A London MP who visited the Jungle migrant camp today warned that hundreds of lone children are at risk of falling into the hands of traffickers if Britain does not step up efforts to help them.
Enfield Southgate MP David Burrowes, who sits on the Home Affairs Select Committee, said “we can’t just leave it to the French” to sort out the “humanitarian and refugee crisis”. He blasted the French authorities’ for their “inhumane approach”.
The Standard accompanied the Tory MP on a trip to the Grande-Synthe camp in Dunkirk, home to about 2,500 migrants, before heading to the Jungle camp 25 miles away, where police fired tear gas on migrants throwing rocks.
Mr Burrowes said conditions in the French camps were worse than those he had visited in Burma and he claimed that the “catastrophic failure” to deal with the crisis lay “very much at the door of the European Union”.
He added that unaccompanied children “are very much at risk now of being trafficked and exploited. The Government committed in January to step up and provide resources and safety for these children... we really need to see some action urgently.”
He urged “a much more humane way” of processing applications for children to be reunited with family members in the UK.
At the Grande-Synthe camp the MP met families seeking asylum in Britain. They included Abbas Hasan, 32, who fled from Kirkuk in Iraq. He has been in the camp for 10 months with wife Soad Mohammed, 28, and their children Manr, 2, Male, 3, and Mane, 7.
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