The French navy fired over a dozen shots near a vessel containing a conservative member of the United Kingdom‘s Parliament on Tuesday as he was being interviewed about small boat migrant crossings in the English Channel, the MP claimed.
Chris Philp, the MP for the south London district of Croydon South and the U.K.’s shadow home secretary, shared a video of the incident on social media. As seen in the video, Philp stood on the bow of the boat, answering questions from a BBC reporter, as a French warship passed from close behind and appeared to fire off multiple gunshots.
“On the channel today monitoring illegal migrant crossings… as I was being interviewed by the BBC just now a French warship approached close and fired 17 live rounds behind us. There was no notice or training exercise in place. Felt like warning shots or attempted intimidation,” Philp wrote on X.
During the incident, Philp was on the English Channel discussing and looking for small boat migrant crossings, a place and topic that are flash points in the debate over illegal immigration in the U.K. British politicians advocating stronger border policies have pushed France to do more to curb the wave of illegal immigrants packing into small boats to cross the English Channel into the U.K.
In an email statement to the Washington Examiner, the communications office of the French Maritime Prefecture of the English Channel and the North Sea said the Tuesday morning incident was a “handgun firing exercise.” The Washington Examiner translated the email statement from the French agency to English using a Google translation tool.
“On Tuesday, July 28, the public service patrol boat (PSP) Flamant carried out a handgun firing exercise off the coast of Cap de Gris-Nez (62). To maintain their high level of operational readiness in the current international context, the units of the French Navy train regularly. Individual combatant training is part of the normal activity of a ship on operations,” the French statement read.
The French agency said the exercise was “unrelated” to the presence of the British ship and that officials did display the proper “regulatory signals” for the exercise, despite the officials from the British boat in Philp’s video saying they did not hear any announcements on the boat’s VHF radio system.
“The regulatory signals as provided by international standards for this shooting exercise were displayed, and the safety template was respected. This exercise is unrelated to the presence of a British ship in the area, which was out of range of the gunfire. The PSP Flamant was not involved in an operation to monitor a migrant boat,” the French statement read.
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In the video posted by Philp, he turns toward the BBC reporter as the gunfire is going off and asks, “Is that a warning shot towards us? I don’t know.”
In late April, France and the U.K. inked a 3-year, multimillion-dollar deal aimed at mitigating the issue by having the U.K. provide funding to the French government to bolster its border patrol measures along its northern coast. Additional funding is dependent on the success of France’s efforts, according to the Associated Press.