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| Dover MP warns against 'tit-for-tat' battles with France over border security | Dover MP warns against 'tit-for-tat' battles with France over border security |
| (about 2 hours later) | |
| The Conservative MP for Dover has urged the government to avoid any “tit-for-tat” battles with France over border security before talks in Paris between Amber Rudd, the home secretary, and her French counterpart. | |
| Rudd is expected to tell Bernard Cazeneuve on Tuesday that the UK government would not accept changes to the Le Touquet agreement – a reciprocal arrangement that allows British border officials to check the documents of migrants seeking to enter Britain from the camps in Calais, and French officials to do the same in Dover. | |
| The president of the region around Calais, Xavier Bertrand, called on Monday for the Le Touquet agreement to end, telling the BBC: “It’s not possible to keep people here without a new agreement between the two governments.” | The president of the region around Calais, Xavier Bertrand, called on Monday for the Le Touquet agreement to end, telling the BBC: “It’s not possible to keep people here without a new agreement between the two governments.” |
| Amid reports that Britain could respond to such a move by reviewing other elements of security cooperation with France, Charlie Elphicke, the MP for Dover and Deal, urged caution. | Amid reports that Britain could respond to such a move by reviewing other elements of security cooperation with France, Charlie Elphicke, the MP for Dover and Deal, urged caution. |
| “France, clearly, has suffered some serious terrorist atrocities, and we need to stand with France,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday. “Threatening a tit-for-tat is not the right thing to do. | “France, clearly, has suffered some serious terrorist atrocities, and we need to stand with France,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday. “Threatening a tit-for-tat is not the right thing to do. |
| “What we need to do is work more closely together. Next year it’s likely there will be a change of [French] government and we need to understand what it is that they want to achieve. I think what they want to achieve is, as we in Dover want, is to see a lasting solution to a problem that has gone on too long.” | “What we need to do is work more closely together. Next year it’s likely there will be a change of [French] government and we need to understand what it is that they want to achieve. I think what they want to achieve is, as we in Dover want, is to see a lasting solution to a problem that has gone on too long.” |
| Rudd and Cazeneuve had been due to discuss cooperation on terrorism and security after a series of deadly attacks in France, including in Nice, at what will be their first face-to-face meeting. | |
| But she was expected to stress to Cazeneuve that Britain was opposed to any change to the Le Touquet deal. A Home Office source said: “This is a complete non-starter. The home secretary is crystal clear that people in need of protection should seek asylum in the first safe country they enter. That’s the long-held norm, and we are going to stick to it.” | |
| Elphicke said lorry drivers passing through Calais faced increasing peril from people seeking to get on to their trucks using desperate measures, and that France and Britain need to cooperate to remove the so-called Jungle camp near the French port, a base for thousands of people seeking to reach the UK. | |
| “I spoke to lorry drivers who have been attacked with chainsaws, they’ve been petrol bombed, they’ve been attacked with machetes, their lorries have been stopped by trees. It’s a really serious situation. That’s why we need to have a new treaty between Britain and France to deal with these problems once and for all,” Elphicke said. | |
| “We need to dismantle the Calais Jungle, to set up a repatriation centre to help the vulnerable people there back to their home nations, but most of all we need to target the people traffickers, who are busy attacking lorries in international transit, and are also exploiting the vulnerable people in the Jungle.” | “We need to dismantle the Calais Jungle, to set up a repatriation centre to help the vulnerable people there back to their home nations, but most of all we need to target the people traffickers, who are busy attacking lorries in international transit, and are also exploiting the vulnerable people in the Jungle.” |
| Those who work with the migrants and refugees in Calais believe that simply dismantling the camp will make very little difference. | Those who work with the migrants and refugees in Calais believe that simply dismantling the camp will make very little difference. |
| Efforts by local authorities earlier this year to clear a section of the makeshift camp led to a similar number of residents cramming into more cramped and insanitary conditions, while other, even worse, encampments sprang up along the coast. | Efforts by local authorities earlier this year to clear a section of the makeshift camp led to a similar number of residents cramming into more cramped and insanitary conditions, while other, even worse, encampments sprang up along the coast. |
| There is estimated to be a record high of nearly 10,000 people living in squalid surroundings at the Calais camp, including hundreds of unaccompanied minors, with French charities warning of the worst sanitary conditions ever. | |
| The French right has jumped on the issue in the run-up to next year’s presidential election. Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president, who is seeking his party’s nomination to run in 2017, used a speech at the weekend to call for the main Calais camp to be relocated to the UK. | |
| Sarkozy said: “I’m demanding the opening of a centre in Britain to deal with asylum seekers in Britain, so that Britain can do the work that concerns them. The Jungle should not be in Calais or anywhere else, because this is a republic and those with no rights to be here should return to their country.” | Sarkozy said: “I’m demanding the opening of a centre in Britain to deal with asylum seekers in Britain, so that Britain can do the work that concerns them. The Jungle should not be in Calais or anywhere else, because this is a republic and those with no rights to be here should return to their country.” |
| Sarkozy, who is running a hardline rightwing primary campaign, in effect called for a renegotiation of the Le Touquet agreement. Yet it was Sarkozy, when he was interior minister, who signed the agreement with Britain in 2003. | |
| Alain Juppé, the mayor of Bordeaux who is favourite to become the right’s candidate for the presidency next year, has also questioned the agreement, saying over the summer that “logic dictates” that border controls should happen on UK soil. | |
| Marine Le Pen, of the far-right Front National, who has strong support in Calais in northern France, is also campaigning on scrapping the current immigration deal. | |
| But at government level, the issue is complex as France battles to sort out its own asylum system issues. After the UK voted for Brexit in June, the Socialist government said there would be no renegotiation of the British-French immigration deal because it would not be in French interests. | |
| Cazeneuve warned that a change to the deal would send a signal to traffickers and smugglers that they could legitimately leave people at the French border to cross to England and would lead to tens of thousands more migrants in northern France. President François Hollande said there would be “no sense” in changing the deal. | |
| Sir Peter Ricketts, a former British ambassador to France, warned on Monday that if a rightwing candidate won the presidential election next year, Britain “is going to have to deal with a pretty serious conversation with France about the Le Touquet agreement”. | |
| He said the UK was unlikely to accept the hotspot idea – adopted by the EU to tackle the crisis of mass migration from Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East to Greece and Italy – warning that it would attract many more people to Calais. “As soon as you suggest that, it becomes a huge magnet,” added Ricketts. | He said the UK was unlikely to accept the hotspot idea – adopted by the EU to tackle the crisis of mass migration from Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East to Greece and Italy – warning that it would attract many more people to Calais. “As soon as you suggest that, it becomes a huge magnet,” added Ricketts. |