None of the 1,300 asylum seekers at France's Sangatte refugee camp should be allowed to set foot in Britain, Iain Duncan Smith has said.

In his strongest comments on the issue so far the Conservative leader said Britain was losing its battle against rising numbers of asylum seekers.

Writing in the Daily Mail, he claimed the system has buckled under the strain and Sangatte has become a "staging post for people waiting to break the law and enter the UK illegally".

Meanwhile International Development Secretary Clare Short has ridiculed details from a leaked Downing Street report, which propose to tie some countries' aid to the number of refugees they take back.

'White flag'

Mr Duncan Smith said official figures show that too many people are coming to Britain as asylum seekers.

Not one of those 1,300 should be allowed to set foot in Britain

Iain Duncan Smith

And he claimed that French police have all but given up trying to stop them.

He challenged the government to reach a new deal with the French and stop "waving the white flag" over refugees.

"Not one of those 1,300 should be allowed to set foot in Britain on the terms that seem to be on offer."

'Laughing at us'

Mr Duncan Smith said the bulk of refugees coming to Britain were economic migrants.

Duncan Smith challenged French government

He claimed their presence undermined the prospects of genuine asylum seekers hoping to find a safe haven.

Mr Duncan Smith added: "Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett have got us into this mess and now they are on the brink of capitulating completely.

"The prospect of that will have the French laughing at us across breakfast tables all over the country this morning. I only hope they are wrong to do so."

But Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid branded the Tory leader's remarks as "daft" adding that Mr Duncan Smith was mistaken.

Shadow chancellor and MP for Folkestone Michael Howard told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the current "problems" with immigration were created by the Labour government.

"This is the diplomacy of the madhouse. We shouldn't be taking people from the Sangatte camp as part of any deal - France should be taking people back from us because they come from France," he said.

"If they have a genuine asylum claim there's no reason they shouldn't make it in France and that's exactly what happened when we were in government."

The European Commission's spokesman Jonathan Todd said the EU had to address the issue of asylum because current arrangements were not working.

"Our fundamental concern is that the Channel Tunnel is a vital link within the internal market for European trade and at the moment the trains are being severely disrupted, companies are losing money, companies are shifting freight off the railways on to lorries, which we don't want to see, and it's a serious situation," he told Today.

'Not sensible'

Meanwhile, plans to link overseas aid to the number of rejected asylum seekers taken back were dismissed as the ideas of "some clever little person" by Ms Short.

People say things like that without thinking

Clare Short

Speaking on BBC One's Question Time she said the idea was "not thought through and not sensible".

Downing Street policy adviser Olivia McLeod was said to have suggested applying the aid conditions to nations including Somalia, Sri Lanka and Turkey.

"People say things like that without thinking," Ms Short said.

"In terms of British aid, it is illegal, because under law we can only spend it for development."

'Possibility'

On Thursday French interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy said it was an "objective" of the country's government to close Sangatte

Downing Street welcomed the news, but denied a deal had been reached.

It said negotiations will not even start until after next month's French National Assembly elections.

But Home Office minister, Lord Rooker did not rule out the possibility that Britain might take at least some of the Sangatte asylum seekers.