The Blair government was accused of losing control of asylum policy yesterday as pressure built over reported French plans for a second refugee camp near Calais.
The Channel Tunnel operator, Eurotunnel, said plans to accommodate as many as 2,000 refugees - at a site in Bailleul, 23 miles from the port of Dunkirk, or, alternatively, in the town of Lille - would be "disastrous" and only compound the problems developing around the existing Red Cross refugee centre at Sangatte.
The asylum issue exploded afresh on the front pages of yesterday's British press following Saturday night's assault on the Eurotunnel entrance by 100 asylum seekers and the arrest of 40 illegal entrants in Dover in the early hours of Sunday morning.
As a German lorry driver appeared in court charged with the illegal facilitation into the UK of the 40 asylum seekers, believed to be Sri Lankans, the Labour MP for Dover, Mr Gwyn Prosser, accused the French authorities of doing too little to deter illegal entry into Britain.
"The biggest difficulty is that there is no sanction that the French government is taking against those people who try night after night," said Mr Prosser, who looked to the British government for "some new initiatives . . . very soon" following representations to the Home Secretary, Mr David Blunkett.
Downing Street, however, was seeking dialogue rather than confrontation with the French authorities.
Aware of "preliminary discussions" between the Red Cross and a third party, a No 10 spokesman said they were asking for more information about the proposed second camp.
However, an official spokesman for the Prime Minister, Mr Blair, said: "What happens at Sangatte is a matter for the Red Cross and the French authorities. We can no more tell them what to do than they can tell us what to do."
The spokesman added: "The problem is at the French side of the tunnel and the important thing is that we continue to talk in a calm, rational way as to how we deal with the problem."