Lee Anderson

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I thank the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston (Neil O'Brien) for securing this important debate. It is a shame that there are not more Members here today. I will choose my words very carefully in this debate, because words and language are important. We need to get tough in this place about the problem of illegal migration. I hear time and again that these people are fleeing war-torn countries—they are desperate people fleeing persecution. Well, let me say, I have been to France and it is quite a nice place. There is no war in France and they are not persecuted there. I served on the Home Affairs Committee for two years. I went to the camps in Calais, and the first thing we noticed was that it was all young men—there were no women, children or families. They were young men between the ages of 16 or 17 and 30. They all said the same thing to us: they would point at the white cliffs of Dover and say, “El Dorado”. They wanted to come to this country because they thought that the streets were paved with gold—and they are paved with gold, if someone is coming from a country such as Eritrea or Sudan. The most annoying part for me was that there was a charity there called Care4Calais, which would attract those people. It would give them the co-ordinates in whichever country they came from, and it would take weeks or months for people to get there. Once they got to the camp, Care4Calais would set up a school to teach them how to speak and write English. It would give them new phones with data, give them shelter, and get them ready for the crossing to the UK. I take issue with the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, who said that once they get to England they are never leaving—it is once they get in the channel. Once they get in the channel they are picked up and ferried to our country. When they get to our country, they are placed in hotels—[Interruption.]