The MP for Morecambe Bay has claimed that she wrote to the Home Office asking what they were doing about cocklers who “Unable to speak English and under the control of a gang master, these people were being paid one fifth of the standard rate for their work.
They were also being transported 20 to a boat in waters renowned for their currents and quicksands, where an experienced local fisherman would not consider carrying more than six.”
Reportedly, the responsible minister (Fiona MacTaggart, MP for Slough and my nearest Labour MP at the moment) replied that “resource issues” and the difficulty of obtaining written evidence in such cases meant that the Immigration Service would not intervene. Not, of course, that the people involved, even those who would later die, would have welcomed a visit from immigration officers. And this is exactly the problem created by the asylum hysteria. The exploited and the exploiter are welded together in a conspiracy of silence against the state.