A BBC Question Time audience member pleaded with politicians to send help to the thousands of migrants housed in makeshift camps during last night’s show.
The elderly woman made a passionate plea for people, as well as money, to be sent to the camps to build better accommodation and provide medical care.
The audience member’s heartfelt comments struck a different tone to Ukip MEP Louise Bours, who claimed “roughly 5,000 jihadists” had come into Europe as a result of the migrant crisis.
Clutching her walking stick as she spoke, the elderly lady said: “There’s thousands of them at the border, young children, there should be people sent out there with the millions you’re sending out there for nurses, builders. Them tents are no use.
“You’re putting children in tents in the middle of winter. The time we’ve been in this situation since last year nothing’s been done, you’ve got a few tents and a few toilets – 42 toilets in one camp for 8,000 people.”
Labour Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and former England footballer Jermaine Jenas both agreed the migrant crisis had been mishandled by the EU, but it was Bours who was the most strident in her criticism.
The Ukip MEP claimed German Chancellor Angela Merkel was “so, so silly” to invite refugees fleeing warzones into her country as she had “not taken into account the terrorist threat that exists at the moment in those countries.”