DEAR Mr Cameron I write a weekly column for the Salisbury Journal that is usually based around an inconsequential event from my daily life that has sparked a thought.

But this week I have been confronted with something much more important and felt I needed to write to you directly.

You probably don’t remember that we met once before at 10 Downing Street, when you very kindly invited me to a reception in connection with celebrations to mark the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. At the time you spoke about using the occasion as an opportunity to celebrate enduring British Values – some of which trace their roots to that document.

It’s that which has prompted me to write: I feel those British Values are under threat, and I am looking to you as our Prime Minister to defend them.

Let me explain. Last week my 10 year old son had some RS homework: ‘Why should the government help those in need?’ He finished it by saying that one day he would be a tax payer and that he would like some of his taxes to be used to help those in need.

Now, I am very aware of a group of very vulnerable children, less than 100 miles from London who are in great need. They are unaccompanied refugee and asylum seeking youngsters at an unofficial refugee camp just outside Calais.

I listened with interest to your argument that taking children from a camp in France will encourage others to leave Syria, but I am not convinced.

I think that anyone fleeing bombing and war will flee – whether or not we give a home to a child in France. I also understand that it might be better to support refugees in or near their home country, but these children are in France now and need help today.

I admit I am prejudiced. I have worked for children’s charities that support asylum-seeking minors and know that without help they are likely to be trafficked into the sex trade, be exploited and attacked and may well have a very bleak future. My father also arrived on these shores as an unaccompanied child refugee in 1938. He, however, went on to lie about his age and fought with some distinction for the country that was good enough to take him in.

Children we welcome will gain an education and qualifications and may well go home to rebuild their country.

Children we ignore may have no future.

Providing for those in need, leading the world in an international emergency and caring for vulnerable young children are some of the British values that I hold dear. Two years ago at Downing Street you spoke most eloquently about the way we led the world in 1215. Isn’t this our opportunity to do so again, 801 years later?