'Start referring to small boats as Brexit boats' top Lib Dems urged

Small boats crossing the Channel should be renamed "Brexit boats", the Lib Dem annual conference has heard.

The call was mounted after leader Sir Ed Davey said Nigel Farage should apologise to voters for Britain losing the right to return migrants to Europe. A panel was questioned on whether the soundbite would point the finger of blame at Brexit's architects.

A delegate from the Mole Valley Liberal Democrats group, said: "Ed Davey recently said if we were still in the EU, we could simply send the people who arrive on boats, on the boats back.

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"Can we use the term Brexit boat to refer to these boats? We need a soundbite, and Brexit boats, we should really do this."

Lord Mike German responded: "I love the Brexit boats which of course is about the Dublin agreement, which of course we were extinguished from when we left the European Union."

Sir Ed has argued that leaving the EU meant losing access to the Dublin agreement - an EU system that meant asylum seekers could be sent back to the first country they reached.

He told the BBC earlier this month: "I think Nigel Farage and the Conservatives should be apologising to those people protesting and saying sorry we caused it. Before Brexit, we had a returns agreement with every European country.

"We were able to return people by law. They couldn't stop us. And it acted as a real deterrent effect. The Conservatives and Nigel Farage need to answer for why they destroyed those return agreements that we had and why they have caused this problem in the first place."

Critics of this view have hit back saying the Dublin agreement was flawed. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp accused the Lib Dem chief of "rewriting history". Around 7% of outgoing requests under the agreement were accepted.

From 2015 to 2018, Home Office data shows, the UK made 18,953 outgoing requests to transfer people to other member states, from which 1,395 people were transferred abroad.

In the same period 7,365 incoming requests were made to transfer people into the UK, of which 2,365 were granted.

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