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At last UK and France team up to keep stowaways out
Page 6
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• by Dominic Perry The UK's beleaguered international hauliers had two pieces of good news this week as the British and French governments pledged to crack down on illegal Immigration.
First the infamous Red Cross refugee centre at Sangatte, branded a "departure lounge for stowaways", will be shut by the end of this year, four months earlier than planned. Second, by Christmas French immigration officials and their British counterparts will be searching every truck passing through Calais.
Other ports, initially Cherbourg and Dunkirk, will also benefit from the use of British detection equipment, prior to the possible introduction of "juxtaposed frontiers" with UK immigration officials operating border controls in certain French ports.
Welcoming the new proposals, the Freight Transport Association says it has been clamouring for the introduction of compulsory checks for the past four years. Many international operators saw the introduction and the updating of the hated civil penalty scheme as a sign that the government was bent on forcing hauliers to do its immigration dirty work.
FTA chief executive Richard Turner says: "We have consistently told the government that this is not an issue we can solve on our own, but we have always been told it's our problem. At last they have come up with an intergovernmental solution that we think is quite good."
Turner claims that the new checks will also be a statutory defence to the civil penalty scheme "in everything but name". However, a Home Office spokesperson denies this, claiming that hauliers could still be fined even if they're vehicles had been checked.
There are also doubts as iu how many of the other French ports will be covered by the increased security, leading to fears that the problem will sim
ply move. The Home Office is also unable to say whether any new detection equipment will be introduced.
Introducing the measures, Home Secretary David Blunkett said: "This agreement not only closes Sangatte by the end of the year, it will also shut off the routes used by illegal immigrants to get to the UK from France. it effectively pushes our border controls across the Channel to the French coast, where stronger security and tighter security will mean we can prevent illegal immigrants getting to the UK in the first place."
But operators remar unconvinced that
closing Sangatte is the answer. Joe McNe Folkestone-based Goldfinch Transport si• "It might stop the immediate panic but I think there are going to be hundreds of irr grants hovering around the French Belgian coastlines waiting to get over. T are still going to be there irrespective of sol• governments do." He warns that the probl could easily just be shifted elsewhere.
But McNeil welcomes the increased se rity: From a company point of view I will ingiy let all my vehicles undergo any sea and suffer a delay while they are carried for the peace of mind that gves me."