More needs to be done to ensure migrants gathering at Sangatte in northern France are sent back to their country of origin, the immigration minister Phil Woolas has said.

Mr Woolas was in Kent on Wednesday for a visit to see border controls in operation at Eurotunnel in Folkestone and sign a new agreement between the company and the Border Agency to improve security.

The minister said the UK government was working hard to resolve the issues around Sangatte, near Calais and declined to criticise the French authorities for failing to crack down on the problem.

Over recent weeks, several hundred migrants have gathered around Calais in an effort to reach the UK.

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The minister conceded more needed to be done to ensure they were dealt with and also admitted tougher action was needed against people traffickers.

He said: "These people are locked out of the UK, they are not queuing to get in. The next stage is to put into place the processes to deport them. We can arrest them but the next question is what do you do with them. These people are not genuine asylum seekers because if they were they would have claimed asylum in France. They are economic migrants and it is important we have in place the processes by which to deport them."

Dover MP Gwyn Prosser recently complained that the French were doing too little to remove migrants from Sangatte. An EU agreement states that it is the responsibility of the first country where migrants arrive to return them to where they came from.

Mr Woolas said: "In terms of the humanitarian problem, I understand the difficulties for the authorities in Calais. My message is that we have to deal with the root cause; dealing with the symptoms won’t get rid of the problem."

But he insisted relationships were good between the UK and France amid some confusion over the Government’s view about whether it was willing to see another permanent camp there.

"We depend on the French for co-operation. My experience at ministerial level and at local authority level is that they are co-operating; they don’t want to have this problem, it is a huge political and humanitarian problem. They recognise that. It is in their interests and that is why we are working very closely with them. We are going to do more."

Figures show that in 2008, there were 28,000 attempts to reach the UK illegally across the channel by clandestines.