The Road Haulage Association has responded to Government plans to bring forward legislation for a new sanctions regime targeting irregular migration and organised immigration crime to secure UK borders in a decade of national renewal.
As the world’s first standalone sanctions regime dedicated to targeting irregular migration and organised immigration crime, it will allow the UK to target individuals and entities enabling dangerous journeys. It is expected to come into force within the year.
The announcement forms part of the government’s bold and credible plan to bring back control of the immigration system, smash the gangs and secure our borders.
The regime, which is, will target organised immigration networks. Criminal networks are making huge profits exploiting vulnerable people by facilitating irregular migratory movements, including dangerous sea crossings across Europe.
Ashton Cull, the RHA Senior Public Affairs Lead, said: “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 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’.”
