Straw stands by stowaway policy
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he sense of injustice among hauliers iurns as strongly as it did when the 12,000 ines for carrying illegal immigrants into he UK were first imposed. But one year on, s the government any closer to changing ts mind? Guy Sheppard reports.
Home Secretary Jack Straw eems in no mood to compro)ise over stowaways found hiden inside trucks. He says driars, hauliers, ferry and Ail-freight operators have all ghtened up securly since the 2,000 penalty was introduced year ago this month: "In the wee months prior to impleientation of the civil penalty St year, the Immigration ervice at Dover dealt with ,908 clandestine entrants ompared with 2,271 in January ) March of this year."
It is not just statistics which lake a change of heart from traw seem less likely than ever. nmigration is one of the few sues on which Labour trails le Tories in the opinion polls so lere could be a high price to ay in votes for any perceived alaxation of policy.
The public hears far more bout hauliers being seen as vilins in the people smuggling
• acle rather than as innocent efts. Last week, for examle, Dutch trucker Perry (acker was jailed for 14 years Sr his involvement in the eaths of 58 Chinese immi-ants at Dover. He had closed le only air vent on the side of s container to avoid detection y immigration officials.
line-year sentence )st month a removals boss ?.ceived a record nine-year jail 3ntence for smuggling illegals to Britain after 96 people are found hidden in his vehies. Stephen Hobbs ran the peration from a farm in Hemel empstead in Hertfordshire: etective Sergeant Alan Day, a 'ember of the joint police/ -imigration detection unit in
Dover which caught Hobbs, says the immigrants were concealed in wooden boxes. "it is terribly dangerous and inhuman," he adds. "You would not be allowed to carry livestock like that."
if Straw's measures were judged purely on the number of illegal immigrants entering the country, then he would be justified in calling them a success. But most of the people and companies paying the fines continue to protest their innocence and, by doing so, they may eventually force a U-turn.
Crippling fines
Britain's biggest rail-freight operator, English Welsh & Scottish Railway, says the fines could ultimately cripple its Channel Tunnel business because the first opportunity it has to check its trains for stowaways is at Folkestone.
But more generally, the sense of injustice that is felt is demonstrated by the fact that a little over it million has so far been paid of the total .£9.4m owed by road and rail operators.
With only about 10% of them being withdrawn by the immigration service on appeal, a sizeable chunk are going to end up being challenged in court. This will either be done or an individual basis or, if the Home Office gets its way, with a Group Litigation Order which would deal with them collectively. The idea is to save the court's time and costs but, according to Jane George, a partner at solicitors Rothera Dowson, it could be advantageous to hauliers as well by providing them with the opportunity to mount a major legal chal
lenge to the legislation.
"It will all come dawn to how strongly people feel about this piece of legislation: there is a huge number of issues that could arise in this sort of action to do with things like human rights," she says, adding that a legal challenge will ultimately depend on how many hauliers are prepared to foot the legal costs.
Hurried legislation
Peter Cook, managing director of Durhambased Peter Cook Transport, was one of the first hauliers to receive a stowaway fine last April. He feels the legislation was hurried through for propaganda purposes rather than to provide an effective system to deal with asylum seekers. As a result, the code of practice that hauliers are meant to follow is flawed, he believes: "From our point of view, the major aspect it failed to take account of was the possibility of individuals passing from vehicle to vehicle while on ferries or Channel Tunnel trains."
The threat to hauliers over the past year has not just been from fines—police say prices paid to gangs for a passage to Britain are now between £10,000 and .220,000, highlighting the desperate measures some people are prepared to take to break into a trailer. In October a number of truck drivers were caught up in a brawl after two refugees were spotted attempting this. Within minutes the number of immigrants had grown to 40 and the truckers had to retreat after one was hit in the back with a brick.
The money and sheer desperation that drive this trade mean that fines and increased security measures will never provide a lasting solution to the problem, according to Heck Buzink of Kidderminster-based Fransen International. He says: "It's a political issue that must involve the French government and the whole of the European Union. It has to be tackled at source, no matter how far away that is."