The director of a family-run haulage firm has been fined £66,000 after six illegal migrants climbed into the back of one of the company’s lorries.
Ed Rogers blasted the fine and revealed how his drivers have been hospitalised driving back through Calais.
He also told how, compared to the number of dinghies crossing the Channel, they were 'doing a pretty good job' of stopping stowaways.
Speaking exclusively on GB News, Ed Rogers said: “We're just going about our normal working practices. In this example, one of our drivers was coming back from Italy and he came back through the normal routes up through France. He went through the scanners on the French side of the border. When he came over to the UK side, which is still in France, they found six immigrants in his trailer.
“At the end of the day our guys are just normal guys going about their work and they're not Border Force agents, they are not security guards. He and we are being punished on this occasion for not fulfilling those roles.
“We send 50 trucks every week into the EU so we do over 2,500 crossings a year into Europe. So for us to speak up and say, ‘This is unfair’, we need to be doing it and speaking loudly about it because this can happen on almost every trip.
“We're diligent, we check our vehicles, we do our checks, we go above and beyond. We've got security systems in place to make sure that everything is in place and the best that we possibly can do to make sure our vehicles are secure.
“We always go through scanners on the French side of the border in Calais and then come across into the UK side.
“We've probably had two incidents in the last three years and we do 2,500 each year. So that's 7,500 crossings, roughly, over a three-year period and we've had two incidents.
“If you compare it to the number of dinghies crossing the Channel on a daily basis, I think we're doing a pretty good job.
“One of our trucks was attacked on approach to Calais a few years ago. The driver ended up in hospital at the end of that. Boulders were thrown at his windscreen, branches trapped under the front of the truck to try and stop it so that people could board the truck.
“I’m not quite sure what they were expecting to achieve by doing it because obviously, the truck was undriveable once they had smashed the windscreen. Our driver was hospitalised after that.”
