MAJOR CONCERNS have been raised about people smugglers targeting ports like Weymouth and Portland. 

PCC Martyn Underhill has revealed that there are people in prison in France who smuggled migrants in to Weymouth. 

It comes after it was revealed that there are just three boats to patrol the UK's 7,700-mile coastline.

Over the weekend, 19 people were rescued off the Kent coast after attempting to reach the UK. And last week, a marine patrol searching for a missing person accidentally came across a group of migrants in Chichester marina.

Port security in the UK has reached “crisis point”, according to the Dorset Police and Crime Commissioner.

Martyn Underhill, re-elected to his position as an Independent earlier this month, has spoken out in the wake of 20 migrants being rescued from a boat in the English Channel on Sunday.

The former detective chief inspector said the country has been left “badly exposed” after the number of Border Force cutters patrolling UK shores was reduced to three.

“Belgium and France spend over 20 times as much money, and have 20 times more resources than we do for policing the same piece of water, which defies belief when you consider that we are an island nation,” he said.

“We need to have more resources in the other countries’ ports so we have a grip on what is coming across the Channel. I’ve asked for that, other people have asked for that – and we’ve all been ignored.

“We are reaching crisis point and this is not the time to start cutting, and that’s what the home secretary’s been doing. The money she is reinvesting in the Border Force isn’t going into small ports.”

Mr Underhill said it is an issue that has a direct impact on Dorset, and also cited the termination of Cobham's £4million contract to supply aerial maritime surveillance from its Bournemouth Airport site as a cause for concern.

“You have got people in France who have been sent to prison for importing refugees into Weymouth – that is a matter of record,” he added.

“Things aren’t getting any better, they are getting worse and I’m not seeing a positive response from government.”

Sunday's incident off the coast of Kent came after 17 men, thought to be Albanian migrants, were detained when a catamaran arrived at Chichester Marina in West Sussex on Tuesday.

And last month two Iranian men were found floating in a dinghy in the Channel.

The Home Office has repeatedly insisted that the changes it has made to port security will not put the country at risk.

'Porous ports'

A leaked report from the National Crime Agency found that Britain's small ports and marinas are wide open. 

MP for Dorset Richard Drax said our borders have a 'porous nature.'
"It is concerning," he told the Echo, "especially when you take in to account that we have very few patrols to protect our very long coastline and if what we read is true, then refugees and migrants are being brought across with considerable ease."

A report in January by David Bolt, the Chief Inspector of Borders, stated at one point in June 2015 there was only one vessel patrolling UK waters.

He also cited a report by the Royal United Services Institute and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, which said France had "20 times the number" of patrol boats. 

Yesterday, Lucy Moreton, general secretary of the Immigration Services Union, said large stretches of Britain's coastline is being left unpoliced and officials simply do not know how many people have sneaked into the country undetected.

She said her "gut feeling" and anecdotal evidence suggest Britain's coasts are facing the biggest ever onslaught of people smugglers.
She said: "The easy answer is this is the worst we have ever seen it, and it is insofar as this is the worst that has ever been recorded. But we have no way of knowing because we didn't look for this until recently.

"My gut feeling is yes - this was an inevitable progression, once you saw the floods of people coming up from north Africa through Turkey into southern Europe and making their way up through Europe.
"That was always going to mean that whatever irregular route they used, whether it was climbing into containers, hanging on to the bottom of cars, clinging on to trains, walking through tunnels or getting into a small vessel - all of that was going to increase.

"And our in-country asylum applications numbers are rising, so the statistics suggest that this is a massive increase."