Amber Rudd to meet French counterpart to discuss processing child refugees with links to Britain before camp is dismantled

Amber Rudd, the home secretary, will be told by her French counterpart, Bernard Cazeneuve, that the UK must speed up the asylum applications of hundreds of unaccompanied minors at the Calais refugee camp or risk losing the confidence of the French public.



Cazeneuve, the French interior minister, is due to meet Rudd in London, where he will also discuss plans to dismantle the camp, home to as many as 10,000 asylum seekers, within the next few weeks.

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A member of Cazeneuve’s cabinet said: “We cannot imagine the UK with its traditions of human rights will refuse to admit unaccompanied minors into the UK. The main objective is to ensure that these minors have a better life in the UK where they have family or friends living in the country.

“At present, the time it is taking for the British authorities to process these children is far too long. It needs to be cut to a matter of days. We need an agreement on this very urgently.”

There are thought to be at least 1,000 unaccompanied minors in Calais aged under 18, of which hundreds– possibly as many as 400 – have a connection with the UK. Each side has blamed the other for failing to register the child refugees properly.

There have been reports that the French interior ministry plans to start the process of dismantling the camp from 17 October, and extra police are being drafted into the area to ensure the operation is complete within 10 days.

The French would like action on the fate of the minors linked to the UK before the destruction of the camp starts and people in the camp are dispersed to reception centres scattered across France. In an earlier partial demolition, as many as 100 children disappeared.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Amber Rudd with French counterpart Bernard Cazeneuve at the French Interior ministry in Paris in August. Photograph: Etienne Laurent/EPA

Cazeneuve’s spokesman said that François Hollande, unlike some other presidential candidates, does not support the tearing up of the Le Touquet treaty with Britain. If there was no progress on the issue of minors at the meeting with Rudd, he added, the French public would think the British were “not taking their responsibilities seriously”. He added that local shops in Calais and the regional economy were being “devastated” and that there “had to be a solution”.

The Le Touquet agreement effectively means that the British border extends to Calais’s ferry ports, where British immigration officials can check passports and inspect vehicles.

The French government, in common with complaints issued by the British Red Cross at the weekend, said bureaucratic delays were preventing many of the children from reaching the UK.

Cazeneuve’s spokesman refused to discuss the precise date the camp would be dismantled, saying discretion was necessary to prevent disruption or attracting large numbers to the camp in its final days or weeks.

The future of the camp and the existence of the British border stationed in Calais has become a major issue in the French presidential elections, with successive candidates visiting the camp to pledge they will bring it to an end.

Nicolas Sarkozy, one of the leading candidates of the French right, has promised to visit the UK the day after he is elected president to demand change to the border arrangements set out in the bilateral Le Touquet treaty.

Construction has begun on a British-funded wall to clamp down on repeated attempts by migrants to stow away on trucks heading for Britain.

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Speaking at the weekend, Anne Longfield, the children’s commissioner for England, threw her weight behind the calls for the UK to speed up the processing of minors in the camp. “I asked the French authorities to determine which children from the emergency Calais refugee camp are eligible to come to the UK to ensure their safety and process them immediately,” she said. “It is unacceptable that some must currently wait up to nine months to see if they can come or not.”

The French insist the delays have been caused by the British officials and not by their failure to register minors.

The British Red Cross declared in a report at the weekend that of the estimated 1,000 unaccompanied children who are currently living in the Calais camp, 178 have been identified as having family ties to the UK. This gives them the right to claim asylum.

However, it currently takes an average of 10-11 months to bring a child to the UK under the Dublin regulation. This is owing to problems ranging from basic administrative errors that cause severe delays to a shortage of staff required to facilitate transfers. A further 200 child refugees might also qualify for asylum under changes to the Immigration Act.