People selling and handling boat parts suspected of being used in migrant Channel crossings could face up to 14 years in prison under new laws trying to crack down on people smugglers. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has also outlined plans to make endangering another life during a sea crossing to the UK a new offence carrying a five-year jail term under the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill introduced to Parliament on Thursday. Report by Faragt. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00This new law brings in counter-terror style powers to be able to go after the criminal
00:05gangs who are organising dangerous small boats, they are undermining our border security
00:10and they're putting lives at risk. They've been getting away with it for far too long,
00:15that's why we have to take this much more seriously and use the counter-terror style powers.
00:20Well we've introduced the new border security command since the election, we've also got
00:24new agreements in place with Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and also crucially
00:31with Iraq as well because we know that many of the gangs are Iraqi Kurdish gangs that are
00:35operating across Europe and that's why we've been working with the Iraq and Kurdish authorities and
00:40had recent arrests there as well. But we need these new powers in place too and we also need
00:47to recognise these gangs have had six years to take hold, they've been getting away with it
00:51and we need that cross-border cooperation and to get these new powers in place alongside the
00:57increase in returns that we've already done. So we have a mix of people arriving, so it has been
01:02Afghan, Vietnamese, Iraqi, Iranian, so different countries and that includes for example,
01:10there was a big increase last year in people arriving from Vietnam even though actually then
01:17people should be being returned very swiftly and that's why we're also strengthening returns and
01:22we've had 16,500 people returned since the general election including flights to Vietnam,
01:30including making sure that we're strengthening enforcement as well.