Safe and secure routes will ‘save lives’

Care4Calais, a volunteer-run refugee charity working with refugees in the UK, France and Belgium, recently came together with PCS to propose an alternative vision of our asylum system – one which prioritises saving lives and protects the interests of our members in the Border Force.

On 25 March 2025, PCS and Care4Calais launched a new report to lobby politicians to provide a humanitarian alternative to small boat crossings. ‘Safe and Secure Routes: Refugee Visa-to-Travel Proposal’ argues for the introduction of a Ukrainian-style visa system that would not only prevent deaths in the Channel but go some way towards destroying smuggling gangs overnight.

This policy built on our previous campaigns opposing the Conservative government’s inhumane immigration policies, whether that’s forcing them to withdraw plans to order Border Force staff to turn back boats in the channel or getting involved in a legal challenge to see off the Rwanda policy.

Echoing Enoch Powell

As PCS General Secretary Fran Heathcote explained to Tuesday's fringe meeting, the “issue of migration and refugees could scarcely be more timely and more vital", with Keir Starmer last week “echoing the words of Enoch Powell, pandering to Reform rather than contradicting their nasty and divisive worldview.”

She told the meeting that “empty slogans” – ‘Stop the Boats’ or ‘Smash the Gangs’ - are “not serious policies,” with at least 78 people drowning last year while crossing the English Channel.

We “should be proud” of the Ukrainian scheme, she said, “but equally we should be ashamed that people fleeing conflict and persecution in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran or Sudan are afforded no such safe and secure scheme”.

“If a Safe Routes scheme is good enough for Ukrainians to claim asylum, the same protections are warranted for others fleeing war and persecution,” she said, adding that the UK should have a foreign policy “that doesn’t create refugees in the first place”.

‘We were not criminals’

Shafi, a person with lived experience of an unsafe channel crossing, addressed the meeting, explaining that Safe Routes is a “practical and human” solution to this humanitarian crisis. “

“Each of us was aware we might not make it,” he said. “We were not criminals - just people trying to seek safety.”

As “someone who works on the ground with refugees”, Charlotte Khan from Care4Calais said she has seen the damage caused by the “lack of safe routes,” which force people to come through illegal means, including on small boat crossings.

“Every day that we delay, people are dying,” she added. “The frequency of Channel deaths means that we risk it being normalised. We’re working towards stopping people dying.”

James Cox, group president in the Home Office, told the meeting that some members who respond to border crossings are reporting symptoms of PTSD.

Alternative vision

“I’m really proud that we set out an alternative vision,” he said. “We represent members who have witnessed the humanitarian catastrophe and have seen those deaths first-hand.”

James also noted there is extensive support among the membership but that there is more “work to do” persuading Home Office members that they can advocate for an alternative asylum system.

Placing the moral panic over migration in a broader context, Stand Up to Racism’s Weyman Bennett discussed the rise of the far-right.

He praised PCS members for resisting – and defending their communities against – the racist riots which swept through the UK last year.

Trade unionists have an important role, he said, to play in counteracting far-right narratives in their communities. “An injury to one is an injury to all,” he concluded, quoting the famous trade union mantra.

Download and read the Safe Routes report. You can also download and read our ARAF strategy.

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