French Allow Aid Into Dunkirk Migrants' Camp

The migrant camps at the French ports of Calais and Dunkirk have expanded significantly over the past two months and continue to grow, with conditions worsening.

Sky News last visited the camp in Dunkirk in early November. It is located on a green area of land surrounded by trees behind a sports centre and superstore on the edge of the town.

Back in November, it consisted of a makeshift football pitch surrounded by several hundred tents.

On our return trip this week we found the place unrecognisable. The football pitch was entirely covered in tents and mud; it's been raining here for much of the past month.

The trees which surrounded the green space have been cleared and tents now occupy the woodland too.

Conditions are utterly grim. One of the few hard structures - in the middle of what was the football pitch - is a makeshift school.

Wooden signs are the only way to find it through the maze of tents - "children's play area", they say.

This is not somewhere any child should ever have to play. Inside though, a mixture of migrant parents and British volunteers have made it as pleasant as possible.

Until this week, French authorities had prevented charities from accessing the camp with tents and other aid in an attempt to stop the camp from expanding.

Lydia Jones from Cheltenham in the UK has been here for three days. She moved up the coast from the larger "jungle" camp in Calais because she had heard the conditions were worse here.

"People here are living in mud and human faeces. There is aid but until today it hasn't been allowed in." she says.

Around us, young children play. Our visit has provided a diversion from the mud. They are fascinated by our camera.

At the other side of the camp, more volunteers are unloading new tents and pallets.

Medical staff from Medecins Sans Frontieres roam the camp and take anyone requiring treatment to their van.

Thirty miles down the coast is the better known "jungle" camp. It, too, has expanded significantly in recent weeks. Conditions are equally unpleasant.

Its location on dunes just next to Calais' port couldn't be worse at this time of year. The winds rolling in off the English Channel are bitter. It's eight degrees but feels much colder.

Some say 7,000 people live in the camp. Nobody knows how accurate that is because nobody is counting.

That points to a broader problem: there is an enduring reluctance on the part of the French government, British Government or the European Union to take responsibility for the camps and to find long term solutions.

This week, though, the French government opened a semi-permanent section of the camp - the first sanctioned and solid structures since the nearby Sangatte refugee camp was closed 13 years ago.

One hundred and twenty-five new shipping containers, stacked two high on the edge of the camp, provide people who are "psychologically and physically fragile" with better accommodation. They are insulated, heated, equipped with six bunk beds and power sockets.

They don't have showers or washbasins because there is no water supply or drainage. The complex cost £15m but it feels like a sticking plaster rather than a genuine solution to the problem.

It is clearly good news for the most vulnerable in the camp, but the concern and the reason that this hasn't been done before is because it could just encourage more people to come.

Walking around the jungle and the mini-jungle in Dunkirk, you wonder why people would allow themselves and their families to live in this filth. Why is the desire to get to the UK that great?

Lawyer Marianne Humbersot has set up a volunteer legal centre in the Jungle.

She explains that few migrants know what their options are. Often they are blindly heading toward the UK because they have family already there, or because the only language other than their mother tongue is English.

The lack of an ID card system in the UK is also a pull factor. The migrants believe it will be easier to find work.

Many have seen heavy-handed police tactics in France and other European countries, she explains, and they think things will be better in the UK.

The new legal centre should help to inform the migrants and help them make choices: they don't need to go to the UK; they could claim asylum in France or many other EU countries.

"It's not a jungle, it's a slum. They are not animals." Ms Humbersot says.

"We are filling a gap of legal information that is deeply needed in the camp because migrants want to go from here. They don't want to stay here."