Peter Singer: Britain needs to think again about the right to asylum The controversial philosopher Peter Singer weighs up the morals of the refugee crisis. By Susie Mesure Peter Singer could be […]

The controversial philosopher Peter Singer weighs up the morals of the refugee crisis. By Susie Mesure

Peter Singer could be said to be the world’s most influential philosopher alive today. He is living proof that ideas can change the world. His work has inspired philanthropists such as Bill Gates to donate billions of dollars in aid, as well as galvanising the animal rights movement. He is also notorious for believing parents should have the right to end the life of any baby born severely disabled.

He made his name arguing that people in affluent nations should feel as morally compelled to help those in poorer countries as they would if they saw a child drowning in a pond. And now Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University, is applying similar logic to the refugee crisis gripping Europe.

Singer has urged a rethink of global asylum policy. He wants to stop refugees able to travel to the country of their choice from being able to claim asylum at the expense of those unable to make the journey. He worries that the current system enables people to “somehow jump the queue” – adding that although Britain has a “moral obligation” to accept refugees, this does not include everyone who makes it to the UK.

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No obligation

“I don’t think Britain has a particular obligation to accept those who manage to set foot on British shores,” he tells i. “I think something needs to be rethought about this idea of the right of asylum as it’s now being applied.”

The same goes for his homeland, Australia, he adds, where the government is often criticised for not taking in more Rohingya refugees fleeing persecution in Burma. “Taking those who manage to get on boats to Australia provides an incentive to make these dangerous journeys during which some get drowned. [The refugees] in the UNHCR camps in Lebanon or wherever are in just as much need of a place to go as the people who are landing in Australia or Greece.”

He also sees no need to prioritise children. “I wouldn’t be particularly pro taking children over adults. I think there should be a look at how many refugees each country should be taking.”

Singer is speaking after flying to Britain from Melbourne for a series of talks to celebrate the recent publication of his seminal 1972 essay, Famine, Affluence, and Morality, as a book. In a new foreword, the billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, who have given away some $30bn (£21bn) of their wealth to help people in developing countries, declare Singer’s “time has come”.

Digging deeper

Despite the Gates’ support, Singer is not above pressing billionaires to dig deeper. They “could still give more”, he says. “And I expect that they will.” He donates 40 per cent of his annual income each year to charities working to end global poverty, which still kills more than six million children prematurely.

He wants everyone to give more: anything up to 5 per cent from annual incomes of up to $100,000 – and up to a third of everything earned above that.

In the past 10 years, Singer’s original essay, which is widely read by philosophy undergraduates, has helped trigger a new social movement: effective altruism, which applies evidence and reason to determine how best to change the world.

Singer is something of a hero to the students who packed a lecture theatre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine this week, where he spoke as a visiting fellow of the New College of the Humanities. They mob him for selfies and autographs.

Decline of zoos

But he is back on track after a reviving Chinese meal – vegan, naturally – at a Soho restaurant with fellow philosopher AC Grayling, master of the New College of Humanities. Singer has not eaten meat since the mid-1970s, when he wrote Animal Liberation, a book that inspired the animal rights movement on the grounds that animals do not deserve to be discriminated against just because they are a different species from humans.

This explains his ambivalence over the recent killing of a 17-year-old gorilla at Cincinnati Zoo after a three-year-old boy fell into the primate’s enclosure. Singer would have preferred that the animal’s handlers used a tranquilliser dart. He hopes the incident will hasten the decline of zoos, accelerating “the trend against captive animals for entertainment”, much as opinion turned against animals in circuses, or even Victorian freak shows. “They started to become something that no one any longer wanted to see.”

He stops short of valuing the boy’s life over the gorilla’s but, when pressed, does admit there are situations where it is “not implausible” to suggest that animals, in some instances, could have more rights to live than children. “If we’re talking about preventing billions of chickens having miserable lives in factory farms and then being killed at the end of it, then it becomes a much more difficult comparison.”

‘Defective’ babies

Asked if he still holds his view that parents should be able to end the lives of severely disabled infants at birth, he concurs, but admits his original use of language – he described such babies as “defective” back in 1993 – was “insensitive”. He adds: “Now there is better prenatal diagnosis so more [infants that would be born severely disabled] are being killed, but in utero. And except for the narrow pro-life movement, nobody is really troubled by that.” He thinks the right to voluntary euthanasia will spread.

His concern for global wellbeing also means he has qualms about the Olympic Games going ahead in Brazil given the risks of spreading the Zika virus.

Despite the strength of his convictions, Singer insists he is a realist. “At some point you have to say, ‘I can’t worry about everything.’ You have to pick your battles.” He knows he travels too much and does not always stick to his vegan diet while away. He even, gasp, eats food that is not grown organically. “Because there’s not enough time and it’s too much effort to check.”