Queens Park Rangers football club has offered to provide buses to bring refugee children left alone in the Calais Jungle to the UK.
Labour politician Lord Alf Dubs detailed plans to rescue the children with assistance from QPR in a letter to home secretary Amber Rudd and the French ambassador, Sylvie Bermann, on Monday.
QPR confirmed to The Independent the offer had been made, but stressed that at this stage it was "only an offer". The plan would need to be approved by both the British and French government in order to go ahead.
Around 1,500 children are thought to be sleeping in shipping containers adjacent to the razed ‘Jungle’ site. Volunteers have said they are unsupervised and able to play amidst the wreckage of the camp, which is still being flattened and cleared with heavy machinery.
At the weekend, volunteers told The Independent taps supplying the site with drinking water were turned off, and alleged the French authorities were not providing food. There are apparently no youth workers on site, and the children do not know what is going to happen to them.
Under the Dubs Amendement to the Immigration Act, which was pushed through parliament by Lord Dubs earlier in the year, vulnerable, unaccompanied children are eligible to come to the UK, but so far very few have actually been brought over.
QPR have "a fleet" of coaches on standby, the Guardian reported. Hammersmith and Fulham council – QPR’s local authority in west London – also said it had volunteer social workers ready to travel to France in the next couple of days to assess and support the children.
The championship club's co-chairman Tony Fernandes said in a statement: “There are children in France who are facing awful challenges, and seeing things that no child should see.
“We are working in conjunction with Hammersmith & Fulham Council to provide transport for these children.”
In his letter, Lord Dubs wrote: “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. We will need assistance with travel documents out of France. We have people arranging the coordination of this.”
He added: “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.”
The home secretary has pledged to take eligible children from Calais, but said the UK government had only been granted access to the camp by the French authorities and permitted to bring over Dubs-amendment children very recently. Ms Rudd said Children under 12, children who are likely to be granted refugee status in the UK, and children at high risk of sexual exploitation have been, and will continue to be, prioritised.
Ms Rudd said that almost 200 children were transferred to the UK shortly before the closure of the camp, but assessments of children still there appear to have been suspended in recent days. Volunteers said they did not see any government workers entering the container camp at the weekend, and a French embassy source told the Guardian negotiations between the two governments were ongoing.
The source said: “Negotiations are still under way with the British government in terms of how the children’s applications are processed. We don’t know if they will stay in Calais or be sent to other centres in France”.
Steve Bedlam, a volunteer who has been handing out food near to the container camp, said the current situation was "crazy", and the children are in danger.
“I’m sure someone will come and someone will sort this out, but the crazy thing is that they’ve left it so far with nobody there,” he told the Independent. “Anything could have happened to these kids.”
He said he felt the eviction and demolition of the camp had been a relative success, until the end. “On this last bit they’ve failed miserably,” he said. “To leave behind 1,500 young men and children with no support whatsoever, I don’t get that.”
He added: “I think the British government and the French government are having a bit of a tit-for-tat at the moment.”
“The French government are basically leaving these kids and going ‘we’ve done our bit, come on do your bit’. But they’re messing with kids’ lives. It’s not fair. They’re pawns in a political game.”
Councillor Steve Cowan, leader of Hammersmith and Fulham council, has been working closely with Lord Dubs on plans to rescue the children.
He told the Guardian: “The situation for the children in France is chaotic, violent and dangerous. So many people have come up to me and said: ‘How can we leave children in these conditions in 2016?’
“We have social workers on standby ready to go to France as soon as the French authorities give us permission to go in and collect the children, and generous benefactors such as QPR who are providing us with a fleet of coaches to collect the children.
“Lord Dubs has shown the necessary leadership here, first by getting the amendment passed in parliament allowing these vulnerable children to be brought to the UK and now by writing to the French government asking them to let us go to France to collect these children and bring them back here."
He added: “I have no doubt that the Home Office will say yes to Lord Dubs’ proposal this evening given the home secretary’s commitment made in parliament last week."
