14 years for human traffickers

Criminals who get rich smuggling people into Britain will face higher jail sentences of up to 14 years, Home Secretary David Blunkett is due to announce today.

Current maximum sentences of 10 years will be raised as part of sweeping reforms of the asylum system, likely to be published in full early next month.

The move to bear down on human traffickers follows increasingly desperate bids to subvert UK border controls, which have seen numbers of stowaways rise to more than 2,000 per month.

Thousands who have paid their passage to Sangatte in northern France try night after night to get through the Channel Tunnel. And the desperation of those who pay organised gangs to get them into Europe is in no doubt after the death of 58 Chinese stowaways found in a lorry at Dover in the summer of 2000.

The National Criminal Intelligence Service has warned that eight per cent of known organised crime gangs in the UK are now helping bring asylum seekers into the country as part of a global trade which American sources say is worth £20billion a year.