Port of Dover: Border Controls

Debate between Natalie Elphicke and Rushanara Ali

Tuesday 18th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Rushanara Ali (in the Chair)]

I will call Natalie Elphicke to move the motion and then call the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates.

[Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered border controls at the Port of Dover.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ali. Today I will raise three matters of concern about border controls: illegal entry of people; legal transit of people and goods; and illegal dangerous food and goods.

Dover stands as the guardian of and gateway to England. Currently, with the number of people in small boat crossings at over 35,000 people, that guardian role is being sorely tested. The Home Secretary says that this situation is out of control and it is. There is much more to do to secure our sea border.

We need to recognise that every person coming into Britain through this route is breaking the law, and every person organising and facilitating such small boat crossings is committing a crime. This is organised criminal activity and it is no different from the smuggling of guns, drugs or any other contraband. Indeed, it is not simply criminal: it kills people, too. I will never forget how 27 people died in the channel last year; they drowned when their small boat sank.

Every person who steps into an inflatable boat on the French coast is putting themselves and others at risk when they are completely safe in France. They are not safe at sea, crossing the English channel in an overcrowded, unseaworthy inflatable boat. They will become even less safe as winter approaches and the weather becomes colder and the sea rougher.

I was pleased to meet the Home Secretary last week and again earlier today to hear about her plans and her determination to tackle this issue. I was also glad to be able to raise it directly with the Prime Minister at last week’s Prime Minister’s questions, urging her to take urgent action with President Macron.

The bottom line is that it is only when migrants and people smugglers alike know that they cannot break into Britain through the channel that this route will be closed down and lives saved. That will only happen when Britain and France act in concert, jointly patrolling the French coast and the English channel, and jointly ensuring that illegal entrants are returned to France.

In my area, people are fearful that there will be further tragic loss of life this winter. Both the UK and France have a human and moral obligation to act now to save lives. That starts and ends with ending this crisis for good and the best way to do that is to keep people out of the dangerous inflatables and safe on land. In order to help genuine refugees, save lives and stop the criminals, more must be done to tackle this issue and secure the border. I look forward to hearing the Minister on this point.

Stopping illegal entry of people is vital, yet ensuring the smooth flow of legal trade and people through Dover is essential, too. The channel ports, Dover and the tunnel together transit around 60% of the UK’s trade with Europe. Goods come from across the whole country to Dover for export, and goods come from across the EU to Dover for import. Whether that is just-in-time manufacturing goods for the hubs of the midlands or seafood from Scotland bound for the continent, Dover plays a key role in making the midlands engine rev, in driving the northern powerhouse and in ensuring that the economy as a whole continues to hum. It is not just trade that goes through Dover. There are also the HGV drivers and a huge number of passengers—both tourists and workers—who come and go from the EU and the UK.

Last December, I secured an urgent debate here in Westminster Hall to set out my belief that we should be immediately ready for the upcoming EU entry-exit checks at the port of Dover. Those checks are part of the EU digital controls and they are now due to come into force in 2023—a matter of months. I am sorry to say that since I first raised this issue in this place, over 10 months ago, it is still not clear how the checks will work. There appear to be working groups, but we do not know if they have an implementable plan. Indeed, judging by the evidence given by the chief executive of the port of Dover to the Transport Committee last week, I fear not. If not, a delay in processing could result in miles and miles of traffic jams all along the Kent roads. The impact of that is not just traffic misery for those in Kent, Dover and those stuck for hours and hours, even days, in those traffic jams, but it would be catastrophic for UK trade and tourism. I would be grateful if my hon. Friend the Minister could tell the House what the progress has been, so as to avoid delays to the preparation for those checks.

Danger to our trade comes not simply from failure to be ready on day one for entry and exit checks, but it also comes from the failure to invest in necessary physical infrastructure too. We have long needed upgraded roads, lorry parks, check-in facilities and so on, yet these have simply not been progressed. They need to be if we want to avoid the risk of tailbacks and delays on Kent’s roads. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), who so ably chairs the Transport Committee, for his and his Committee’s diligent and expert work on pressing for infrastructure investment and facilities to facilitate this important trade route. I would encourage the Minister to meet with him as well as me, as he has much information and expertise on this matter that would be of great assistance to the Department in planning for and delivering effective borders and a strong national transport and transit infrastructure.

