I had knife pulled on me in migrant camp, says Conservative shadow minister

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp has said he was pelted with bottles and had a knife pulled on him while speaking to migrants in a camp in northern France.

The Conservative MP posted a video on social media discussing the incident with Daily Express journalist Zak Garner-Purkis who has accompanied him on his visit to France.

In the clip, Philp says: “I found it pretty shocking – you said behind me somebody had pulled out some sort of machete and we left pretty quickly.”

Mr Garner-Purkis says the man was “swinging it around in the air” adding: “It was, clear he was doing it to send a message to the other people there – whether it was a case of ‘don’t speak’.”

In the video, the two men are recounting the incident while walking along the side of a road at which point objects can be seen being thrown at them.

Mr Garner-Purkis says “they are throwing bottles at us” and Philp says: “Right, we’ve got to go.”

Philp has said he has been visiting the north coast of France to “find out more about what’s happening on the ground with the illegal migration crisis”.

The number of people trying to get to the UK by crossing the English Channel in small boats has been increasing for around eight years.

Since 2018, when figures were first recorded, more than 170,000 people have arrived in small boats.

In 2022, 45,755 made the journey, in 2024 it was 37,000 and as of 11 August this year, 27,029 people have arrived in the UK.

In the first three months of the year, Afghans made up the top nationality of people arriving by small boat, followed by Syrians, Iranians, Vietnamese and Eritreans.

In a bid to reduce numbers making the crossing, the Labour government has taken steps to “smash the gangs” that organise crossings including spending £100m to fund 300 National Crime Agency officers to tackle people-smugglers.

It has also reached a ‘one-in, one-out’ agreement to send some arrivals back to France and in exchange, the UK will take in asylum seekers in France who have not tried to make the crossing.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said the deal was a “product of months of grown-up diplomacy” which would “deliver real results”.

The Conservatives have criticised the government for scrapping their Rwanda plan which aimed to send arrivals to the East African country where they would have had their asylum applications processed.

Earlier this week, Philp said: “Labour tore up our deterrents before they were even in place, and the results are there in black and white.

“When I went to the Channel to see Labour’s France returns deal in action, the truth was obvious. Within half an hour of arriving off the French coast, I watched two packed dinghies being escorted into UK waters. Every illegal migrant should be removed immediately upon arrival.”

Louise Calvey, head of the Asylum Matters charity, has said the government’s ‘one-in, one-out’ deal with France was “yet another attack on the human right to seek sanctuary”.

“In reinforcing the criminalisation of people exercising their legal right to seek asylum, our government continues to ignore the Refugee Convention – which permits travel by irregular means to seek sanctuary – and punish people for using the only means available to them to reach safety.”