There was an exchange in the House of Commons on Thursday afternoon that ought to be a scandal but won’t. It ought to be a scandal because it involves a Cabinet minister undertaking to do something that, in any other context, would bring waves of condemnation from across the House. It won’t because the scandalous thing the minister pledged to do is endorsed by Good People with Good Intentions and could only be decried by Bad People with Bad Intentions.
The minister was Priti Patel and she was being questioned about the deaths of 27 migrants who attempted to enter Britain via the English Channel. The SNP’s Brendan O’Hara said he tuned into Wednesday’s 10 o’clock news on the BBC and had been ‘absolutely appalled when a presenter informed me that around 30 “migrants” had drowned’. He added:
‘Migrants do not drown; people drown. Men, women and children drown.’
When you don’t take action to stop people-smuggling operations that cause 27 deaths, you don’t get to complain that neutral phraseology is an affront to human dignity
O’Hara asked the Home Secretary to ‘join me in asking the BBC news editorial team and any other news outlet thinking of using that term to reflect on their use of such dehumanising language’.
Patel replied that he had made ‘a reasonable point’ and confirmed she would join him in requesting that the BBC and other media outlets consider their use of language.
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