Civil servants accused over cockling trade; COCKLING TRAGEDY TERROR OF THE VICTIMS.

Byline: BY GRAHAM DAVIES Daily Post Staff

GOVERNMENT officials turned a blind eye to the shadow industry of Chinese cockle picking and allowed the illegal immigrants to remain in the UK, Preston Crown Court was told.

Ministers from the UK Immigration Service and the Department for Work and Pensions acted as "agents provocateurs" and created a situation in which cockling was an accepted part of British industry.

The court heard that instead of detaining the Chinese cocklers, UKIS and the DWP allowed them to carry on working, happy in the knowledge that they were self-sufficient and not a drain on the state.

These damning claims, which could not be printed before today due to legal reasons, were presented to judge Mr Justice Henriques by Lord Carlile in September last year, before the Morecambe Bay trial began.

Lord Carlile, who represented Tony Eden, argued that the UKIS and DWP officials were as guilty of facilitation - helping people breach immigration law - as any of the defendants.

Addressing the court in the absence of the jury, Lord Carlile said: "Officials and possibly ministers knew at all times that the Chinese were working as cocklers and would continue to work as cocklers.

"The reality is that the officials of the Government and Ministers connived and co-opted people into acceptance of the illegal cockle trade.

"They frustrated the operation of the law against that activity and one consequence of that was that it did nothing to deter the snakehead criminal gangs responsible for bringing Chinese illegals into the UK."

Lord Carlile told the court that unlike other illegal immigrants, the Chinese cocklers had not been liable to detention by the immigration authorities.

He said: "On about 50 occasions Chinese cocklers were detained for a very short time and then released.

"None are known to have been detained more than briefly by reason of breach of immigration restrictions.

"The overall and inevitable effect was the development of a shadow industry to which the Government, at the lowest, turned a Nelson eye.

"The Chinese cocklers who did this were self sufficient and not a drain on the state."

He added: "No strategy was considered or devised for dealing with the problem of Chinese cocklers.

"Those steps would have had to be taken by UKIS, working with the DWP. Both were conspicuous by their absence from this problem." The barrister also claimed that no effective steps were taken to warn merchants, or anyone else in the fishing trade that the employment of Chinese cockling gangs involved illegality.

He argued that emails sent by UKIS officials showed they were aware of the possibility of a tragedy, but apparently did nothing about it.

Lord Carlile said: "The state, through the agency of UKIS and its responsible ministers, created the situation in which it was an everyday and accepted part of British industry and exports that Chinese illegals would gather cockles, and by the way would be self-sufficient.

"If David Anthony Eden jnr is guilty as charged, so must be each UKIS officer who released a Chinese illegal in the belief that he would go cockling again.

"The difference is that the UKIS officer knew the legal provisions and was fully aware of the law on facilitation, whereas David Anthony Eden jnr was not."

Responding to Lord Carlile's claims, the Home Office and DWP released a short statement.

It read: "UKIS was aware of issues relating to illegal working in the Morecambe Bay area prior to February 2004 and took robust and appropriate action by mounting intelligence-led operations, with the involvement of the DWP, to tackle illegal working in the area and taking steps to remove those individuals with no legal right to be here.

"Despite this activity it was not possible to predict what happened on February 5, 2004."

But, according to Lord Carlile: "The reality of this case is that it is an attempt to blame somebody for the fact that the Chinese were working at Morecambe Bay on February 5, 2004, when a large measure of the true blame lies with the authorities."

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CAPTION(S):

Roll-call of disaster - 23 people either died or went missing in the Morecambe Bay tragedy. No picture is available of one of the victims, Zhang Xiu Hua