Lorry and passenger services held up for several hours as Scottish seafood exporter reveals scale of business losses owing to migrant crisis

Tourists and lorry drivers were facing delays in the Channel tunnel on Tuesday morning while workers made an unplanned inspection on the tracks.

Eurotunnel, the operator, said freight and passenger customers faced delays of several hours as it ran the service with just one tunnel open. It is not clear if the tunnel inspection is linked to what French police said were hundreds of attempts by migrants to penetrate the terminal overnight.

The cross-Channel link has faced nightly attempts by migrants to enter its terminal in Coquelles, near Calais. About 5,000 migrants, many of whom hope to make a new life in Britain, are living around the town, mostly in makeshift camps.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Footage said to show migrants walking unchallenged towards the Eurotunnel terminal in late July

Delays caused by the incursions have had a knock-on effect on British businesses. One Scottish seafood exporter said it had lost £100,000-worth of business because of the migrant crisis.

DR Collin revealed the loss a day after the Scottish fisheries secretary, Richard Lochhead, held urgent talks with processors and transporters. He is seeking talks with the UK government again to press for an action plan to prioritise lorries carrying perishable goods such as seafood.

The latest problems to affect crossings between Kent and northern France come after extra security guards were stationed to try to tackle the crisis in Calais. David Cameron, the British prime minister, has faced calls to break off from his holiday and witness its impact “first-hand”.

On Tuesday morning, Eurotunnel was warning both passenger and freight customers that timetables were disrupted owing to an unplanned tunnel inspection.

UK passengers faced waits of about two and a half hours at the terminal, while those travelling from France were told they would have to wait about 60 minutes before boarding a train.

Freight customers were told to expect journeys of more than three hours from check-in to arrival each way. The Guardian contacted Eurotunnel to ask why tunnels were being inspected but had received no reply at the time of publication.

In France, a police source told AFP that hundreds of migrants were seen overnight next to the Eurotunnel terminal. Of the 600 attempts they made to get into the site, about 400 were repelled by authorities. Of the other 200 people, 180 were caught within the site and removed and a further 20 were arrested.

Eurotunnel said it was inspecting a section of one of the undersea tunnels for an “anomaly” that was causing delays. It was not clear whether the problem was an issue with the tracks, the presence of a migrant or another incident.

Eurotunnel LeShuttle (@LeShuttle) We are currently operating with just one tunnel, this is due to an ongoing tunnel inspection, we apologise for the inconvenience caused ^CM

Despite the delays, roads leading to Dover and the Eurotunnel terminal in Folkestone remained relatively free of traffic. There was some slow-moving traffic east-bound on the motorway, but Operation Stack, which at times has turned the M20 in Kent into a huge lorry park for delayed heavy-goods vehicles, is not in place.

The crisis is said to have cost the UK economy millions of pounds as hauliers are forced to dispose of contaminated goods and wait in lengthy queues on the M20.



James Cook, managing director of DR Collin, based in Eyemouth in the Scottish Borders, said the problems at Calais were having a big impact on his business. Scotland exported £461m of seafood to Europe last year.

“This has gone on now for six weeks and we’ve had problems almost daily,” Cook said. “We cannot complete our jobs, we cannot deliver our product to our customers. There has been lots of frustration and lots of financial implications.

“We’ve run up credit notes over the past five weeks for over £100,000. There have been customers that have missed connections, and we’ve had to find other markets for product. When you miss your first sale and connection you have to try and place product into the market that’s already saturated with product. It’s a buyers’ market on the French side.”

He added that the company was now missing the chance to catch up after poor fishing owing to bad weather over the winter and spring.

Lochhead, who is writing to ministers in Westminster, said: “Seafood exports are worth five times as much in Scotland as the UK as a whole – which means Scottish seafood producers are being disproportionately affected by the ongoing Channel tunnel disruption. I have heard first-hand about orders in some categories being down 80% and valuable European markets built up over decades potentially being lost due to orders not being fulfilled.”

As pressure mounts on the government to secure a long-term solution, the Road Haulage Association urged Cameron to break off from his holiday and visit Calais to see “the appalling conditions” that lorry drivers are facing.

The RHA chief executive, Richard Burnett, said: “Without witnessing the mayhem at Calais first-hand, neither the prime minister nor his advisers can fully grasp the severity of the situation.”

The foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, on Monday said the government had “a grip on the crisis”. He added that measures introduced in co-operation with French authorities and Eurotunnel were “already having an effect”.