Dear Yvette Cooper,

Congratulations on your new job of UK Home Secretary, probably the hardest job in government. I have been following, like you have, the horror of people crossing the English Channel in small boats and like you have found the response of trying to scare people away with various gimmick’s farcical. Maybe you will be open to thinking about our petition asking you to move fast and fix things! better then that daft slogan ‘move fast and break things’ isn’t it? i won’t need to remind you who did that in recent years!

The UK state has a good history of managing how people can claim asylum and safety; from giving British overseas citizens a chance to start a new life back in the post war years, to responding with care and efficiency to the Vietnamese (boat) people fleeing persecution in the 1970s, and most recently people from Hong Kong and Ukraine have benefited from the UK’s best response to the many problems in the world that create refugees and asylum seekers (always remembering no one ever choose that identity). However recently the far right have ‘shoved’ the UK government into allowing people to drown trying to cross the channel, with four more such non accidental deaths reported to have happened on the 11th July. Our petition asks you to seize the moment you have with your election victory to be bold and put in place safe routes. this is the time to do it. recent reports have estimated that 40,000 refugee visas per year are needed to give asylum seekers safe passage. This is very possible to do and will both mean you change everything for the better, which is what you want to do, and that the new Labour government remembers the past and why we have international rules to enable people to seek safety in other countries.