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Journalist Torpedoes Tory Claims That Brexit Is Not To Blame For Dover Chaos

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Coaches wait to enter the Port of Dover in Kent after extra sailings were run overnight to try and clear the backlog which has left passengers stuck in Easter traffic for hours. Picture date: Sunday April 2, 2023.
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Coaches wait to enter the Port of Dover in Kent after extra sailings were run overnight to try and clear the backlog which has left passengers stuck in Easter traffic for hours. Picture date: Sunday April 2, 2023.

A journalist has torpedoed the claims of senior Tories that Brexit is not to blame for the traffic chaos at Dover.

Simon Calder, The Independent’s travel editor, said the French authorities were doing what “we asked them to do” by painstakingly checking the passports of everyone trying to get across the Channel.

Thousands of holidaymakers trying to get away for the Easter holidays have been caught up in huge tailbacks in Kent in the past 48 hours.

Doug Bannister, the chief executive of the port at Dover, said that the “post-Brexit environment means that every passport needs to be checked”.

But home secretary Suella Braverman said: “Idon’t think that’s fair to say this has been an adverse effect of Brexit.”

And local Tory MP Natalie Elphicke said she was “incredibly disappointed to see French border control problems once again adding to traffic mayhem” at the Kent port.
Appearing on Sky News today, Calder calmly explained why both Braverman and Elphicke were wrong.
He said: “For decades we’ve had so-called juxtaposed border controls at Dover.
“That very simply means French passport officials checking everything before you board the ferry. Normally that’s great because it means as soon as you get to Calais or Dunkirk, you’re free to go.
″Unfortunately, it was never designed, the port of Dover, which as you know is a very constrained area beneath the white cliffs, there was never idea that we would be a hard, external EU frontier just the same as they have in Russia and Turkey.
″But that was exactly what we signed up for after Brexit.
“So previously you would turn up in your car or on a coach and just wave your passport and if they really wanted to a passport official could check ‘is this Anna Jones, is this a valid passport’ and off you’d go.
“Now, they are required – as we asked them to do – to go through, check all your stamps to stamp the passport, and that on a coach needs to be replicated 50 or 60 times.
″And however many French frontier officials you can send over, it’s simply going to back up.”

Extra sailings were run overnight to try and clear the backlog and by Sunday morning the port estimated some travellers would face waits of up to eight hours, depending on the ferry operator.

A port spokesman said: “The additional sailings have assisted in clearing some of the traffic, although currently both DFDS and P&O have two full lanes of coaches in the port before French border controls, with a processing time of about 4.5 hours.

“P&O have some coaches waiting at the cruise terminal and DFDS have some at service stations in Kent.

“Once coaches are processed in an operator’s lane, more are being sent to the port. Currently, the estimated total time is six to eight hours dwell time.”

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