A fisherman whose crew saved 31 people stranded in the English Channel said he was woken in the early hours of the morning when migrants surrounded his boat “screaming for help”.
Skipper Raymond told Sky News he had been sleeping when he was awoken by a member of his crew, who told him, “There are migrants alongside the boat.”
“One guy was hanging off my wire,” he said.
“I thought at first it was just him, and once I got my fishing gear up – which took about three minutes – I stopped my boat and ran outside and along the port side there were five of them hanging off the side of my boat.”
Raymond said he then counted 45 people holding onto the collapsed dinghy and surrounding his fishing boat.
Four people have now died after the small boat got into difficulty off the coast of Kent in the early hours of this morning.
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The scene shows migrants being rescued
After the first five were pulled aboard, the rest of those stranded began swimming towards his boat.
“It was like something out of a second world war movie, there were people in the water everywhere, screaming,” he said.
In footage shared with Sky News, the fishing crew can be seen hauling the panicked people over the side of the boat.
“The dinghy started to drift away, so I steamed towards the dinghy and we secured it with a rope to the side of the boat,” he said.
“We were trying to pull them off the dinghy.”
They told me they’d paid £5,000 to a smuggler in France
After calling the UK coastguard just before 3am, Raymond’s fishing crew spent two hours pulling people from the water: “Adrenaline kicks in and you find the strength to get these guys safe.”
He said those he rescued came from Afghanistan, Iraq, Senegal and India, and they told him they had each paid £5,000 to a smuggler in France for passage into the UK.
But as the crew began pulling away, taking its passengers into port, they realised one migrant had attached himself to the side of the boat and drowned.
“One of the crew shouted, woah, there’s a rope on the starboard side of the boat.
“The next thing I knew this rope was attached to a dead body.
“We had been concentrating on the port side and this one person had swum to the starboard side, tied a rope onto my fishing gear and tied it around his wrist to keep himself alongside the boat.
“When I put my boat into gear his body floated up.”
Crew gave them ‘any clothes they had’ and put them in their beds
A government source said 43 people have been rescued alive and brought to the UK. Some of those rescued were taken from the boat and others from the water.
After being pulled from the water, Raymond says he gave everyone a “lukewarm shower”, to slowly warm them back up.
“We stripped all their wet clothes off, and my crew gave them any clothes they had to keep them warm,” he said.
“We put them in beds to keep them warm, with quilts, to get there body temperature up slowly.”
All 31 rescued by Raymond’s team had survived, he said.
“It was very lucky that the sea conditions were good. It was very cold,” he said.
“When we got into Dover, a medical came down and checked on them and he couldn’t believe how good a condition they were in, none of them had any hypothermia.”
“I just see it as saving human life,” he added.
More feared dead due to icy conditions
Searches will continue all day, but at this stage more are feared dead given the icy conditions, with temperatures believed to be as low as -4C overnight.
The Maritime and Coastguard Agency said HM Coastguard is working with the RNLI, Royal Navy, Border Force, French navy and Kent Police to look for the boat, while an air ambulance has also been sent to the scene.
A UK government spokesperson said: “We are aware of an incident in UK waters and all relevant agencies are supporting a co-ordinated response. Further details will be provided in due course.”
Home Secretary Suella Braverman said in a Commons statement that it was a “terrible tragedy”, and she had spoken to her French counterpart and is working “closely with the local authorities”.
The UK is on a “slippery slope towards death on demand”, according to the justice secretary ahead of a historic Commons vote on assisted dying.
In a letter to her constituents, Shabana Mahmood said she was “profoundly concerned” about the legislation.
“Sadly, recent scandals – such as Hillsborough, infected blood and the Post Office Horizon – have reminded us that the state and those acting on its behalf are not always benign,” she wrote.
“I have always held the view that, for this reason, the state should serve a clear role. It should protect and preserve life, not take it away.
“The state should never offer death as a service.”
On 29 November, MPs will be asked to consider whether to legalise assisted dying, through Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill.
Details of the legislation were published last week, including confirmation the medicine that will end a patient’s life will need to be self-administered and people must be terminally ill and expected to die within six months.
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Minister ‘leans’ to assisted dying bill
Ms Mahmood, however, said “predictions about life expectancy are often inaccurate”.
“Doctors can only predict a date of death, with any real certainty, in the final days of life,” she said. “The judgment as to who can and cannot be considered for assisted suicide will therefore be subjective and imprecise.”
Under the Labour MP’s proposals, two independent doctors must confirm a patient is eligible for assisted dying and a High Court judge must give their approval.
The bill will also include punishments of up to 14 years in prison for those who break the law, including coercing someone into ending their own life.
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However, Ms Mahmood said she was concerned the legislation could “pressure” some into ending their lives.
“It cannot be overstated what a profound shift in our culture assisted suicide will herald,” she wrote.
“In my view, the greatest risk of all is the pressure the elderly, vulnerable, sick or disabled may place upon themselves.”
Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, who put forward the bill, said some of the points Ms Mahmood raised have been answered “in the the thorough drafting and presentation of the bill”.
“The strict eligibility criteria make it very clear that we are only talking about people who are already dying,” she said.
