YES, WE MUST SHOW PITY — BUT IS IT BEING ABUSED?

Amid the mud and mayhem of the Calais ‘Jungle’ camp, it’s a pitiful image: youngsters living in squalor as they await a chance to slip across the Channel into Britain.

most can barely mouth a syllable of English — apart from the name of their favourite Premier League football team. They say they are all alone, penniless and parentless, after making a perilous solo journey across the world from a godforsaken or war-ridden place.

Left-leaning politicians, charity workers and showbiz luvvies (such as the breast-beating pop singer Lily Allen last week) claim almost all are children who have fled the horrors of the Syrian civil war and are, therefore, in particular need of our help.

We, too, understand that it is our moral duty to reach out the hand of friendship and dig deep into our increasingly stretched nation’s coffers to help them.

An amendment to the immigration Bill earlier this year (backed by the House of Lords and initially opposed by the then Prime minister, david Cameron, until he was forced into a U-turn) committed Britain to take in 3,000 lone child migrants who are already in Europe.

As a result, the first 14 arrived on monday from Calais to an official welcome in Croydon where they were processed at an immigration centre, and more arrived yesterday.

Several hundred more are expected this week as Home Office officials scour the Jungle looking for suitable candidates to bring here. And the stream of ‘unaccompanied child refugees’ coming from this infamous illegal camp, a stark symbol of Europe’s migrant crisis, is unlikely to stop there.

THE Jungle, home to thousands, is to be pulled down by the French authorities in the next few days. So the scramble to rescue lone children, particularly the 180 who we know have relatives to receive them in Britain, had by this week reached fever pitch.

Yet, in many years of reporting on the Jungle and its inhabitants, i have grown deeply sceptical. For a start, after talking to scores of the young migrants, i have rarely found a Syrian among them.

And i’m sorry to say, many of the Afghans, iraqis and North Africans who told me they are children, quite frankly, appear not to be so.

Broad of shoulder, with deepening voices and a shadow on their chins (even full moustaches), it was almost laughable for them to insist they were 12, 13 or 14.

Even the young children — and there are not many of them — were not entirely alone, often having an older relative with whom they have travelled to France.

While speaking with a youngster in the Jungle, an uncle, older brother or cousin would suddenly appear and help out in the conversation. This happened to me time and time again.

Of course, as the world’s sixth richest country, we must show compassion to genuine child refugees and orphans. The mail has campaigned for them to settle here. We have argued that these frightened children are vulnerable to all forms of vile exploitation. Common decency demands that we help them.

it is not their fault they have been sent halfway round the world alone to search for a safer life, often after seeing their family members slaughtered.

But that image was somewhat shattered this week when we saw photographs of that first group of 14 ‘young’ refugees on monday.

Though said to be aged under 18, the countless commentators on social media could be forgiven for claiming that these boys looked much older.

The Home Office responded by explaining that growing up in a war zone had ‘probably toughened them up so they’ve grown up a bit quicker’.

But it was difficult to disagree with Tory mP david davies, who said: ‘These young men don’t look like minors to me. They are hulking teenagers who look older than 18.

‘i’m all for helping the genuine children, but the well of goodwill is rapidly being exhausted here. i hope British hospitality is not being abused.’

He called for dental tests to be used to verify their ages, though the Home Office said these were not used on refugees because it could be ‘intrusive’.

Home Office rules say that if a young migrant is not in possession of a birth certificate (and Afghanistan, for instance, introduced these only in 2007, while migrants from other nations have been known to deliberately destroy identity documents to obscure their true age), it is up to a screening officer to simply take a guess at their true age. There is another worrying issue. At the weekend, the mail on Sunday exposed the lies and myths peddled by Left-wing bleeding hearts such as Lily Allen.

DUriNg a visit to the Jungle, the singer broke into tears, moved by the plight of a 13-year-old Afghan boy and apologised ‘on behalf of Britain’ for bombing his country and putting him in the hands of the Taliban.

However, this newspaper revealed that the father in Birmingham who he was trying to join had been a sidekick to an islamist warlord.

The man escaped to Britain from Afghanistan — via eight countries and arriving here illegally in a lorry — because he feared being caught by the UK-backed Afghan Northern Alliance.

After getting leave to remain in the UK, on what were surely

dubious grounds, the man promptly returned to Afghanistan on holiday to visit his family.

And so the sorry saga goes on.

Among the migrant ‘children’ in Calais interviewed by journalists recently was an Afghan who said he was 16 and had an uncle he hoped to join in Birmingham.

His story unravelled when he admitted he had a child and a wife aged 18 back in Afghanistan whom he hoped would join him in Britain when, and if, he got here (pretending, no doubt, to be a lone child).

In the Kent port of Dover, which receives many of the migrants being smuggled by people traffickers on ferries from France, there are also growing worries about the number of migrants saying they are children when they are not.

Significantly, by pretending to be under 18, migrants are not treated as adults and placed in a detention centre to await the outcome of an asylum claim, but allocated to a foster home with no restrictions on their movement.

The cost of each of these places to taxpayers is up to £41,600 a year — including pocket money, education and healthcare costs.

A dental nurse who works in Dover told the Mail recently that her surgery has on its books many migrant patients who are said to be children.

‘They’re not kids as they say,’ she explained to us. ‘They’ve all got wisdom teeth — which don’t appear until early adulthood between 18 and 25.’

Back in Calais, the penny is also finally beginning to drop about such deceptions. An aid worker said this week’s rescue operation was a complete mess.

‘Those at the front of queue to get to the UK are adults pretending to be children. The most needy and vulnerable young ones are being pushed to one side.’

In a further depressing twist, one in ten of the Calais migrants placed on a list of ‘children’ eligible to come to the UK has gone missing from the Jungle in recent days.

The chances are they have already been trafficked into the UK in the back of lorries, paying the going rate to people-smuggling gangs of £13,000.

By entering Britain illegally and getting jobs in the black economy, they avoid the risk of being deported if, by chance, they are found to be lying about their age.

So what began as a laudable, compassionate gesture risks turning into a farcical shambles.

The danger is that if the system is exploited by ‘youngsters’ with five o’clock shadows, it will sabotage the chances of genuine, unaccompanied refugees being let into this country.

And that really would be a tragedy.

The most needy are pushed to one side