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 flow of illegal migrants.
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 13ft-high ‘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. 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. 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. ‘They perform initial checks allowing our Border Force officers to focus on the highly skilled work they are trained to do.’ Calais and the Channel Tunnel are key destinations for thousands of the more than one million migrants and refugees who illegally entered Europe last year from Turkey and North Africa.
