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Ben Habib, the deputy leader of Reform UK, has suggested there are circumstances when people crossing the English Channel in small boats should be left to drown.
In comments on TalkTV that shocked presenter Julia Hartley-Brewer, Habib said migrants should “suffer the consequences of their actions” if they scupper their vessels and refuse new dinghies.
Hartley-Brewer said his position was “not a policy that a civilised country should endorse”.
The statement came as five more people died in the Channel on Tuesday. The migrants, including a seven-year-old girl, died when their boat got stuck on a sandbank off the coast of Pas-de-Calais in northern France.
In the interview, Habib, a parliamentary candidate for the party polling around 12%, suggested Border Force should “use force” to repel migrants in boats, and that rescue services should provide them with another dinghy if they jumped into the water.
But he urged Hartley-Brewer not to “infantilise these people, they have free will”, adding that if people “choose to scupper” a rescue dinghy then “they have to suffer the consequences of their actions”.
Hartley-Brewer then asked: “Then you would leave them to drown?”
“Absolutely,” he replied. “They cannot be infantilised to the point that we become a hostage to fortune.”
You can watch the full exchange below.
Julia Hartley-Brewer clashes with Reform UK’s Ben Habib over how the party would stop the Channel boats.
Julia: “Are you genuinely saying the policy is ‘we will let people drown to make a point’?”
Ben: “Let’s not infantilise these people!”@JuliaHB1pic.twitter.com/u4OAIjjBk4
— TalkTV (@TalkTV) April 23, 2024
This should end Ben Habib’s career.
It won’t. But in any rational universe it would.pic.twitter.com/JW8jcPH55H
— Edwin Hayward (@edwinhayward) April 24, 2024
Crucial part of the exchange below.
Ben Habib: “I said that we could, as an idea, provide them with another dinghy into which to climb and then go back to France. And if they choose to scupper that dinghy, then yes, they have to suffer the consequences of their actions.”
Julia Hartley-Brewer: “Then you would leave them to drown?”
BH: “They cannot … absolutely, they cannot be infantilised to the point that we become a hostage to fortune.”
JHB: “I have no doubt that’s a policy that would work quite well. However, that is not a policy that a civilised country should endorse.”
BH: “Why is that uncivilised, Julie?”
JHB: “Because we don’t leave people to drown. Because we’re civilised human beings. I don’t want these people here. I don’t think they should be infantilised either. But I would never, I wouldn’t leave someone to drown. No, I wouldn’t. And I don’t think there’s anyone in Border Force or the Royal navy who would do that.”
The clash comes in the aftermath of legislation being passed to underpin the government’s Rwanda deportation plan.
The policy to send illegal migrants on a one-way journey to east African country is key to Rishi Sunak’s pledge to “stop the boats” by deterring people from making risky journeys and breaking the business model of people-smuggling gangs.
