The Immigration Minister was humiliated last night when his French counterpart denied that an Anglo-French detention centre was to be built outside Calais.

Less than 24 hours after Phil Woolas surprised his own officials by announcing the plan, it had been dismissed in France. Eric Besson, the French immigration minister, said that such a centre would be tantamount to creating a new Sangatte, the infamous Red Cross centre near Calais that was closed in 2002.

“That would be a dramatic error for the people concerned, it would be a error in the way we handle the flow of migrants with the United Kingdom and it would put us in an inextricable situation again,” Mr Besson said.

Mr Woolas had claimed that the centre would be run jointly by Britain and France and expressed the hope that an agreement could be announced at an annual Anglo-French summit in May.

However, with a heated debate continuing in France over the treatment of about 500 migrants in Calais, his comments caused anger in Paris, where they were seen as an irritating blunder.

A spokeswoman for Mr Besson said he had been “surprised” at talk of a new detention centre in Calais “because this has never been mentioned in discussions between Mr Woolas and him”. She suggested that the French Government’s intentions had been lost in translation.

The Home Office tried to avert damaging headlines suggesting an Anglo-French rift. A UK Border Agency spokesman said: “We are determined to work with the French to maintain one of the toughest border crossings in the world and are looking at all options to toughen up controls further. There are ongoing discussions about what form of facility could be built within Calais port.”

The only initiative taken by the French authorities is approval for the provision of showers and a canteen for migrants.

The timing of Mr Woolas’s claims could hardly be worse for the French Government, which is embroiled in a row over the treatment of the migrants in Calais after the release last week of Welcome, a film about their plight. It portrays the migrants as the victims of police violence, and denounces the prosecution by the French authorities of charity workers seeking to help them.

Mr Besson faced a volley of criticism from left-wing opponents in connection with the film. The suggestion that he wanted to create a new centre in Calais threatened to inflame the controversy.

The minister also faces pressure from residents for an end to migration through Calais and a demand by President Sarkozy for him to expel 25,000 illegal immigrants a year.

Mr Woolas has been at the centre of a number of controversies since becoming immigration minister last year. Among officials he is beginning to be seen as someone whose public utterances damage the Home Office and the Government.

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