Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether enhanced security checks are applied to vehicles entering the UK from Bulgaria for the detection of illegal immigrants and contraband.

Border Force search lorries, trailers and containers entering the UK on a targeted or intelligence-led basis. Border Force have also invested tens of millions of pounds in new infrastructure to enhance border security, with all freight vehicles entering the UK screened using a range of techniques. These include the use of carbon dioxide detectors, motion sensors and sniffer dogs to detect clandestine on-board lorries.

Border Force work closely with the Road Hauliers Association to prevent opportunist attacks on individual lorries, which can be frustrated by operators taking relatively simple measures to secure their vehicles.

Hauliers travelling to the UK are expected to operate effective security measures to prevent illegal migrants entering their vehicles. Border Force fine drivers and operators who have failed to implement such measures and migrants have been discovered in their vehicles.