“That is why the bill is called the ‘Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill’; its scope cannot be changed and clearly does not include any other group of people.
“The bill would give dying people the autonomy, dignity and choice to shorten their death if they wish.”
In response to concerns Ms Mahmood raised about patients being coerced into choosing assisted death, Ms Leadbeater said she has consulted widely with doctors and judges.
“Those I have spoken to tell me that they are well equipped to ask the right questions to detect coercion and to ascertain a person’s genuine wishes. It is an integral part of their work,” she said.
In an increasingly fractious debate around the topic, multiple Labour MPs have voiced their concerns.
In a letter to ministers on 3 October, the Cabinet Secretary Simon Case confirmed “the prime minister has decided to set aside collective responsibility on the merits of this bill” and that the government would “therefore remain neutral on the passage of the bill and on the matter of assisted dying”.
She talks about a “slippery slope towards death on demand”. Savage. The state should “never offer death as a service”, she says. Chilling.
So much for Sir Keir Starmer attempting to cool the temperature in the row by urging cabinet ministers, whatever their view, to stop inflaming or attempting to influence the debate.
Ms Mahmood talks, as other opponents have, about pressure on the elderly, sick or disabled who feel they have “become too much of a burden to their family”.
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Details of end of life bill released
She hits out at a “lack of legal safeguards” in the bill and pressure on someone into ending their life “by those acting with malign intent”.
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Malign intent? Hey! That’s quite an assertion from a secretary of state for justice and lord chancellor who’s been urged by the PM to tone down her language.
It’s claimed that Sir Keir ticked off Wes Streeting, the health secretary, after he publicly opposed the bill and launched an analysis of the costs of implementing it.
Will the justice secretary now receive a reprimand from the boss? It’s a bit late for that. Critics will also claim Sir Keir’s dithering over the bill is to blame for cabinet ministers freelancing.
Shabana Mahmood is the first elected Muslim woman to hold a cabinet post. Elected to the Commons in 2010, she was also one of the first Muslim women MPs.
She told her constituents in her letter that it’s not only for religious reasons that she’s “profoundly concerned” about the legislation, but also because of what it would mean for the role of the state.
But of course, she’s not the only senior politician with religious convictions to speak out strongly against Kim Leadbeater’s bill this weekend.
Gordon Brown, son of the manse, who was strongly influenced by his father, a Church of Scotland minister, wrote about his opposition in a highly emotional article in The Guardian.
He spoke about the pain of losing his 10-day-old baby daughter Jennifer, born seven weeks prematurely and weighing just 2lb 4oz, in January 2002, after she suffered a brain haemorrhage on day four of her short life.
Mr Brown said that tragedy convinced him of the value and imperative of good end-of-life care, not the case for assisted dying. His powerful voice will strongly influence many Labour MPs.
And what of Kim Leadbeater? It’s looking increasingly as though she’s now being hung out to dry by the government, after initially being urged by the government to choose assisted dying after topping the private members bill ballot.
All of which will encourage Sir Keir’s critics to claim he looks weak. It is, or course, a private members bill and a free vote, which makes the outcome on Friday unpredictable.
But the dramatic interventions of the current lord chancellor and the former Labour prime minister are hugely significant, potentially decisive – and potentially embarrassing for a prime minister who appears to be losing control of the assisted dying debate.
Red Bull driver Max Verstappen has won the Formula One world title for a fourth straight year.
His victory was confirmed after finishing fifth at the Las Vegas Grand Prix. Mercedes’ George Russell won the race.
The 27-year-old Dutchman becomes just the sixth driver in Formula One history to win four titles or more, after outscoring Lando Norris who took the chequered flag in only sixth.
Verstappen is now guaranteed the world crown with two races still remaining, with his domination cementing his name among Formula One’s greats.
“Oh my God man,” said an emotional Verstappen after securing the world title. “What a season. Four times. It was a little bit more difficult than last year.”
Lewis Hamilton raced back from 10th to second place to complete an impressive one-two finish for Mercedes. Carlos Sainz finished third for Ferrari, one place ahead of his team-mate Charles Leclerc.
Russell’s third victory was the most dominant of his career so far, crossing the line 7.3 seconds clear of Hamilton.
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Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton have each won a record seven, with 1950s Argentine legend Juan-Manuel Fangio on five ahead of Alain Prost, Sebastian Vettel and now Verstappen on four.
Having won every Drivers’ Championship since claiming his first in the controversial end to the 2021 season when he beat Hamilton in deeply contentious circumstances, Verstappen now joins Hamilton, Fangio and Vettel in winning four titles consecutively.
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Only Schumacher has achieved a run of five.
The team were hit by controversy earlier this season, with Red Bull’s principal sponsor, Christian Horner, facing allegations of controlling behaviour by a female staff member. Horner, who denied the accusations, was cleared, and a subsequent appeal was thrown out.
Horner congratulated Verstappen on the radio, telling him: “Max Verstappen you are a four-time world champion. That is a phenomenal, phenomenal achievement. You can be incredibly proud of yourself.”
Red Bull is on course to finish third in the constructors’ championship this year. This century only Hamilton in 2008 with McLaren, and Verstappen in 2021, have won the drivers’ title when their team did not win the constructors’ championship.