Alison McGovern
Main Page: Alison McGovern (Labour - Birkenhead)Department Debates - View all Alison McGovern's debates with the Home Office
Calais Jungle
Alison McGovern Excerpts(8 years, 1 month ago)
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Amber Rudd
The answer to the first part of my hon. Friend’s question is that the children are not confirmed as qualifying under the Dublin agreement unless that is actually dealt with by the French Government, so the charities provide the numbers and the lists to the French Government, because the children are in France; then the French Government have to confirm it to us. They have confirmed that they expect to do that within the next few days. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) noted, they are doing a census, and during the next few days we expect considerably more information to come from them, which we can work with.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) for tabling the question. May I draw the Home Secretary’s attention to the question from the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) about a taskforce? We seem to be arguing about bureaucracy, but these are children who need help. Cannot a British and French taskforce get into that camp and sort it out?
Amber Rudd
The hon. Lady should know—or rather, I should like to inform her—that we are doing some of that already. My officials have been over in France every other day for the past two or three weeks, and French officials come over here a lot, so that we can work together to make sure that we can deliver the outcomes that we want. As we approach the final clearances, which may be in the next week, the week after that—the French have not set a date—or the next few weeks, we expect to be very much involved in working with them in the camps to make sure that we look after the most vulnerable. I cannot give the hon. Lady more information at present. As I said earlier, we have not arrived at a final agreement with the French—there are elements that have to be further discussed and agreed—but we will arrive at one, and I hope that at that point she will be able to see us working much more closely together in the interests of everybody there.