Labour leadership candidate Andy Burnham says government cuts to the Border Force need to be reversed to help stem the surge of migrants trying to enter the UK.

Mr Burnham made a campaign visit to the county today, meeting local party activists and students.

Meanwhile, the Folkestone and Hythe MP Damian Collins hit out at the French authorities, accusing them of losing control of the situation in Calais.

Mr Collins said: "The situation is shameful for the French authorities, who have lost control and are complicit in allowing migrants to travel across France to our border. This is why we see the bottleneck in Calais that we do today. We have tried to help the French authorities and have provided funds and security fencing, but it is abundantly clear that they should be doing more.

The chaotic scenes in Calais were inevitably raised at Prime Minister's Questions today where Mr Cameron said action was needed to make the UK a less easy place for migrants to come to.

Speaking in Ashford, Mr Burnham said the scenes at Calais were both frightening and unacceptable.

“It seemed to be a failure of the French authorities particularly. One of the things I would be doing would be to pick up the phone to the French President because these were unacceptable scenes."

He added: "More broadly, we have seen cuts to the UK Border Force and the government is wrong when there is public concern about immigration, you need a strong border. Right now, the government should stop the cuts to border force staff. My worry is that more cuts are to come in the next spending round.”

But he said a Europe-wide approach was needed to address the issue of migrants fleeing their home countries and ending up in Calais.

“Italy is bearing the brunt to be fair. This is a situation where we have a number of countries where there is serious instability - Eritrea,Syria, Somalia - where traffickers are exploiting those people.”

He denied Labour had been in denial about the views of voters on immigration at the 2015 election - a claim he had made in 2010.

“We had a much stronger policy. I called for a clear policy on entitlement to benefits and we had that - a two-year period when we said people could not claim.”

But he added: “I don’t think the public has a problem with migrants coming here to work. The problem arises if people feel they are coming to take out before they have contributed. Our policy was an improvement but it could be improved still further.”