Stella Creasy
Main Page: Stella Creasy (Labour (Co-op) - Walthamstow)Department Debates - View all Stella Creasy's debates with the Home Office
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Amber Rudd
My hon. Friend is right to refer to the fine line and to the fact that the camp is a place of terror and danger. We will follow up on our obligations, and as I said in answer to an earlier question, we are now managing to move more quickly. I ask him not to underestimate the difficulty sometimes of dealing with French law and EU law. We cannot simply move in and take action; we must act within the law, which is always in the best interests of the child.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the Home Secretary to her new role. I was in Calais at the weekend for the second time this summer. Both times I met some of the 800 young unaccompanied children in that camp—children who told me that in the many months they have been there they have not spoken to a single Government official. I met a pregnant woman who said that she had tried to claim asylum in France, but the system is so broken that she was told it would be months before they would even begin to process her application. These people are living in hell because of a lack of bureaucracy. My right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) is absolutely right. They need our safeguarding, because they are sleeping in tents with strange men. Will the Home Secretary meet me and other MPs affected by this issue and concerned about it to discuss how we can change that?
Amber Rudd
I would point out to the hon. Lady that the French have already dispersed 5,000 people from the camp. The Interior Minister has already said that he has plans to make sure, by the end of the year, that the camp is phased out so that everybody can be rehoused. It is important for the children to know, as the adults know, that they are not forced to come to the UK to find a bed; they can claim asylum in France, and the French Government are willing to do that. The hon. Lady should have a care not to encourage unwittingly the traffickers to bring more children to the camps.