Union challenges right to fine 'stowaway' drivers
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• by Guy Sheppard The United Road Transport Union wants to challenge the government's right to impose fines on hauliers caught with illegal immigrants on board and is appealing to other associations for support.
Whether it receives such support could depend on a meeting with immigration officials tomorrow (9 June) where industry leaders will vent their anger over the appeals system for hauliers who are fined.
The Road Haulage Association (RHA) says the outcome of appeals so far suggests it is "extremely difficult" to produce a defence acceptable to the immigration service.
URTU general-secretary David Higginbottom says: 'We believe the fines may be found to be illegal. The absence of any independent appeal process is enough to have it ruled illegal by the European Court."
Tomorrow's meeting will be the first chance for the RHA and the Freight Transport Association (FTA) to directly challenge the appeals procedure since the fines were introduced at the beginning of April.
Gordon Unington, head of international trade for the FTA, says: "We think the system is wrong. The concept of an appeal being dealt with by the people who imposed the penalty in the first place is fundamentally flawed," But the RHA says officials have never been sympathetic to this argument before.
Transport lawyer Jonathan Lawton believes that once an appeal has been rejected by the immigration service, there is no other body to turn to within the British judicial system: "I am 80% certain that we are going to have to go to Europe."
He is involved in the case of Lakeland Commercials, a Kendal-based company, whose appeal against an 28,000 penalty for carrying illegal immigrants has been rejected (CM 25-31May 2000).
We are determined to fight this decision one way or another," says Lawton.