Fiona MacTaggart

Nineteen bodies had been recovered from the treacherous waters of Morecambe Bay after the tides engulfed the team of cockle fishers, and the police confirmed that most of the survivors, believed to be Chinese, were asylum seekers.

The Home office Minister Beverley Hughes said she suspected people trafficking was behind the tragedy. We are talking about ruthless gangs "the snakeheads", she said," who transport people for labour exploitation."

But the government has long known about the issue of illegal cockle workers - these ones went out to the cockle beds under cover of dark - and had promised a multi agency crackdown.

Kirsty Wark spoke to the Home Office Minister Fiona MacTaggart. She asked her if she thought illegal migrants were amongst the dead.

FIONA MACTAGGART (HOME OFFICE MINISTER):
It's very possible that there are illegal migrants amongst the dead. One of the reasons why we are trying to bear down on illegal migration is because things like health and safety arrangements and proper security aren't operated by people who are happy to employ people illegally. This ghastly episode highlights the risks which people take.

WARK:
But the Government has long known about the illegal cockle fishing, the scale of the employment of illegal immigrants. There was a major rescue last month of 50. In August last year, 37 illegal cocklers were apprehended at Morecambe. Where is the great co-ordinated approach promised by the Work and Pensions minister - we will have a major clampdown, he said?

MACTAGGART:
We have had a major clampdown. 20 gangs have been stopped in the last six months. There are 24 facilitators in jail at present. But the scale of the operations is substantial. That is one of the reasons why we are putting legislation through Parliament right now to make facilitation of migration for labour an offence, punishable by up to 14 years in jail. So we can have new powers to deal with this kind of situation.

WARK:
Is there surveillance at the moment at Morecambe Bay?

MACTAGGART:
I can't talk about particular operations. We have quite a complex series of operations which are designed to deal with intercepting illegal facilitation and illegal migration.

WARK:
There either was or wasn't surveillance at Morecambe Bay. If there was surveillance, it didn't work and if there wasn't, when it was well-known that it was a good area for cockling, there was a failure in your approach.

MACTAGGART:
There is a difficulty in working out where the best point to intercept illegal migration is. The first point, and the point where most of Britain's effort is put on, is at the ports of entry. We have a whole series of new powers which have actually prevented the continuous flow of people through our ports and then claiming asylum after. The numbers of people doing that have been halved in the last year. That is the first point at which we put our effort. The second is in order to begin to prevent the sending of people, which means tackling inequalities between countries and also tackling, dealing with cases quickly here.

WARK:
The fact is that at least 19 people have lost their lives in the waters of Morecambe Bay at a time when it was well-known that the cockling was extremely good, the waters were terrifying, and there was probably likely to be gangs working in the area. Surely we have a duty of care to people in this country, whether they are illegal immigrants or not?

MACTAGGART:
That's absolutely true. That is one of the reasons why we are trying to reduce the scale of illegal working. That's the way to prevent it.

WARK:
Today the Bishop of Lancaster called on the Government to ensure that all contractors for migrant employment were licensed? In particular in this area, multi-million pound business, you just to have accept that you need these workers, license the leaders and then they can have these workers working for them?

MACTAGGART:
Well, as you might know, there is a Private Members' Bill on the issue of gangmasters which is coming before the House of Commons. One of the things that we will be doing is talking to the mover of that Private Members' Bill to see if there are parts of that bill which can actually give us new ways to tackle this problem.

WARK:
Private Members' Bills are notoriously difficult to get through Parliament. Will you provide Parliamentary time as the Government to make sure that this Bill has a following wind?

MACTAGGART:
If there are elements within the Bill which will give us effective powers to deal with the problem, of course we will. It's often easy to say we need a system which will work. It's actually quite difficult, as you will know if you have ever been to Morecambe Bay, to find a system you can police effectively. It's a huge area. So, one of the things that we need to do is not just have things which sound good but have proposals which work well, that's what we are determined to do.

WARK:
Minister, thank you very much.

This transcript was produced from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight. It has been checked against the programme as broadcast, however Newsnight can accept no responsibility for any factual inaccuracies. We will be happy to correct serious errors.