00:00Good morning, everybody. I'm pleased this morning to be launching Operation Fortress.
00:05We will launch Operation Fortress, the biggest military operation in the English Channel since the Second World War.
00:12Operation Fortress will be a combined military operation.
00:17It will save lives. It will help the French in fulfilling their job of stopping the boats.
00:25And it will save a huge amount of money.
00:28We are very confident that our policy of securely picking people up and safely taking them back to France,
00:38we are entirely confident that that falls within other conventions of international law.
00:45And you'll see that argued clearly in this document.
00:51But if the Élysée Palace refuses, make no mistake, His Majesty's Royal Marines will disembark them safely on the very
01:00shore they left that morning.
01:04Those are the only two options.
01:06There is no third option where a British government under reform just shrugs its shoulders and brings them back to
01:14Dover.
01:14A president of France ordering French police onto a beach to block Royal Marines on a humanitarian mission from landing
01:22civilians in safety
01:24and forcing them back out of sea and forcing them back out of sea directly endangering their lives.
01:30Well, that would be a crime against humanity.
01:33It is simply not a serious hypothetical that President Macron, or anybody else for that matter, would do that.
01:40What's the legality of sending them to the land of French people?
01:44Saving lives at sea, saving lives at sea under international law, when people are in, and these big mega dinghies,
01:51you saw one last week with 165 on, 90 to 100 is now common.
01:56If you've ever seen one of them, and I've seen many of them, they're built for one trip,
02:00they've got balsa wood glued in the bottom.
02:03It is astonishing that we've not had a mass casualty event for some time.
02:08And indeed, the last big one happened at night, and there just happened to be a scallop boat next to
02:15them.
02:15Otherwise, that would have been 40 gone.
02:17And you're going through the world's busiest shipping lanes, you're prone to fog,
02:22actually picking these people up out of flimsy boats and returning them to the nearest safe destination
02:30and to a safe country, we believe is entirely in keeping with the international law of the sea,
02:36going back for, gosh, I mean, well over 100 years.
02:40The Australians faced all of these problems many years ago.
02:44They tried offshore processing, they tried a number of things,
02:48and in the end what worked was towing the boats back to Indonesia.
02:54And since then, hardly a boat has landed in Australia.
02:57Between 2007 and 2013, 1,200 migrants tragically died making the journey to Australia.
03:07The Australian military operation reduced that to zero.
03:13Go to Ramsgate Harbour, you will see four great big cutters.
03:18Those cutters are used by Border Force,
03:20but of course we would have Border Force working in conjunction,
03:24in many cases, with Royal Marines, Soldiers, whatever else made this joint military operation work.
03:31So, those boats are there, they're fully staffed, they're fully manned, they're available,
03:37and it won't cost any more than it's currently costing, frankly, to operate.
03:41All right.
03:41Come back, let's go to the 329 station,
03:42Himma, to keep up later today.
03:42What will they do to serve and ε habit to achieve?
03:44How will they do to serve and fuss you today?
03:44To work with relief in afternoon and afternoon,
Comments