PARLIAMENT last week was dominated by the tragedy in the English Channel. Whatever view you take on immigration and asylum, humanity dictates sympathy for the suffering of these desperate people.

Criminal gangs who exploit them and lead them to their doom do need punished severely. But at the root of the issue lies their appalling situation, where many find they can no longer safely live in their homeland. That can be through war or natural disaster but something cataclysmic has driven them to risk everything.

Addressing that and providing assistance is what’s really required. There may not be room for all but there’s certainly room for some. Of course, those who are criminals should be rejected but others have been imperilled by our actions and sometimes assistance that they provided us in places such as Afghanistan deserve sanctuary from us.

More must be done to address their plight, even if not all can ultimately stay here. If we don’t do that then we’ll discover a sea channel is no more effective in deterring desperate people than a wall across a land border in America.

That global unfairness exists with Covid as with every other aspect of life. I’m soon to get my booster jag and am looking forward to it. It might not guarantee I avoid coronavirus but it certainly reduces the risk and mitigates its effects. But I recently read that whilst we’re rightly powering on with protecting our people with an additional vaccine dose, in the developed world 4.7 billion people remain entirely unvaccinated. That’s an unfair world but it’s also an unsafe world. If we don’t take steps to address its eradication globally then we’ll face the risk of yet another strain, and one that could be even more threatening and severe.

So I recognise why people say look after our own people first and we are. But it’s a global world now and that requires us to look after all of humanity – for our own, as well as their, sakes.