Up to 400 more child migrants will come to Britain from the demolished Calais ‘Jungle’ camp over the next few weeks, the government has admitted.
Around 300 have already arrived, but officials are working on the basis that the total number of child migrants entering the country will be between 350 and 400, the Times reports.
Some migrant charities in France have suggested that Britain could take nearly half of the 1,600 underage migrants in Calais, however Whitehall figures said they did not recognise this figure.
A Home Office spokesman said: “We have already transferred over 300 unaccompanied minors to the UK from France and the home secretary has been very clear that we will transfer several hundred more who qualify to come here via the Dublin Regulation or the Dubs amendment of the Immigration Act.”
The figure comes after Queens Park Rangers football club announced plans to bus in 1,000 child migrants from France in a plan formed along with the club’s local council Hammersmith and Fulham.
Breitbart London reported how Lord Dubs announced the plan in a letter to the Home Secretary.
“I formally request that the French government allows us to send in coaches and social workers to collect those refugee children that have a right to be here in the UK,” he wrote. “We will need assistance with travel documents out of France. We have people arranging the coordination of this.
“I am also writing to the British government and hope that this intervention can bring the assistance the refugee children so desperately need. Given the urgency of this matter I should be grateful for a quick response.”
There have been concerns, however, that many child migrants may in fact be adults posing as children in order to gain access to the UK after Home Office figures collected in the year to September 2015 showed 65 per cent of “unaccompanied minors” to be actually over the age of 18.