UK faces huge bill for French migrant chaos

BRITISH taxpayers could be hit with a multimillion-pound bill to cover the soaring cost of the Calais migrant crisis.

There around 3,000 migrants from wartorn African countries camped around the French port, with numbers risings every week and many trying to head for Britain.

But the problem has been exacerbated lately by striking French ferry workers blockading the port and causing huge tailbacks that give migrants easy opportunities to board stranded UK-bound lorries.

Now the boss of Eurotunnel has said the British Government should help cover the cost of the disruption in France.

Jacques Gounon said his firm had spent £7million on security in the first six months of this year alone, but warned this could double to £14million by the end of the year.

He demanded that Britain pay at least 50 per cent of the cost, saying that if the Government refuses, Eurotunnel will take legal action, as it did successfully eight years ago after the last Calais migrant crisis.

The Government has already agreed voluntarily to pay Eurotunnel £3.3million to build a new security fence.

On Tuesday, the Channel Tunnel had to be shut temporarily after striking French ferry workers set fire to a pile of tyres and blockaded the entrance to a terminal in Calais.

THE ultimate job of a chief constable – indeed any police officer – is to enforce the laws passed by Parliament. But for Durham police chief Mike Barton, that remit is far too restrictive. He has decided to become a law unto himself and has unilaterally decriminalised the growing of cannabis.

Production of this dangerous drug – emphatically linked by countless studies to depression and psychosis, especially in the young – carries a maximum penalty of 14 years’ imprisonment. Crown Prosecution Service guidance is that even those caught growing as few as nine plants may be jailed for up to a year. But in Durham – thanks to Mr Barton and his equally vacuous Police and Crime Commissioner Ron Hogg – they receive no more than a caution.

Both men give the usual tired list of liberal excuses for legalisation – it would deprive criminal gangs of money, allow users to be seen as victims rather than criminals and leave the police to concentrate on more serious offenders. And predictably, Mr Barton says cannabis is far less damaging than alcohol and calls for a ‘ grown-up debate’ on decriminalisation. What stupendous, misguided arrogance!

Successive governments have concluded that cannabis is extremely hazardous to health and that growing, using, or dealing it should remain illegal.

If he wants to change that, he should stand for election to Parliament. Otherwise he should pipe down and get on with his job. THE Mail has sympathy with Eurotunnel bosses who are asking the UK for 10million euros to help cover soaring security costs as a result of the ferry workers’ strike and blockade in Calais. But these are French trade unionists, on French soil in a wildcat action which would be illegal in this country. Why should we have to pay for it?