Council rejects call to bar migrant landings

Portsmouth City Council has voted against a motion calling for the city to never be used to land migrants rescued from small boats.

Councillors voted 24 to 13, with one abstention, to reject the proposal, which followed the arrival of 120 people at Eastney on 6 September.

The motion, proposed by Reform councillor George Madgwick, said Portsmouth was "not a suitable disembarkation point" for small boat arrivals and "must not be permitted to become one".

A letter from the Home Office and Department for Transport, read to the meeting, said it was "not the government's intention" to make Portsmouth a routine landing site, but stopped short of ruling it out entirely.

The letter said it would "not be responsible to give an absolute guarantee" excluding any particular location, in circumstances where life may be at immediate risk.

The extraordinary meeting, held at Portsmouth Guildhall on Wednesday, was suspended for 10 minutes after repeated disruption from the public gallery.

Some members of the public were removed and the Lord Mayor warned he would cancel proceedings entirely unless order was restored.

The motion called on the council to write to the Home Secretary stating it did not consider Portsmouth an appropriate location for landings.

It also asked the authority to seek a binding commitment to be consulted ahead of any future disembarkation and called for the government to reimburse local costs.

Resident Sonia Gibbs said crowds who gathered at Eastney on 6 September were "met with riot police" and given no information about who had arrived.

She said it had been "upsetting" to be labelled "thugs and racists" by "local MPs and officials" the following day.

Ant Middleton, the former SAS soldier and TV personality, also spoke in support of the motion, saying he could not accept the city "facilitating" small boat arrivals.

Speaking against the motion, another resident said the RNLI was "a heroic organisation saving lives at sea", and that its volunteers had acted "without discrimination" in line with their duty.

He also pointed to an incident in which Pakistan's under-19 cricket team were wrongly targeted after being mistaken for migrants, saying the motion's wording risked excusing "racial vigilantism".

Councillor Matthew Winnington accused Madgwick of previously posting online that people should "lobby against the RNLI" and "withdraw" their support for the charity.

Madgwick disputed this, saying he had only argued it was "morally wrong" to bring undocumented people ashore, and that critics of the RNLI should raise concerns through lobbying rather than "violence" against volunteers.

Councillor Leonie Oliver, who also opposed the motion, said the council could demand answers over why Eastney was chosen without withdrawing support from RNLI volunteers.

Council leader Steve Pitt said the authority had already written to the Home Secretary on 11 September to make clear Portsmouth was unsuitable for such landings.

Several councillors said they could not support the motion because it did not thank the RNLI or coastguard.