Two survivors were taken to Lancashire Royal Infirmary, and others to Lancaster police station. Morecambe Bay is notorious for its fast-rising tides and quicksands. Stewart Rushton and his nine-year-old son, Adam, died in the flats two years ago after becoming disorientated in fog and trapped by the rapidly incoming tide.
In August last year, police arrested 37 Chinese people in the Chatsworth area of Morecambe after members of the public expressed concerns. Cockle picking is not illegal, but locals have complained after reports that groups of fishermen from across the UK were flocking to Morecambe Bay.
Some argue that, while members of the public should be free to pick cockles, those doing it for a business should be regulated and licensed.
Ms Smith told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "You can't stop people turning up and going on the beach at eight o'clock on a dark winter's night. The legislation dates back over years, so there is a need, maybe, to update legislation regarding fisheries. Tides kill 19 cockle pickers. Rescue workers carry bodies into an ambulance at Morecambe lifeboat station after a group of Chinese cockle pickers were trapped by the rising tide.
Topics China. I was just numb… then, I don't know how, a wave maybe turned me round. I was on my own and then a helicopter came. Gangmaster Lin Liang Ren would drive the workers to Morecambe from Liverpool and visit casinos while the men and women toiled through the night. Mr Gradwell said while "significant sums" were pocketed by the gangmaster, the cockle pickers earned "a pittance". The former detective superintendent, who is now retired, said: "The main reason 23 people died in Morecambe Bay on this particular night was because of poverty in the Fujian province of China.
Lin Liang Ren was jailed for 14 years in after being found guilty of manslaughter and helping the cockle pickers break immigration laws. The 23 deaths at Morecambe Bay highlighted the serious risks being taken by low-paid workers and the cavalier attitude of those supposedly responsible for them, but in Parliament efforts were already under way to tackle gangmasters.
The organisation was set up to protect vulnerable workers in the shell fish, agriculture, food and food packaging labour markets but MPs and academics are campaigning for it to be given more powers. Mr Sheridan wants to see its remit extended into industries including social care and construction.
Research led by Durham University last year found evidence that the numbers of people trafficked for labour exploitation would soon exceed those brought to the country for sexual exploitation. The report also called for the scope of the GLA to be widened. Professor Gary Craig, who led the study, said there was a "real problem" getting people to acknowledge that "slavery exists in the UK" and warned there were "accidents waiting to happen".
The remit of the GLA, Prof Craig said, should be extended to include industries including "construction, hospitality and leisure and social care". He added: "What's changed since Morecambe Bay? The problem has got worse and the resources directed to it are totally inadequate. For its part, the GLA accepts exploitation exists in other industries and insists it could be more of an "effective deterrent" with extra resources.
His father went overseas to earn enough for his tuition. Chen says that is impossible now. After he turns 18 next year, we won't be able to keep him in education.
He would rather start work early so that he can start making payments on the debt that he will inherit as soon as he comes of age - a responsibility that few children of his age have to bear. He cooks noodles for the family, helps his mother with the piecework, and trims his dreams to fit the new reality. There are some outlets just 10 minutes from here and I hear they pay OK, about three or four yuan [p] an hour.
I could earn yuan in a month," he says. One grandmother is still crying as I prepare to leave. The other quietly grasps my hand and implores me to help. I ask Chen how the family will manage. My only hope is that all of the family stay safe and healthy.
If anyone gets sick, it will be a total disaster for all of us. Chen Jinyun is on the run. She has not broken any laws, but the death of her husband in Morecambe has made her a fugitive from the family's creditors.
If I had any money, I would pay them, because I know they have to work hard for their money too. It is not that I don't want to pay. I just can't. We sneak back into her home so that she can show me the life she left behind. It is a rough-hewn, empty house. The only decorations on the walls are some Christian posters and a portrait of her dead husband, Lin Guoguang.
Ten of us used to live here," says Chen. Just after the disaster, our relatives helped us a little bit, but they could not carry on supporting us indefinitely. Now we are on our own. And the amount that we owe is growing all the time because we cannot pay interest. She shows me a letter she received from her husband before he died. It is a short, scrawled tale of misery: "Wife. Europe is a devilish prison. It is very hard to make a living here.
