MADAM,

I am appalled by the comments made by our MP David Davies in response to the Calais migrant crisis.

He says that the ‘incentives’ to come here would be reduced if we cut benefits. Hundreds have already drowned this year and yet thousands continue to attempt the journey to the UK. If seeing the bodies of dead children floating in shark infested waters isn’t enough to deter them then reducing the £37 a week to which asylum seekers are entitled, certainly isn’t.

The UN high commissioner for refugees’ representative in France, Philippe Leclerc, said most of the migrants in Calais were fleeing violence in countries such as Syria, Eritrea, Somalia and Afghanistan which would indicate that the majority of people in the camps are refugees and not economic migrants.

Whatever their reasons for leaving their home countries, whatever their reasons for risking their lives, for leaving behind home and family, for making perilous journeys of thousands of miles, for giving their life’s savings to people traffickers - whether political or economic it is imperative we regard and treat these desperate people as human beings. That means not describing them as a “swarm” as David Cameron did and certainly not using water cannons as our MP suggested.

I don’t share David Davies’s views on many things but I do expect him to act responsibly and this he has singularly failed to do. Not for the first time he has decided to pander to the very worst instincts of a part of the public rather than show the enlightened leadership of which he should be capable.

Tyler Chinnick

(Monmouth)