Downing Street is warning that migrant encampments like the Calais Jungle could spring up in Kent and other parts of the south-east if the UK votes to leave the European Union.

The Vote Leave campaign has accused David Cameron of scaremongering, saying border security arrangements with France have “nothing to do with our EU membership”.

So who is right? Is Cameron scaremongering in the most lurid way, or is it a realistic precis of the situation?

The legal history

The “juxtaposed controls” under which British border force officers carry out passport checks in France and Belgium were first introduced in 1994 under the bilateral Sangatte protocol to speed up entry and exit procedures on the Channel Tunnel route.



They were extended to Eurostar in 2001 and to the ferry ports in 2003 to counter the number of people without papers arriving in Dover and claiming asylum. The ferry checks were enshrined in the 2003 Treaty of Le Touquet. Under these arrangements British border guards carry out passport checks as far away as Brussels Midi station. Less well known is the fact that French border police also operate at Dover under the treaty, checking all passengers going to Calais or Dunkirk.

So this has nothing to do with EU treaties or policy, and everything to do with bilateral agreements that would exist whether Britain was in or out of the EU?

Yes, but the French are not very keen on the arrangement and don’t understand why the then interior minister, Nicholas Sarkozy, signed up to it when David Blunkett, the British home secretary at the time, negotiated it back in 2003. The current French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, hinted on Monday that France would give two years’ notice to end the arrangement if Britain voted to leave: “It is obvious that leaving the EU will always result in countermeasures,” he said on Monday.

Those leading the calls to scrap the treaty have been the outspoken mayor of Calais, newspaper Le Monde, former ministers, and the French national commission on human rights, who argue that this “one-sided tangle of treaties” in contradiction of EU law has led to France “becoming the police arm of British migration policy”.

Rob Whiteman, the former head of the UK Border Agency, set out the background: “I think at the time the French felt there would be an upside for them, in that if it was clear that people could not easily get to Britain it would stop Sangatte building up again. The camp was closed. But history has shown that not to be the case. The French authorities still have a huge amount of pressure on their side. And now the Jungle, as it is called, has developed. So there is not much upside for the French.”

But the French government, helped by regular payments from London towards the costs of policing Calais and the camps, has kept the arrangement in place and now says that even more refugees and migrants would head for the French Channel ports if they thought it was easier get into Britain.

This is because the Jungle and other camps on the north French coast have been set up by refugees and migrants trying to get to Britain to claim asylum. They do not want to claim asylum in France, often because they speak English, have relatives in the UK, or believe Britain is less hostile towards asylum seekers than France.

So if the border moved back to Dover would migrant camps spring up in Folkestone or near other south-eastern ports?

No. Those who reached Dover would be able to claim asylum. They would then either be dispersed outside London and the south-east or, if it was thought they would abscond, put into a immigration detention centre while their claims were considered.

How many would come?

Whiteman says UK asylum claims fell from 80,000 a year in 2003 to 30,000 a year now as a result of the arrangements, so it is likely the flow of asylum seekers would increase to Britain without the juxtaposed controls.



The most likely scenario is that Dover immigration removal centre, which is currently scheduled for closure, would have to be reopened and probably expanded. An immigration detention centre is also likely to be needed near St Pancras station where the Eurostar terminates.

Verdict

Cameron is scaremongering when he implies Brexit would necessarily lead to a mass invasion of asylum seekers from Calais to Kent because the current bilateral agreements have nothing to do with the EU.



There is however a risk that France could end the treaty as a “countermeasure” to Britain leaving the EU, but if that occurred it would be two years before it took effect.

It is highly unlikely thatmigrant camps à la the Jungle would be set up in the south-east as new asylum seekers in Britain are either dispersed to Home Office funded accommodation or held in immigration removal centres.