back to France.
Ms Patel has ordered senior officials
to draw up plans to use whatever
resources are needed.
A heavily pregnant woman and
young children were among boatloads
of migrants arriving in Kent yesterday,
bringing the arrivals so far this year to
more than double the total for last year.
The woman was among a group of 16
migrants, including ten children, who
landed on Dungeness beach at about
8.30am after being intercepted by the
Border Force. Others arrived at Dover.
The Dungeness group sat exhausted on
the pebbly beach while waiting to be
transferred to immigration officials.
Susan Pilcher, an amateur photo-
grapher who saw them on the beach,
said: “I could hear the Border Force
workers asking how many months
pregnant she was and she said eight.
They didn’t speak much English at all.”
As the scale of the crossings emerged,
Ms Patel held emergency talks with
Border Force and Immigration En-
forcement officials, and the British
ambassador to France. “We are looking
at what more assets may need to be de-
ployed. This could involve the navy
potentially,” a Whitehall source said.
The talks will involve the Ministry of
Defence but it is understood that Ms
Patel has not made a formal request for
military aid. “We do not want to put the
navy in if all it does is act as a magnet for
more people to come over,” the White-
hall source said. “We do not want the
navy to be a taxi service.”
Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the
Commons defence select committee,
said that navy patrols should be de-
ployed. “The navy’s fleet is a national
asset, and if there is a spike in the Chan-
nel then a supportive arrangement
from the MoD to the Home Office
should be triggered to protect our
shores,” he told The Sun.
Last night Ms Patel was seeking ur-
gent talks with her French counterpart.
It is understood that next week a char-
ter flight could return people who have
arrived this year back to EU states.
More than 3,700 migrants have ar-
rived so far this year, compared with
1,850 in all of last year. Yesterday’s total
of nearly 250 exceeded the previous
daily record of 202, set last Thursday.
Lucy Moreton, of the Immigration
Service Union, said: “A hundred a day isabout average now. It is warm and calm
and lots of people will try to come.”
The border will close in December,
and so people smugglers were advising
migrants that it was “now or never”, she
added. “Of course, it is not true. They
are just telling the migrants that.”
Since Sajid Javid, when he was home
secretary, declared the crossings a
“major incident” in 2018, the number
arriving annually has increased about
twelvefold from 297.
Only 155 cross-Channel migrants
were returned to Europe between Jan-
uary last year and April this year. A fur-ther 166 are awaiting return to France,
Italy and Germany. Requests have been
made for a further 577 who have arrived
this year to be sent back after finger-
print checks found that they had either
claimed asylum in or been in contact
with another EU state.
Ms Patel has demanded that France
take more action to close the route. The
French authorities intercept some ves-
sels but when migrants threaten to
jump into the sea the patrol boats
withdraw. The French then shadow the
overcrowded dinghies until they safely
reach British waters.A man who stabbed an aspiring Olym-
pian to death in an unprovoked assault
at a Tube station while on licence for
another knife attack faces life in prison.
Alex Lanning, 23, murdered Tashan
Daniel, 20, with a weapon he claimed
he had taken from the set of the film
Fast & Furious 9.
Mr Daniel, a 200-metre sprinter, had
kissed his father goodbye before setting
off with a friend, Treyone Campbell, to
see Arsenal v Nottingham Forest at the
Emirates Stadium on September 24.
He was at Hillingdon station in west
London when Lanning, who was with
his friend Jonathan Camille, 20, asked
“what he was looking at”, the Old Bailey
was told. Lanning crossed a bridge to
the platform Mr Daniel was on and
stabbed him in the heart.
Mr Daniel’s parents arrived while
paramedics were performing CPR. Hisfather, Chandy Daniel, said: “I held
him, stroked his face and kissed him as
he lay on that platform, only to be told
by the paramedics that there was noth-
ing more that they could do for him.”
Lanning, from Hillingdon, had been
released halfway through a four-year
sentence, handed down in 2018, for
repeatedly stabbing a man to whom he
had been selling drugs in Brighton. At
the murder trial he said a friend paid
him to supply weapons for action films
and that he had left the knife in his bag
after finishing work on the latest Fast &
Furious film. He admitted manslaugh-
ter but yesterday was found guilty of
murder. Camille, from Kensington,
west London, was cleared of murder
but found guilty of manslaughter. The
pair will be sentenced on August 20.
Outside court Chandy Daniel, 59,
said that his son, who trained up to four
times a week at Hillingdon Athletic
Club and wanted to make the Olympics,
was a “fantastic human being” with “so
much potential and so much to give”.Knife thug
freed before
Tube murder
Greg WilfordNavy on call after record day
for cross-Channel migrants
Richard Ford Home Correspondent
The woman on Dungeness beach in Kent was heard telling Border Force employees that she was eight months pregnantSUSAN PILCHER VIA FERRARI PRESS AGENCYTashan Daniel was
the victim of an
unprovoked attack.
He died as his
parents looked on