To earn money, I have to endure the depths of bitterness. In this boring Europe, I miss you and mother and our relatives very much. I wish you and my son health and safety. At the bottom, he tags on a brief message to their two sons. Always listen to your mother. The eldest son has done his best to honour that final wish, but it is becoming more difficult.
This month he takes university entrance exams, but his mother says she cannot afford the application fee, let alone the costs of tuition if he gets a place. This barely covers half the interest payments. At the moment, it is impossible. I can't sleep with worry. I know it would influence them in a bad way. But they are not stupid. They realise we have problems," says Chen.
Outside, there are building materials for some home improvements that have been shelved indefinitely. On surrounding plots of land, meanwhile, neighbours are erecting huge new villas with the money sent back by family members overseas.
Their father had died in an accident several years earlier, leaving the family deep in debt. Their mother, Chen Aiqin, went to work in Britain because she thought it was her family's only chance to escape poverty. A week after she died, in , I visited the family's home. Having heard so many wailing relatives in other houses, I was struck by the silence in this one. The children looked lost, disbelieving. Their uncle was too shocked by the size of the burden suddenly thrust upon him to grieve at the loss of his sister.
He already had four mouths to feed. Returning three years later, I find that he seems to have coped as well as can be imagined in the circumstances. The family has had to move. It wasn't the creditors this time. The children couldn't bear to live in their old house, where the pictures of their dead parents hung on the walls. She now lives at her uncle and aunt's home in the hills.
The siblings have been separated. The uncle, Chen Minyi, said he could not afford to keep them both, so the son stays with another aunt. Even so, small expenses quickly mount up. Healthcare, which is more market-driven than in most capitalist countries, is a heavy burden. Each time one of the children catches a cold, the family must pay a few hundred yuan for medicine. And, of course, the debt from the dead woman's passage to Britain still hangs over them. The uncle, who earns 1, yuan per month, has repaid 20, yuan, but still owes , The creditors have stopped charging interest, but they are a presence that the children cannot ignore.
He wants to quit school and start work so that he can begin repaying the debt. He knows the creditors will never stop coming after him. He has seen what they are like when they are here. Worries about the future contrast sharply with the upbeat mood in Fujian. With China's economy racing along at double-digit pace and huge inflows of cash from overseas, this region has never had it so good.
But it is still not rich enough to keep people from leaving. Xu Liying knows just how hard life can be without any support from society, the state or charity. She is the stalwart of her family: a doughty, intelligent woman with the only skilled, white-collar job among all the people that we have been meeting. But she is dragged into poverty by debt and dependants. She supports a daughter with learning disabilities, an unemployed husband, an elderly father, a sister who became mentally ill after being raped, and, since February 5 , a nephew.
Her brother and his wife were the only couple to die on the Lancashire sands, leaving their son an orphan. She shows me two photos of the father, Xu Yuhua, and mother, Liu Qinying, taken a week or so before the disaster.
In the background of both is a British beach. Xu says her brother went overseas after his mother was diagnosed with cancer. It was the only way they could pay for the treatment. He earned a lot in his first year and wrote to say that he was happy in Britain. His wife joined him after local snakeheads told her that migrant men find mistresses if they are separated from their spouses for too long. Xu appears to be a reasoning, reasonable woman.
But now she is furious at those who have left her alone with such a burden. She condemns the snakeheads for luring her brother and his sister overseas, she accuses the Chinese authorities of inhumanity because they would not let her see the bodies before they were cremated, and she is dismayed that Britain is treating the dead more as criminals than as victims. How can the Chinese and the UK governments say that it is not their responsibility?
It is really unfair. All the victims were the main breadwinners for their families. They did not do anything illegal once they got to the UK. They were working and they died. Those who sent them to their deaths have not been punished as much as us. The creditors have taken over the dead couple's house, using it as a storeroom for their goods. The year-old's schoolwork is suffering. When he returns home, he locks himself in his room.
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