The journalist and associate director at The Henry Jackson Society hit out at lawyer Samantha Davies in an interview on Sky News.

He said it was not possible for the UK to take in the “millions” wanting to enter Britain and better systems were needed to assess who most required help.

“What we are doing is colluding ourselves in a lie,” he said. “We’re pretending that if we bring in people who have not abided by the EU’s own laws – Europe’s own laws on what you do when you arrive into Europe.

“We have decided that if you want to follow our laws and if you make it all the way to Calais and if you are somebody who can claim to be a child – and in some cases there are children – or claim to have relatives in Britain, some of whom will and some of whom won’t, that we then let you in.