David Cameron

During his mandate as Prime Minister, he said “Mare Nostrum was a genuine attempt by the Italians to deal with this problem, but I think I am right in saying that more people died during the operation of that policy than when it was brought to an end” 

David Cameron has been Prime Minister from May 2010 to July 2016. On 23 April 2015, David Cameron agreed at a special EU Council summit in Luxembourg to deploy the military ship HMS Bulwark in support of Sophia. At the European Council meeting on 18 May 2015 where Operation Sophia was discussed, according to scholar Karolina Follis, David Cameron did make sure that none of the persons rescued by the Royal Navy would be allowed to apply for asylum in the UK (See UK, “Operation Sophia”).

In 2015 and 2016, Cameron and May came under strong domestic pressure from the rise of UKIP and the constant campaigns in the tabloid press. Cameron specifically failed to prioritize migration policy until the Valletta Summit in November 2015, seeing it as a European not a British issue.  Following this event, Cameron started being proactive on EU migration policy and supported cooperation with African countries. The UK sent military planners to the Rome headquarters of Operation Sophia in 2016 and was described as being a very strong, indeed leading, contributor to Operation Sophia to date.” (See UK, "Operation Sophia")

Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg also acknowledged that the EU’s decision to scale back search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean did not work, after two boats with hundreds of exiles drowned in 2015. (See UK, “Operation Sophia”).

On 23 April 2015, David Cameron agreed at a special EU Council summit in Luxembourg to deploy the military ship HMS Bulwark in support of Sophia. When the mission of HMS Bulwark expired, a vessel a fifth of its size called HMS Enterprise was sent to the area with the principal aim of stopping smugglers, not saving lives (See UK, “Operation Sophia”).