Hammond: Evidence that rescue operations attract migrants 'anecdotal'

The International Organisation for Migration says thirty times more migrants have drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean this year than in the same period last year. More than 1,750 migrants have died.

Last year the Italian government's maritime rescue operation was scaled back, amid concerns that it was encouraging migrant crossings, and a more limited EU border security operation took over

"There was a risk that the way the Mare Nostrum operation was being conducted could have encouraged people take risks that it was really not safe to take", said Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond.

“Where is the evidence for that?” asked Martha Kearney.

"Well it’s anecdotal of course, but when you talk to people that have been rescued at sea, they clearly have the impression that they can get on a vessel, which is unseaworthy in the expectation that they will be immediately, within hours, picked up, that creates a really perverse incentive," replied Philip Hammond

The Tunisian captain of a boat that capsized off Libya on Sunday 19 April, killing hundreds of migrants, has been charged with reckless multiple homicide, Italian officials say.

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