We pick up £36m bill for clear-out of Calais migrants
BRITAIN will foot a £36million bill to clear out the Jungle migrant camp in Calais. Home Secretary Amber Rudd said the UK would help pay for the evacuation that started yesterday and for measures to keep the site shut for good.
The UK has already pledged £80million to pay private firms to patrol ports in northern France for three years. And last month ministers agreed to fund a £2million ‘Great Wall of Calais’ to stop stowaways getting across the Channel.
Yet charities warn that the outlay of £118million will not stop migrants targeting the French coast. The first of the estimated 10,000 Jungle residents were transferred to hostels around France yesterday.
With bulldozers ready to go in today:
Hundreds gathered in protest, chanting ‘UK, UK, UK’ and vowing to build a new Jungle;
Other migrants said they would return to Calais after being relocated;
British police worked to identify UK anarchists intent on trouble;
Up to 70 young male refugees arrived at a 17th century manor house in Great Torrington, Devon;
France asked Britain to suspend the transfer of child refugees even though Miss Rudd says we will take hundreds more.
In a Commons statement last night, the Home Secretary said responsibility for Calais rested with the French government, but insisted border controls between
‘We must get to the UK’
the two countries were vital to Britain’s security.
She added: ‘The UK Government will be contributing up to £36million to maintain the security of these controls, to support the camp clearance and to ensure in the long term that the camp is kept closed.
‘This funding will also be used to help keep children safe in France.
‘This contribution is not made unconditionally and we will continue to work with the French government to ensure the clearance operation is full and lasting.’
The Home Secretary said British officials were given access to the camp to begin interviewing children only last week. Consent to bring in unaccompanied children was also granted only recently.
Mainly Sudanese and Eritrean men were taken to temporary accommodation centres around France yesterday.
Many of the 2,300 who left the Jungle did so willingly but others said they would rather die than give up on dreams of reaching the UK. Scuffles broke out as a poorly managed crowd was penned up by riot police while they waited to be processed.
As dusk fell, protests were held by those unwilling to leave. They chanted ‘UK, UK, UK’, and fires raged in the camp amid claims that migrants had torched an area used as a base by British charity workers.
Riot police were on standby amid fears that up to 200 anarchists from the British group No Borders had infiltrated the camp.
A helicopter flew overhead and two specialist ‘spotter’ officers from the Metropolitan Police joined their French counterparts to help search for suspects.
Migrants told the Daily Mail the closure of the camp meant they would step up efforts to cross the Channel by any means necessary. Imran Ali, 20, from Afghanistan, said: ‘We must get to the UK. If I die it’s no problem. I would rather die than stay here. In France they don’t like refugees. They treat refugees like dogs.’
Another Afghan admitted that several of his friends in their 20s had tried to register as children in a bid to reach Britain. His admission follows widespread concern that some of the child refugees brought to Britain appeared to be older than 18.
Christian Salome, of the French charity Auberge des Migrants, said he expected some 2,000 people in the Jungle to refuse to leave.
French authorities admitted those willing to leave had been delayed by a lack of buses, and one accommodation centre in Loubeyrat, central France, was set alight hours before the migrants were scheduled to arrive.
The frontrunner for the French presidency, Alain Juppe, has threatened to tear up the Le Touquet deal that allows Britain to carry out border checks in France.