Yvette Cooper, Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary, commenting on reports that hundreds of people have drowned after a boat capsized in the Mediterranean Sea, said:

“Today’s dreadful and distressing tragedy shows how urgently we need EU and international action to prevent thousands of people from drowning off Europe’s shores.

“The British Government must immediately reverse its opposition to EU search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean, as the EU needs to restart the rescue as soon as possible. EU Governments must not turn their backs on those drowning at sea. And we need international action to tackle the traffickers and provide more help in the region to prevent desperate people trying to make the perilous journey in the first place.

"We have warned for many months that the UK Government was wrong to oppose EU search and rescue operations when Mare Nostrum was cancelled.

“Theresa May was very wrong to argue that the EU rescue operations should be stopped in order to deter others from coming. It is immoral to turn our backs and leave people to drown in order to deter other desperate travellers - and of course it hasn’t worked. Since the operations were cancelled even more people have tried to cross the Mediterranean, and thousands have died.

“The Italian Government are asking for EU help. The EU should do the basic, humanitarian thing and rescue those in peril on the sea.

“And importantly we need to see more focused leadership at an EU level to tackle the traffickers profiting from death, and ensuring all member states are doing what they can to support humanitarian assistance and foreign policy interventions in the countries people are travelling from to prevent these desperate journeys in the first place.”

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