Migrants launch bottles at Chris Philp and Zak Garner-Purkis (Image: Phil Harris)
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp has been left "frightened for our country" after he was attacked at a migrant camp in Dunkirk.
The Conservative MP was visiting the camp, known as Jungle 2, with the Express when a migrant pulled out a foot-and-a-half-long machete in what appeared to be an attempt to intimidate him. As he fled the camp, Mr Philp was also pelted with bottles of beer - one of which narrowly missed the Tory frontbencher’s head by inches. Rocks were also thrown at the Express’ vehicle.
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Mr Philp said he was scared that the same people who’d targeted him could potentially be boarding a dinghy for Britain in the next few days.
He said: “I was concentrating on [the conversation I was having] when somebody walked past and pulled out some kind of machete, and then we had to leave pretty quickly.
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“It makes me feel frightened for our country. The people who pulled a knife and pelted me with bottles could be in the UK tomorrow and put up in a hotel next to your family or my family.”
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Read more: Migrant 'pulls machete' on Chris Philp as UK MP chased out of camp
“If the people in that camp are willing to use violence against an elected Member of Parliament, then I'm terrified and determined that we need to take the proper action. This needs to stop.”
Mr Philp, who believes he is the first MP to visit the giant makeshift settlement, said the incident had not cowed his desire to travel to France and urged his opposite number, Yvette Cooper, to travel there and bear witness to the migrant crisis firsthand.
He added: “This was an unsettling experience, but it is important for members of Parliament to actually find out what's going on on the ground.
“When you actually see what is happening for real, you realise how serious this border crisis is and that the government is just not doing enough.
“I'm going to be taking [what I’ve seen] back into the House of Commons Chamber and put it directly to Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, when Parliament returns in a few weeks' time.
“She obviously has not been anywhere near that camp, and I don't think understands exactly how serious this border security crisis is.
“I think it’s important that democratically elected members of parliament in the UK actually are willing to take the risk, frankly, to go in there and find out what is actually happening on the ground instead of listening to the government's sort of sanitised propaganda and the propaganda of some of these refugee charities put out as well.”
Prior to the violent outburst, Mr Philp was speaking to migrants in the makeshift settlement who had been spotted carrying luminous orange lifejackets and were walking back from the beach.
Zak Garner-Purkis with Chris Philp in Dunkirk (Image: Chris Philp)
Some claimed not to speak English or denied they were travelling to the UK, but others admitted to saving money for the trip and had heard about hotels hosting new arrivals. Mr Philp said from what he’d gathered, it was evident that the UK was their final destination.
“What is clear is they could, if they wanted to claim asylum in France and get looked after by the French government,” he said. “They are here in France. Many of them said they travel to countries like Greece and Italy on the way here.
“But they're determined to get to the UK. When I explained that it was illegal, they didn't care at all and some of them thought it was easy to work illegally in the UK.”
On a day of calm seas and soaring heat it is believed three boatloads of migrants made from the beaches of Northern France.
They added to more than 50,000 who have crossed the English Channel in small boats since Labour came to power last summer, a milestone reached faster than Conservative administrations, and which Mr Philp said was an indictment of Keir Starmer’s failed policies.
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Mr Philp had spent the morning tracing the routes in Gravelines used by small boats he’d seen crossing the Channel a week earlier on a boat trip with the Express and raged about a lack of action from the French police in stopping migrants attempting to travel to Britain.
Surveying the horizon on a large beach which this week had more than a hundred migrants board dinghies from, Mr Philp couldn’t believe how this had been the spot where so many successful launches had taken place.
“Looking at the beach, you would think it wouldn't have taken much for the French police to see what's happening,” he added. “As the migrants made their way across the sand, they could have stopped it and that would have prevented illegal migration.”
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