The siting of the Sangatte refugee camp, just two kilometres from the Eurotunnel terminal at Coquelles, looks like a blatant provocation by France. Eurotunnel is undoubtedly justified in seeing Sangatte as a “logistics centre” where incursions are planned and logistics for reaching Britain are discussed. Its proximity to the Channel rail link presents would-be immigrants – and those who would profit from their plight – with an almost irresistible temptation.Yet the closure of the camp, even in the unlikely event that the court in Lille so decrees, would be at best a short-term solution. Sangatte was established in the first place not because France was deliberately shuffling its asylum-seekers northwards in the hope of passing the problem to Britain, but because so many were finding their way to the tunnel terminal on their own that they had begun to constitute a social nuisance in Calais.

It was to assuage local hostility that the refugee camp was founded – under Red Cross auspices – with, paradoxically, premises requisitioned from Eurotunnel.That “solution”, it is now clear, has spawned a new problem, which has the potential to sow seeds of discord not just between the Eurotunnel company and France, but between local residents at either end of the tunnel and between the authorities of the two countries. The only long-term solution is for Britain and France, preferably in concert with other EU countries, to formulate a policy for immigration and asylum that will eliminate the gaps that illegal immigrants (and traders in illegal immigration) have become so adept at exploiting.The camp at Sangatte should be shut, not in order to close the doors into Britain, but with the aim of stifling the illegal organisations and racketeering that inevitably thrive in such places. The siting of refugee camps, as the British immigration authorities rightly recognise, is an internal matter for France. Any bilateral or pan-European agreement, however, should stipulate that camps not be sited in places where they might seem to facilitate the illegal crossing of borders or help one country pass its own problem on to a neighbour.Several blurred distinctions should also be clarified, chiefly that between legal immigrants and asylum-seekers. The criteria for granting asylum should be standardised across the EU with, if necessary, a review of the principle that an asylum request is valid only in the seeker’s first port of arrival.

As applied at the moment, this principle is clearly not working: the thousands apprehended by Eurotunnel seeking to enter Britain illegally would otherwise be applying for asylum in France.The corollary should be a more liberal, but also more consistent, regime for legal immigration into EU countries that would lead in time to citizenship. If the EU is able to coordinate its policies on economics and security, it should be able to coordinate its entry policies, too.. ‘The world where a man had to have a job has gone, and with it the need for boys to do better’One of the eternal dilemmas facing teachers is this. To what extent do we coach weaker students at the expense of their classmates? This week’s news that boys are finally narrowing the lead that girls have over them in attaining A*- to C-grade GCSEs brought this question to the forefront of my mind.