Straw proposes stowaway fine
Page 16
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
Last week Home Secretary Jack Straw said he wants to fine hauliers £2,000 if they are caught with illegal immigrants on board. Karen Miles asks how this will affect operators.
• Illegal immigrants found in the back of Peter Cook Transport's lorries have already cost the company thousands of pounds. Up to a dozen times in the past year the Durham-based international haulier has faced massive repair bills for trailers slashed open by escaping stowaways and additional costs associated with hours of wasted driver and management time.
But if Jack Straw gets his way the company's general manager Alan Simon could soon be yearning for the good old days. The home Secretary said last week he wants to impose fines on hauliers of 12,000 for each illegal immigrant found hiding in their vehicles. If already law, that would have meant fines of £150,000 for Peter Cook Transport—totted up just over the past 12 months.
Innocent victims
Like most hauliers, Simon protests that his company and drivers are innocent victims of desperate asylum seekers, often aided by criminal gangs specialising in the illegal export of humans. Like many others, he has tried to prevent immigrants from latching on to his vehicles. His latest order is for his drivers
to seal their trailer back doors immediately after loading and to continually check the seal while returning home.
If a driver suspects a broken seal, they must take the vehicle to an enforcement authority before opening the doors.
Sound advice—but last week one of the company's drivers opened a sealed door in a Basildon loading bay only to discover half a dozen fugitives from the Balkans, including one with a knife. Someone had superglued the seal back together after they had slipped in.
The Home Secretary's proposal follows a relentless and increasing flow of illegal immi grants from Kosovo and other Balkan areas into the UK. Last year there were 300 entering the UK illegally each month, this July it was 500 and the Home Office has said it has increased again.
Straw must believe the threat of a £2,000-perhead fine will force innocent haulage bosses and drivers to tighten up their security procedures and will also act as a deterrent for those knowingly involved in the smuggling.
However a spokesman for the Home Office, speaking a few days after Straw told a Parliamentary select committee of his intentions, said the fines are at this stage just a proposal. "The original legislation is aimed at organisations carrying passengers and it may not be applicable to hauliers—we are looking at it closely and only then will make a decision," he says.
But hauliers are outraged by the Home Office's method of dealing with the problem, arguing that truck drivers should not be used as a substitute for better immigration controls. "We need airport-style checks at all the borders from better trained customs and immigration staff," says Simon from Peter Cook Transport. "It's unfair for our drivers to conduct another layer of control." he adds.
The Road Haulage Association agrees, calling the Home Secretary's proposal "absolutely ludicrous" and a potential massive financial burden on hauliers. Its spokesman argues hauliers are already aware—and vigilant— of illegal immigrant problems. "But when you're dealing with very desperate people they will find ways of getting in vehicles," he adds.
The RHA says it will defy the government if its presses ahead
Straw: £2 for eac immi
by advising its members to dump stowaways without informing the authorities.
Meanwhile, it may advise members to campaign on the issue by leaving their illegal human cargoes at the doors of the Home Secretary's office block and to demand time-con. suming control checks on a chosen day at Dover for all lorries going though the port.
Imimsonment
The RBA says hauliers already face up to seven years' imprisonment if convicted for smuggling immigrants and the real solution lies with the UK and other governments: better cross-Europe border checks, better targeting of the criminal gangs: co-ordinating the immigrant movements and a long-term solution to the Kosovo conflict. In the shortterm hauliers could do well to look over the water to Ireland.
In June the Irish government announced it wanted to introduce unlimited fines and truck seizure for hauliers caught smuggling illegal immigrants. According to Irish Road Haulage Association spokesman Jimmy Quinn, the discussions have unearthed a "very strong reaction from hauliers and a whole bundle of problems". Better enforcement is all that is really needed, he argues. "The trailer gets used as a toilet for two or three days and the cargo is ruined. Hauliers have nothing to gain," Quinn says. "The purpose of the law should be to hammer the real criminals."
,000 fine h illegal grant