France's largest illegal migrant camp will be razed "by the end of next week" with inhabitants told: "You will not get to England any more via Calais."

French immigration minister Eric Besson gave riot police the green light to clear the notorious "Jungle" near the port- and made it clear that he was having to take tough action because Britain was "soft" on immigration.

"The paradoxical situation in which France finds itself is that we're trying to protect entry to the United Kingdom," said Mr Besson.

He said Britain's generous welfare benefits encourage people from all over the world to use his country as a base to get across the Channel, where they claim asylum or else disappear into the black economy.

"But enough is enough," said Mr Besson in a television interview. "You won't get to England any more via Calais."

And, fulfilling a pledge first made in April, Mr Besson said police supported by army units would "destroy the Jungle before the end of next week". He said crime was on the increase in Calais around the notorious shanty town, where a London journalism student was raped last summer.

Of about 2,000 foreigners living rough near Calais, about 800 mainly Iraqi and Afghan immigrants are in the lawless area of waste ground, which they use as a base to try to board Dover-bound trains and lorries illegally.

This summer hundreds of squatters were treated for scabies and there have been cases of tuberculosis.

Such camps have sprung up regularly since the Red Cross Centre at Sangatte, near Calais, which was a magnet for thousands of migrants to the UK, was closed in 2002 by interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, now president.

But local refugee charities have warned that closing the camps would only make matters worse.

"It's ridiculous - where are all the evicted people expected to go?" said Jean-Pierre Boutoille, a Catholic abbot. "Since the closure of Sangatte there have been numerous attempts to empty and shut camps, but you can't just make people who want to get to Britain vanish."

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