The number of times migrants are prevented from entering the UK illegally through Calais and other Channel ports has doubled this year, MPs have been told.

Giving evidence to the House of Commons home affairs select committee, Sir Charles Montgomery, director of Border Force, said that in the 10 months to the end of January there had been 30,180 “detections”; in the whole of the previous year, 2013/14, there were only 18,000.

Montgomery admitted he could not be certain whether the rise was due to better policing or an increase in the number of people camped out around Calais trying to get onto vehicles going through the tunnel. “Year on year,” Montgomery said, “this figure will have doubled.”



He estimated that there were around 3,000 migrants in the Calais region determined to cross the Channel. “Over the last four months the number of detections has been relatively level,” the Border Force director added.



The committee was told that the date for reintroducing exit checks on select categories of travellers has now slipped by a week to 8 April – after the Easter holiday surge has passed. The aim is to provide better information on passenger movements. Coaches carrying children under the age of 16, often school parties, will be among those exempt from being stopped.

Montgomery also revealed that his force was on target to exceed last year’s drug seizures: in the 10 months to January, officers have confiscated 2,000kg of cocaine and 500kg of heroin.



In an earlier session, the same committee was told by the Home Office minister James Brokenshire that the UK has finally signed up to access a vast pool of European data on tens of thousands of wanted criminals, missing people and national security alerts.

The second generation Schengen information system (SIS II), which was established in 2007 and is already used by 28 European countries, will help stop offenders slipping unnoticed into the UK.

Ministers have previously faced criticism for not being a signatory to the wide-reaching alert system, including from the spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, in a scathing report last October on managing foreign national offenders. Data available as part of the scheme includes around 250,000 wanted or missing people, including 37,000 European arrest warrants, more than 43,000 alerts for national and public security threats, including suspected foreign fighters and 60,000 alerts for missing children and vulnerable adults.



The system also provides access to more than 100,000 alerts for judicial purposes, such as a court summons, 40m alerts on identity documents, 3m on vehicles, and 8m on other lost or stolen items.

Warnings from other countries will automatically appear on the UK police national computer and on border watchlists, and alerts can be issued by the UK to help find criminals who offend here and flee abroad.

It will also provide automatic access to every EWA – making the UK aware of more than 15,000 additional warrants. Previously the warrants were only circulated to the UK for more serious crimes or where there was a known link to this country.

Serious concerns were raised last year over the effectiveness of police and border background checks following the case of now-dead Arnis Zalkalns, the prime suspect in the murder of schoolgirl Alice Gross who had served seven years for killing his wife, in his native Latvia.

Brokenshire said: “Foreign criminals and terrorists have no place in the UK and this government is using every resource available to root them out and protect the British public.

“The system will give us access to alerts that could help prevent terror attacks, trace vulnerable people, bring offenders back to the UK to face justice, and stop dangerous foreign criminals before they reach our shores.”

• This article was amended on Wednesday 11 February 2015 to amend the headline to clarify that it was the number of illegal attempts to enter the UK through ports that have been detected that has doubled.