Overwhelmed UK rescue agencies fear children, including babies, have been left adrift in small boats in the English Channel days before a mass drowning in 2021, prompting the former children’s commissioner to call for an investigation.
There are at least nine incidents in coastguard logs obtained by The Guardian and Coast Guard free investigation, There is no record of attempts to determine the safety of a small boat carrying children after a distress call was sent.
In three of the cases, call handlers responding to boat requests for help may have heard children crying, documents show.
Four days ago, a ship sank on November 24, 2021, killing at least 27 people, including 3 children, making it the worst maritime disaster in the English Channel in more than 30 years.
British official report A report into the mass drownings published last year found that rescue operations were hampered by chaos. Problems identified by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) included too few staff at the Dover control room to handle emergency calls and a lack of aerial surveillance due to bad weather.
Anne Longfield, Britain’s former children’s commissioner, said the report failed to address concerns that young people would continue to be at risk. She said the latest revelations from the Guardian and Liberty Inquiry called for a full investigation into the search and rescue response and child protection at small boat crossings.
“Children traveling across the Channel in small boats are extremely vulnerable and have little say in the dangerous journey,” she said.
Maritime search and rescue experts who have reviewed coastguard logs from before the November 2021 tragedy say they have raised serious questions about the under-resourcing of government rescue agencies despite the growing crisis in the English Channel in previous years.
In two documented incidents, there was no evidence that rescues were underway even after helicopters or drones spotted the boats – one of which was reportedly carrying five children, the logs show.
When pressed, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) told reporters that “there are no special administrative zones” [search and rescue] requirements in these circumstances”.
However, a former senior coastguard officer, who requested anonymity, said the cases may have breached the policy of treating all migrant vessels in British waters as requiring “immediate assistance”.
Asked whether the safety of all reported passengers had been determined, a MCA spokesman said it would be “inappropriate” to comment pending the outcome of the ongoing investigation.
The MAIB report said crossing incidents had been increasing since 2018 and by the end of 2021, smugglers were advising migrants to make repeated 999 calls once they entered UK waters.
This is said to make it more difficult for operators to determine which calls are coming from ships to which they have sent rescuers. MAIB also found that rescue workers believed at the time that some migrant callers would falsely exaggerate their cases.
The British Coast Guard is mainly responsible for search and rescue, but there are no rescue ships in the English Channel. It relies mainly on the Border Force patrol boats – which an independent review commissioned by the Home Office deemed unsuitable for rescuing children – and to a lesser extent the RNLI.
Previous reports have highlighted that the coastguard also downgraded 999 calls from migrants crossing the Channel in the days before the disaster.
The Coast Guard is required to document in logs the steps taken to coordinate rescues, but the logs were so sparse that the former senior Coast Guard officer felt the staff was “effectively overwhelmed.” Another search and rescue expert said all evidence pointed to a “carnage” in the control room.
Logs show that between 5am and 7am on November 20, a three-man team from the coastguard control room in Dover received 27 calls from small boats.
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Some appear to have been moved to other control rooms, leaving staff in different parts of the country to piece together fragments of information from the same ship.
In one such incident, a coastguard officer in Falmouth responded to the call at 6.28am after multiple 999 calls were made from a boat carrying 45 people and a “crying child” said to be on board. , followed by a call at 6:39 a.m. in Dover. Another takes place in Fareham at 6.49am.
It took nearly four hours to determine that the calls were coming from the same phone number.
The incident ended 15 hours later with no update on the vessel being found and rescued, one of which records indicate ended when the operator was unable to determine whether the passengers had arrived safely.
In multiple logs, staff said they were “satisfied they were found” based on the number of rescuers throughout the day.
It was not until early November 2021, weeks before the tragedy, that the MCA became aware of the risk of fatalities as the Coast Guard was “overstretched”.
Even so, plans to increase the size of the Dover team are not completed until March 2022.
Things changed a bit after the tragedy. Policy requires the Coast Guard to document actions taken before a shutdown, and the number of operators at Dover increased sixfold, from four to 20.
An independent inquiry will hold its opening hearing on March 6 to further investigate the disaster.
Meanwhile, an increase in the number of fatal incidents has been reported in the English Channel, with the majority occurring in French waters, with research attributing the rise to British-funded French policing measures.
One of the latest victims was 14-year-old Obada Abd Rabbo, one of five people who died on January 14 this year.
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