UK to pay £80m to secure borders

Taxpayers pick up cost of guarding French ports

By Jason Groves, John Stevens and Daniel Martin BRITAIN is to pay private security companies up to £80million to police ports in northern France.

The Home Office is advertising for firms to beef up security at Calais, Dunkirk and the Eurotunnel terminal, to stem the illegal migrant flow.

Under the contract, private guards will carry out round-the-clock searches on UK-bound lorries and act as temporary ‘custody officers’ for migrants caught trying to reach Britain illegally.

The deal has a potential value of up to £80million over three years – ten times the amount the contract was worth when it last came up for tender in 2011.

It comes less than a fortnight after it emerged British taxpayers are to fund a £2million wall at Calais to help keep illegal migrants out. The 13fthigh ‘Great Wall of Calais’ was branded a ‘scandalous waste of taxpayers’ cash’.

Latest figures reveal the number of migrants at the so-called Calais Jungle has topped 10,000 for the first time.

Charlie Elphicke, Conservative MP for Dover, last night urged French authorities to do more to bring the situation under control.

He said: ‘It is essential we have maximum border security at Calais to protect tourists and truckers, but the priority must be to make sure the Jungle is dismantled.

‘We need more security at Dover too to stop guns, weapons and people being smuggled but we don’t get a contribution from France for that.’

Tory MP Peter Bone said: ‘I don’t know why the French government thinks the British taxpayer should be bailing them out to do something that is their responsibility.

‘They should be embarrassed and ashamed. Just imagine if it were the other way round and the French government were paying us the equivalent of £80million a year because we could not control the border at Dover. The Prime Minister would have to resign.’

The Home Office contract says the successful bidder will have to provide ‘40 authorised search officers, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year’ at the Eurotunnel site and at Calais and Dunkirk. Three of the staff must be trained as ‘detainee custody officers’, who will have responsibility for arrested migrants until French police can take over.

The contractor will also provide electronic search equipment and sniffer dogs.

The Home Office last night played down the move. A source acknowledged ministers were looking for an ‘expanded level of service’ after 84,000 migrants were caught trying to enter the UK illegally at the ports last year. But he said the £80million figures was the ‘maximum possible value’, with the final bill likely to be ‘significantly less’.

A Home Office spokesman said the contract expanded existing routine work done by private security staff. ‘Specialist search contractors have successfully played a vital role in protecting our borders for over a decade,’ he said.

Charites yesterday called on the Government to do more to help child migrants after an Afghan boy of 15 was killed by climbing on to a lorry after becoming frustrating at delays to his legal entitlement to join his family in the UK.

French authorities have pledged the Jungle slum will be totally torn down ‘by the end of the year’.

‘They should be embarrassed’