“We support the Government’s efforts to dismantle people-smuggling gangs and their trade in human misery, and we’re hopeful that the measures they’ve announced today will be a sufficiently disruptive deterrent.
“Commercial vehicle operators get unwittingly caught up in this trade with criminal gangs using ever-resourceful ways of securing ‘clandestine entrants’ into UK-bound vehicles undetected. The same gangs who are loading people onto boats for perilous sea crossings without any regard for their safety are doing the same thing when helping them break into vehicles.
“This also puts drivers at risk and also leaves them and their employers liable to receiving huge fines if people are discovered on board.
“We’re concerned about the effectiveness of the Clandestine Entrant Civil Penalty Scheme which is in place to prevent illegal entry into the UK, as we hear of drivers and firms who’ve made every effort to keep their vehicles secure fall foul of its measures which include fines of up to £10,000 per ‘clandestine entrant’.
“We support reforms of the scheme to ensure that drivers and employers are better protected. This is why we’re calling for entry checklists to be revised, better training for Border Force officials, improved support from UK and French authorities for targeted drivers, and a declaration that drivers are not expected to intervene with ‘clandestine entrants’.”
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