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The recent tragic events in Dover have brought the immigration issue bouncing back into the headlines and public opinion is, for once, largely on the side of the drivers. Talk to someone not involved in road transport and they can see that a driver cannot always check the 80plus cubic metres of a lorry's load space.
Yet when the RHA's Roger King was asked on BBC News 24 if drivers should be aware of what they are carrying he answered "of course they should". This undermines years of effort tn,ring to convince the authorities that drivers cannot automatically be held responsible for what is found in their load.
Also, when questioned on Radio 4 the day after Jack Straw's visit to Dover about the involvement of his members in the illicit trade, Roger King did not take the opportunity to stress that the people found on that day were all in foreign vehicles and that some were found in a Czech truck. Hundreds of these enter the UK, take third-country loads, undercut UK hauliers and are therefore effectively also economic migrants.
This leads onto another very important point about the new Immigration & Asylum Act. Having carefully read the act itself, on my first return to the UK after its implementation I drove down the non-EU passport holder's lane in Dover and asked for my vehicle to be searched. I was fully aware that if someone had been found, having asked for the check would not have been seen as a defence. My concern was that under the Act there is no cut-off point of liability. Having done everything in my power to make sure I arrived in Britain with noone in the trailer, if I had then parked in the lorry park in Dover or even halfway up the Ml, gone for a meal and come back to find a group of immigrants standing by my lorry and claiming to have travelled in it I would have had to try to prove my innocence.
My request was refused on the grounds that "no one was available". I then took the opportunity to ask the immigration officer what his reaction would have been had I been a non-EU national, such as a Romanian or Turk, presenting himself to UK immigration and driving a UK registered lorry. His answer was that if the driver had a visa he would be let in.
Interesting this, because following pressure from UK drivers who had lost their jobs to cheap Eastern European drivers, the embassies abroad, spearheaded by Maurice Harper at the British embassy in Romania, clarified the situation and agreed that the visas held by these drivers are not valid if the holder is driving a UK registered vehicle.
We deserve the basic protection given to other industries. Haulage will always be vulnerable to unfair competition from abroad. Other governments protect and encourage their haulage industries—look at how Spain and Portugal have come on in recent years; not to mention the former Eastern Bloc countries. Nigel Harness, NH Transport, Canvey island, Essex.