Aneurin Brewer sets out a practical guide to defending the pilots of small boats following the Nationality and Borders Act 2022
- This article seeks to address, from a defence practitioner’s perspective, practical approaches to the prosecution of pilots of small boats following the amendments to ss 24 and 25 of the Immigration Act 1971 made by ss 40 and 41 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022.
As migrant crossings of the British Channel in so-called ‘small boats’ rose in political salience in and around 2018, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) started to attempt to prosecute the pilots of these craft. These pilots are usually asylum seekers themselves who have been pressganged or induced into holding the tiller in return for reduced fares. Nevertheless, these defendants were charged and routinely convicted of offences of facilitating their passengers’ alleged breaches of immigration law, contrary to s 25 of the Immigration Act 1971 (IA 1971), an offence primarily intended for the prosecution of people smugglers.
In R v Kakaei [2021] EWCA Crim 503 and R v Bani and other related cases
