Lee Anderson Confronts Channel Migrants in France’s Largest Camp

It is noon in one of France’s largest migrant camps and hundreds of men, women and children are queuing for their free lunch dispensed by charity workers who Reform UK has come to believe are part of the problem.

Many of these migrants have spent months living in the sprawling Loon-Plage camp, a vast settlement of tents straddling a main road between Calais and Dunkirk.

They are, according to Lee Anderson, the Reform UK chairman visiting the camp, sustained by charities not just with food but with the hope that they can leave the shores of France, a safe country, and make the perilous journey to England for a better life.

Around 2,500 people from a wide range of countries live in Loon-Plage. All are united by a single ambition: to cross the English Channel in small boats and begin a new life in the UK.

The camp is busy with daily activity. Along one side of the road, makeshift stalls sell cigarettes, offer mobile phone charging, and provide essentials such as juice, milk and fresh baguettes.

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Scattered throughout the camp are pits and trenches filled with rubbish. The smell of burning plastic hangs heavily in the air, after one of the residents started a fire just metres from a collection of tents.

Mr Anderson argues that Britain and France must do more to reduce the number of migrants risking their lives and fuelling a multi-billion-pound criminal trade by crossing the Channel in small boats.

He wants to challenge not only the men and women who want to take such risks to live in the UK, but also the charities who encourage them to do so.

Mr Anderson is clear who is to blame for what he called the “squalor” in the camp. He said charities and “Lefty-lawyers” were sustaining the trade in Channel crossings as they “encourage people to risk their lives”.

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