The number of recorded attempts to clandestinely enter Britain each month via European ports and the Channel tunnel has more than tripled, according to figures released by the Home Office.
The figure rose from 4,000 a month in 2014 to almost 13,000 in July 2015, according to figures released after a Freedom of Information request by the Economist.
By way of comparison, attempts detected by authorities between 2008-12 were recorded at 1,000 a month in 2008-12 and 2,000 in late 2013.
A sudden increase in migrants and refugees clandestinely making their way across the Channel from June last year included significant numbers from Eritrea, Sudan and Syria. They were trying to enter Britain without being detected, either hidden in vehicles on the ferries to Dover, in the Channel tunnel or on freight trains arriving in Folkestone.
The immigration minister, James Brokenshire said on Tuesday night that the UK government was continuing to work closely with the French authorities “to respond to the challenges of illegal migration at the UK border”.
He added: “The UK government has invested tens of millions of pounds to bolster security at the ports in northern France and the Border Force has doubled its contracted freight searching and sniffer dog capacity.
“In addition, critical new security infrastructure is in place at Calais and Coquelles, along with hundreds of new French police officers, Border Force officers and security guards, co-ordinated from a new joint command and control centre in Calais involving law enforcement staff from both countries.”
An official report recently found that hundreds of asylum seekers who made it across the Channel in the early autumn were detained in “wholly unacceptable” conditions in a freight shed with nowhere to sleep other than a concrete floor.
The chief inspector of prisons, Peter Clarke, said that those who left the insanitary makeshift camps near the French port of Calais and made it through the Channel tunnel under lorries and freight trains were held in a lorry bay in Folkestone, Kent, with no clothing, food or hot drinks provided.
The Home Office announced a consultation on Monday to extend an existing civil penalty regime on lorries found with clandestine migrants to rail operators and freight wagons.
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