The mayor of Calais faced heated questions from British MPs today as she visited Parliament to discuss the flow of illegal immigrants from France.
Natacha Bouchart was called on to step up security at the Channel port after mounting cases of desperate refugees risking their lives to get to the UK.
Shadow immigration minister David Hanson, who recently visited Calais, said France needs to “step up its game” to stop migrants repeatedly trying to board lorries.
“There is far more the French authorities should be doing to stop the dangerous stream of migrants trying to enter our country illegally,” he wrote on politicshome.com. “No one I met in Calais could explain to me why the French authorities are not apprehending people in France, determining their status and either offering asylum, refuge or repatriating them home or to the country in Europe they first entered, as agreed.”
He said 75 would-be migrants were removed from British-bound lorries in 12 hours on the day he visited — and he was told that they were just released back into Calais to try again.
Dozens of migrants in Calais tried to storm a ferry bound for Britain in September. Riot police were deployed after up to 100 people breached security and tried to run up the ramp of the cross-Channel vessel.
The French government closed the Sangatte Red Cross centre, near Calais, in 2002 after repeated lobbying by the UK. Meanwhile another immigration row erupted today after Britain and other European countries rejected calls for special sea rescue patrols to save thousands of immigrants trying to sail to Italy on unsafe boats.
Refugee organisations said the refusal would lead to people from Africa drowning in huge numbers.
Refugee Council chief executive Maurice Wren said: “The world is in the grip of the greatest refugee crisis since the Second World War. People fleeing atrocities will not stop coming if we stop throwing them life rings; boarding a rickety boat in Libya will remain a seemingly rational decision if you’re running for your life and your country is in flames.”
But Foreign Office Minister Baroness Anelay said special patrols would encourage more migrants to attempt dangerous crossings in unseaworthy boats and lead “to more tragic and unnecessary deaths”.
