Advertisement

Calais Crisis: Smugglers Put Up Prices For UK

Tighter security around Calais has prompted criminal gangs to charge even more to take migrants through to the UK, Sky News has learned.

Prices have risen sharply in recent days according to an aid volunteer who works every day with those living in the makeshift town nicknamed "The Jungle" on the edge of Calais.

Maya Konforti has helped people there seven days a week for the past 18 months.

She told Sky News: "It makes the smuggler's day. People don't realise that the harder the border is to cross, the more the smuggling rings develop, find ways to cross, and they increase their prices.

"Two months ago they were paying €500 (£351) for people to open a truck and to close the door on them and choosing their truck. Now it has gone to €800 (£562) or €1,100 (£772)."

:: Asylum Seekers: Why They Come To The UK And France

:: What You Need To Know About The Migrant Crisis

Fortified fences, extra sniffer dogs and enhanced surveillance equipment are now in the process of being installed in northern France, particularly around the Eurotunnel terminal just outside Calais.

Ms Konforti, who works with the aid group l'Auberge des Migrants, added: "If they keep on building fences we are going to see more deaths ... people still take more risks.

"Calais is like a pressure cooker with the heat on high underneath. If you close the pressure like when you do with fences, all you do is make it explode ... It is clearly not the way to just close borders."

Prime Minister David Cameron, who is currently away on holiday, has warned that the struggle to hold back people trying to enter the UK illegally from northern France may go on for the rest of the summer.

The Government has announced new measures designed to put off would-be asylum seekers , including threatening landlords who fail to evict migrants who do not have the right to live in Britain with a prison sentence of up to five years.

On Monday, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond insisted the Government has a grip on the crisis , as he promised 100 security guards will be sent to Calais.

"We saw a peak last week, since when the number of illegal migrants has tailed off," he said.

"We have taken a number of measures in collaboration with the French authorities and Eurotunnel, which are already having an effect and over the next day or two I would expect to have an even greater effect."