Asked by: Natalie Elphicke (Conservative - Dover)
Question to the Home Office:
What steps her Department is taking to stop illegal immigration across the English Channel.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The danger to life from Channel crossings and the criminality behind it is simply unacceptable.
Journeys are often illegally-facilitated and totally unnecessary; France and other EU countries are safe with fully functioning asylum systems.
We are working tirelessly to make this route unviable.
We are introducing legislation to fix our broken asylum system and create a fairer and firmer system.
Asked by: Natalie Elphicke (Conservative - Dover)
Question to the Department for Transport:
Whether he has undertaken an assessment of the adequacy of road transport provision for international freight traffic in East Kent; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Rachel Maclean
The Department works with Highways England and Kent County Council to ensure roads in East Kent can support international freight traffic.
This includes Highways England funding a movable barrier which enables Operation Brock to hold heavy goods vehicles in the event of serious disruption at the Port of Dover and Eurotunnel, and allows the M20 to remain open for other traffic in both directions. For the longer term, Highways England is currently developing options for two schemes on the A2/M2 route to inform future road investment decisions.
Asked by: Natalie Elphicke (Conservative - Dover)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many suspected migrants have been detected entering the UK by small boat across the Dover straits in each year since 2015.
Answered by Brandon Lewis
Small boats crossing the English Channel were an infrequent phenomenon prior to 2018. Incidences involving small boats, as a result, were not recorded with this level of granularity.
However, information was provided to the Home Affairs Select Committee (HASC) on 5th March 2019 which gave the number of migrants detected entering the UK by small boats from January 2018 to February 2019 as 428.
On 22 July 2019 the then Home Secretary Sajid Javid provided an additional figure to Home Affairs Select Committee that up to 21 July 2019, 725 migrants had crossed the English Channel.
We anticipate publication of 2019/2020 data in the coming months.