Force economic Mediterranean migrants to go back home, Theresa May says

Theresa May, the Home Secretary, has been on the Today programme to confirm that Britain does not intend to take part in an EU Scheme to resettle migrants who become stranded in the Mediterranean.

Her appearance follows a piece in The Times in which she steps up her intended opposition to an EU plan to take in tens of thousands of refugees who have made the crossing from Africa to Europe across the Mediterranean.

She says that any EU quota that would oblige to take states to take a greater share of migrants and refugees would encourage “evil” traffickers and “act as an increased pull factor” across the Med.

She writes in the Times: “We must distinguish between those genuinely fleeing persecution and economic migrants crossing the Mediterranean in the hope of a better life.

She adds: “I disagree with the suggestion by the EU’s high representative Federica Mogherini that ‘no migrants’ intercepted at sea should be ‘sent back against their will’. Such an approach would only act as an increased pull factor across the Mediterranean — and encourage more people to put their lives at risk.”

She told Radio 4’s today programme: “These are very often economic migrants, people who have paid criminal gangs to transport them across Africa, to put them into vessels which those criminal gangs know are not sea-worthy.”