This afternoon, Heidi Alexander (Labour MP for Lewisham East) asked David Cameron a question. She deplored the fact that people have drowned in the Mediterranean “because they are simply fleeing war, violence and poverty”, and she continued: “Is the reason why the UK is failing to take its fair share of refugees because this government finds human suffering easier to bear if it is just made someone else’s problem?”

In his reply David Cameron boasted about British rescue operations rescuing 4,000 people from the sea. (He failed to mention that British rescue operations only exist at all because the previous government’s policy of “let them drown” had caused such an uproar that he’d had to change it.) He then answered the question:

“But do I think that it is somehow a – the correct act to be part of a relocation scheme for people who’ve already arrived in the EU? No, I do not, because I believe it would add to the business models of the smugglers. So, you know, the idea that you can only have a moral, upright position on this if you take part in a European scheme that I believe to be misguided I think is just wrong.”

So, in fact, it’s worse than Heidi thought: he doesn’t actually want anybody to be relocated anywhere in Europe. Just sent back to the war, violence and poverty they fled from. He didn’t stop to explain how this puts him in “a moral, upright position”.

But he did apparently want to reassure us that he was in favour of cooperation and “taking part” in things when it really mattered. In answer to a question on the migrants in Calais, Cameron explained that he had had discussions with the French president about how we could help the French. We are going to spend money, he said. On what? Well, of course, “on providing fencing and other action, including sniffer-dog teams and the like, to try and help the French and work together with them to reduce the problems in Calais.”

So “let them drown” has been replaced by “set the dogs on them”. There’s progress for you.