The controversial Sangatte refugee camp in Northern France will close to new entrants on 15 November, it has been announced.

The camp is expected to close completely by April next year, once new laws are in place to make the UK less attractive to asylum seekers.

It's not surprising that people gravitate towards Sangatte if that is the only place they will get a roof over their heads

Richard Williams, Refugee Council

From Friday, everyone at the centre, which is a few miles from the entrance to the Channel Tunnel, will be fingerprinted and interviewed to pinpoint their country of origin.

The hope is that most can be sent home voluntarily.

But the UK has agreed to take half of Sangatte's residents the United Nation's High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) decides are genuine asylum seekers.

Home Secretary David Blunkett, who is in France for talks on combating illegal immigration, said: "We have achieved in three months what people thought a year ago was impossible."

Critics claim the Sangatte camp is being used as a staging post for illegal immigrants to be smuggled onto cross-channel trains.

'Clear signal'

There are currently 400 Afghans in the camp and several hundred Iraqi Kurds.

But Mr Blunkett has insisted no one with a genuine claim for asylum will be sent home.

He said he was determined to "send a very clear signal that those who are in desperate need of protection from persecution will be given it".

But he added: "Those who choose to use asylum and clandestine entry as an alternative economic route to migration will be dealt with firmly and clearly."

Mr Blunkett's French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, said an Anglo-French police crackdown has already led to the arrest of four out of six ringleaders of organised criminal gangs, who are accused of smuggling refugees from Sangatte.

Further action would "dismantle" remaining smuggling networks to cut the flow of people into Sangatte, he added.

If necessary, refugees at Sangatte will be given cash to aid repatriation or helped to seek political asylum.

Voluntary returns

Mr Sarkozy was unable to say how many of the camp's asylum seekers the UK would eventually take, but he suggested it would be "dozens".

Those who do not win asylum or take part in the voluntary returns scheme will be forced to go home, he said.

Afghans who decide to go home will be given 2,000 euros (�1,300), plus 500 euros (�325) for each child, to help them "pick up their lives" in their homeland.

Britain will contribute towards the cost of the scheme, which mirrors a voluntary returns programme already operating in the UK which pays �2,000 per head.

The two ministers will meet in London in November to assess progress.

French 'shambles'

Richard Williams, of the Refugee Council, said a Europe-wide asylum policy was needed to stop refugees "bouncing around like hot potatoes" from one country to another.

Instead of telling the UK to reduce the "pull factors" attracting refugees, France should sort the "shambles" of its own refugee system, which left thousands without accommodation, Mr Williams told BBC News 24.

He added: "It's not surprising that people do gravitate towards Sangatte if that is the only place they will get a roof over their heads - and now that roof is being taken away."

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Simon Hughes said the closure would simply move the problem elsewhere.

He said: "It's all very well for Sangatte to close its doors next month and close down finally next year but I have heard nothing about replacing the present nonsensical arrangements of passing responsibility from one country to another.

"A sensible and common process is needed for asylum seekers wherever in Europe they appear."

New security measures have helped at Sangatte

Earlier, Mr Blunkett inspected a new five-mile double fence at the Frethun rail freight depot outside Calais.

Mr Blunkett said the 9ft fence had helped cut the number of illegal immigrants boarding freight trains bound for Folkestone from 70 a day to just one a day.

He said he would reward Mr Sarkozy's "good faith" in building the fence "in record time" by completing the UK's new asylum legislation by the beginning of November.

French rail company SNCF were catching thousands of attempted illegal immigrants a month before the fence was built.

Regional director Claude Solard said virtually no-one was now getting through the cordon.