I have explored the dangerous small boats crossings and the danger of trade disruption. I will now turn to the dangers of poisonous food and unsafe goods coming from the EU to the UK through Dover. Since leaving the EU, a new port health facility at Dover has been fitted out, fully ready for border checks. It was ready to go live, with extra staff recruited, but then it was unexpectedly mothballed in the summer by the then Brexit Opportunities Minister. That was in spite of the Cabinet Office receiving a shocking report from Dover’s port health authority in May, ahead of the decision, about poisonous food and serious biosecurity concerns. The report said,

“To not mobilise the facility would be an act of negligence that would significantly increase the risk of devastating consequences of another animal, health or food safety catastrophe.”

Further, it said that

“we cannot control what is coming through the border and ensure national food safety, public and animal health and biosecurity are maintained, as we do not have a facility to complete the escalating number of checks required”.

The evidence is that the problem with poisonous food and dangerous goods has not gone away. Indeed, the evidence from the Dover border is that the problem has got worse, if anything. At the beginning of this month, Dover Port Health Authority undertook Operation Ouzo, a multi-agency exercise designed to check the adequacy of existing controls at the border. Over a 24-hour period, from Saturday lunchtime to Sunday lunchtime, they searched some 22 vehicles of Romanian, Moldovan, Ukrainian and Polish origin. In those vehicles, they discovered raw animal products loosely stored in carrier bags and paper tissue without temperature control, refrigeration or labelled identification. The products were not separated from ready-to-eat products such as cheese, crisps and cake.

In one case, raw, unlabelled and loosely-wrapped pork had been popped in the bottom of a taped-up wheelie bin, which was filled with other products intended for free circulation within the UK. The operational report contained some 20 pages of disgusting images from this very small operation. We need to remember that it is not 22 vehicles a day entering the UK at Dover. There are up to 10,000 vehicle movements across the channel each day. It is clear that the risk of maggoty meat, meat of unknown origin, which often means horse or other illegal meat, rotting meat due to the lack of temperature controls, as well as fresh blood dripping on to other products, is of real concern.

It is not just meat. Pesticides on eastern European flax seeds, the sort that we might sprinkle on our cereal, have been found to exceed the maximum level for UK health safety—in other words, they could be dangerous to human life. None of that food meets the EU requirements, and it should not be coming in; it is illegal for the UK market. That highlights why it is wrong to outsource our food and biosecurity to the EU, and not have our own robust controls. Moreover, those are just the things we know about. What about the things that we do not know about because the Government mothballed the facility and slashed the funding for port health officers at the Dover border?

Biosecurity is also a real concern. Take African swine fever, about which the Government have said,

“The disease poses a significant risk to our pig herd and our long-term ability to export pork and pork products around the globe.”

Ministers deem the risk of African swine fever to be high, and have even put in special measures to prohibit certain types of EU pork. However, the illegal pork trade is rife at the port of Dover—so rife that around 80% of that illegal trade comes through the short straits. Without adequate checks, there is nothing to stop it. The October Dover port health report concluded,

“The exercise validated Dover Port Health Authority’s advice to Government that biosecurity at the border is not secure.”

The Port Health Authority has said that

“greater mitigation is needed to control the risk of African Swine Fever entering the UK via illegally imported EU porcine at the Short Straits.”

The port authority says that it has been left in limbo, without direction or appropriate engagement, so can the Minister say when controls, facilities and staff will be put in place to tackle the risk of more poisonous food, dangerous goods and biosecurity risks coming into the UK?

The Cabinet Office is thought to believe that due to digital borders, little or no infrastructure or extra staffing is now required. Given the unhappy history of Government with IT systems, that is inevitably a real worry, especially given the many delays to date in border-related IT systems. Those systems have been subject to scrutiny in the official reports of the expert Joint Committee in the House of Lords, and are very troubling and long delayed. Digital borders, blockchain, end-to-end invoice processing and the rest are part of a modern border and trade environment, but do the Government recognise that the digital world will not stop the real-world gaming of the system, and for that reason, physical audits will always be needed? Digital borders can absolutely improve the efficiency of physical borders, but cannot replace them.

To conclude, it is vital to end the dangerous small boats crossings, prevent the danger of trade disruption and endless traffic queues, and stop dangerous poisonous goods and other dodgy goods entering the UK. The smuggling of illegal goods and people is rife at Dover, and it is shocking. It is time for the Government to confront those dangers and bring them to an end, to restore order and effective controls. That includes a review of the decision to mothball the port health facility and reinvestment in port health staff. I look forward to hearing from the Minister how the Government intend to restore order at the border, and would be happy to meet with him to discuss the matter further.