Cameron mocks Corbyn for meeting a 'bunch of migrants' in Calais camps

British Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday described people living in the makeshift refugee camps of Calais as a “bunch of migrants”.

While speaking at the weekly session of Prime Minister’s Questions, Cameron said Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who visited Calais over the weekend, had “met with a bunch of migrants and said they could all come to Britain.”

Corbyn visited Calais on Saturday and walked around camps known as the “Jungle”, where an estimated 7,000 refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers are living in squalid conditions as they try to get to the UK.

Corbyn said the conditions of the camp, including rat infestations and puddles of sewage, were “far worse” than he had imagined.

The Labour leader called on Cameron to let unaccompanied children escape the Calais camps and come to the UK. Corbyn said these children should be given a proper home and education, like the children taken in who fled the Nazis in 1939 Germany.

“The plight of thousands of refugees in Calais and Dunkirk, destitute and forced to live in inhuman conditions, is an affront to our common humanity which demands action by both France and Britain,” Corbyn said. 

Several Labour MPs criticised Prime Minister Cameron for his comments on Wednesday.

The UK has pledged to take in 20,000 Syrian refugees by 2020, however; this number is far lower than other European countries. In 2015 alone Germany recieved 1.1 million asylum seekers, Greece took in 715,000, and Sweden 190,000.

British International Development Secretary Justine Greening said the government was considering admitting 3,000 children to the UK, which would be on top of the 20,000 already planned to be allowed in.

"That's what we are doing (considering allowing 3,000 children in) and I think that is the right thing," she said.

Greening defended the UK's role in contributing to Europe's refugee crisis and said: "We’ve been right at the forefront frankly of helping children who have been affected by this crisis."