DAVID Cameron is facing increasing demands Britain’s doors to 3,000 unaccompanied children who have fled war-torn countries.
The Prime Minister said a decision on the proposal is "not going to take ages" to consider.
But senior Labour MP Yvette Cooper warned Mr Cameron the longer he takes to consider, the more children will be lost.
Speaking in the Commons, she said: "Before Christmas I met an 11 and 12-year-old who are living in the Jungle in Calais.
"They
are a similar age to my children and to your children yet they are
alone, separated from their parents, vulnerable to exploitation, to
prostitution as well as to the cold, bronchitis and scabies.
The longer you look at this proposal to help 3,000 children, the more simply disappear.
"Can
I urge you, this proposal has cross-party support to agree today to
work with Save the Children on a plan for Britain to help 3,000
unaccompanied children from across Europe - just agree to the principle
today."
The PM replied: "We're going to
consider this in a very proper way, as I said during the Syria debate
because there are different views amongst the NGOs about whether or not
this is the right approach to take.
"In terms of people at Calais,
we're very clear we'll do everything we can to help the French with
border security and indeed with helping to process people who are in
France.
"But at the end of the day, people
do not have the right to try and break in to Britain against our rules,
and those people in Calais should be properly processed by the French
and dealt with by the French."
The scheme has drawn comparisons to
the Kindertransport programme that brought almost 10,000 mainly Jewish
children to Britain from Nazi-occupied areas in 1938 and 1939.
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