By 2017, the United Kingdom has planned to hold a referendum on possible withdrawal from the European Union but before, Prime Minister David Cameron is carrying out a negotiation process to approve reforms in the bloc that favor permanence.
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And senior Tory David Davis said: “As the argument slips away from the Remain campaign they are forced to rely on desperate scaremongering”.
A French interior ministry source however pointed the Daily Telegraph newspaper to a recent statement by Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve and said it had “no plans” to change the agreement.
This, Cameron implied, could lead to migrant camps, such as the now infamous “Jungle” in Calais, appearing in southern England.
Under the 2003 ‘Le Touquet treaty between the United Kingdom and France, Britain conducts border controls on the French side of the Channel Tunnel and other cross-Channel routes.
He said he could not rule out the suggestion the influx would be so great and sudden that it would result in Jungle-style camps being created in port towns such as Folkestone.
Immigation Minister James Brokenshire said political figures in France have indicated they would like to see an end to “juxtaposed” border controls in Calais.
Ricketts told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “This is a bilateral treaty but it was made in a multilateral context”.
In so doing, they are in a position of being able to halt illegal migrants getting to the United Kingdom, where they could rightly claim asylum.
The remarks by the prime minister on Monday came hours after Downing Street warned that thousands of refugees could cross the Channel overnight and claim asylum in southern England in the event of a United Kingdom exit. “They are now running at about 30,000 a year so we would probably see, let’s say, another 50,000 asylum claims a year which we used to get before the treaty came in”.
Steven Woolfe, Ukip’s migration spokesman, said Number 10’s warning was “based on fear, negativity and a falsehood”.
Defending the claim, the Number 10 spokesman told reporters at a regular Westminster briefing: “This is about raising a genuine concern”.
Mr Redwood was responding to suggestions by David Cameron that the United Kingdom turning its back on Brussels could bring the migrant crisis to Dover.
“This is a perfectly feasible scenario that could happen”.
“If we can get this deal in Europe, if we can this renegotiation fixed and we can stay in a reformed Europe, you know what you get”, said the PM. There is no reason why the same policy would not work for trains and ferries. “If it didn’t exist there would still be border controls”.
The claim was dismissed as “scaremongering” by Vote Leave campaign chief executive Matthew Elliott. She claimed pro-EU campaigners were taking voters “for fools”. “Despite years of campaigning for Brexit, they can’t even agree among themselves what the alternative to European Union membership should be”.
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“Our party is committed to keeping Britain in the EU because we believe it is the best framework for European trade and cooperation and in the best interests of the people of Britain”, he told activists. “These kind of scare stories are beneath contempt and show how anxious the establishment has become about the upcoming referendum on our membership of the European Union”.
