Aid charities in northern France say there are four times as many asylum seekers living in makeshift camps near Calais and Dunkirk compared with last year. That number is expected to increase as the freezing weather prevents migrants from crossing the Channel.
Care4Calais, a refugee charity providing humanitarian aid to thousands of migrants living in poor conditions in northern France, told donors: “Temperatures are about to plummet. As the bad weather stops people moving on from Calais, the number of refugees in the region is rising steadily.
“Right now there are around 3,500 cold and wet refugees in Calais and Dunkirk facing the winter without proper clothing or shelter. That’s four times as many as last winter.”
The UK used a Europe-wide summit on smuggling yesterday to warn that gangs operating in northern France were becoming “increasingly violent”.
The UK’s representative, Julian Braithwaite, is understood to have said: “We will only succeed against the smugglers if we work together along the route, as countries of origin, transit and destination
“Nearly 50,000 migrants crossed the Channel last year. This was just the last leg of a journey exploited by smugglers at every stage.”
The summit came as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak wrestles with his plan to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda, a central element of his bid to tackle the Channel migrant crisis.
The policy was recently ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court. It said there was a risk that asylum seekers sent there could be returned to their home country, which would break UK and international human rights laws.
Government lawyers warned that attempting to opt out of international rights treaties could take months and stir anger on the Continent that could see the end to current cooperation with European partners like France.
Mr Sunak has been urged to adopt tough legislation that includes “notwithstanding” clauses that can prevent judges from applying protections in the Human Rights Act and the European Convention on Human Rights to asylum cases.
But the Government has received advice from its lawyers that says instructing the courts to ignore the ECHR risks opening up more avenues for migrants to challenge the legality of deportation flights.
A Government source said: “If we take the Court’s ruling at face value and play a straight bat, that will be the quickest way of getting flights off the ground, instead of starting a big fight that may invite more challenges.”
The advice was apparently discussed at a meeting on Saturday between the PM, Home Secretary James Cleverly, Justice Secretary Alex Chalk, and Attorney General Victoria Prentis.
Asked if disapplying the ECHR had been ruled out of the Rwanda legislation, Mr Sunak’s spokesman said: “No…there are policy discussions ongoing about how we meet that objective [to stop the boats]”.
Senior Tory Sir Robert Buckland said the Rwanda plan was not the “be all and end all”.
He said: “It seems to me that unless the government does more, unless Rwanda does more, to satisfy everybody that it’s a safe country then we will continue to struggle with the problems that we saw up to and including the Supreme Court judgment.”
