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And now the good news...
Page 9
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Good news in haulage is a rarity. But the industry, especially international operators, must welcome the government's tougher stance on immigration, announced this week. At last it seems to have recognised that it needs to take a much, much greater share of the responsibility for ensuring stowaways don't manage to cross the Channel hidden in trucks, only for drivers to be castigated—and companies to be unfairly charged— when they tell port authorities that they have discovered stowaways in their trucks on board a ferry.
Establishing new immigration controls at Calais with high-tech equipment will reduce the potential for stowaways to get on trucks. More importantly for hauliers, it should also cut the risk of drivers being threatened or assaulted.
Would-be stowaways might well move on to other ports; this is a possibility that CM s readers have been flagging up for some time. It seems that, again, the government has at last realised that this is a problem—it has agreed with French and Belgian authorities to deploy immigration officers and detection equipment along the Channel coast.
Let's hope these measures work, and are seen to be working by wouldbe stowaways and the gangs which run people-smuggling operations.