Hardly a “clampdown”, but a good start. — Ed.
The government today agreed a new deal to handle the growing crisis of migrants gathered at Calais, allocating £15m to tighten British border controls, while France promised to begin voluntary and forced repatriations.
The deal, agreed as Gordon Brown met Nicolas Sarkozy for a pre-G8 summit in the Alpine town of Evian, was claimed as a breakthrough by the minister for borders and immigration, Phil Woolas – the first time France has explicitly agreed to step up removal flights from northern France.
There are currently around 1,600 mainly Afghan and Eritrean migrants sleeping rough in makeshift tents on the Nord-Pas-de-Calais coast, desperate to reach Kent by stowing away under cars and lorries. With an epidemic of scabies and lack of running water in the squatter camps known as “the jungle”, the sanitation crisis is the worst since the Red Cross centre at Sangatte closed in 2002. Last week the United Nations High Commission for Refugees started advising migrants about their legal rights.