Travellers face more chaos at Dover as France and UK trade blame over gridlock – live

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We’ve got more from the ISU union’s Lucy Morton who is asked whether Brexit is to blame for more rigorous checks by French border officials.

It’s certainly the case that the checks are more rigorous than they used to be. Prior to Brexit there was a deemed right of entry – we weren’t in Schengen but there were still very minimal checks… and frequently there were no French checks at all.

We’re now of course outside the EU and they’re entitled to treat us as they treat any other European traveller.

So they do the same level of checks we do, and have always done, on them.

We send approximately 800 staff on any given day manning four ports across the northern French [coast]. Plus we have staff in Paris, in Lille, in Brussels. So we’ve got quite a lot of UK immigration staff in France ensuring that they’re able to perform checks.

Understandably, these queues aren’t in France, they’re not upsetting especially [for people there]. I can understand why they might have a little less regard for the fact this is suddenly gridlocking.

Lucy Morton, professional officer for the ISU – the union for borders immigration and customs staff – has been speaking to the BBC’s Today programme about the problems at the border.

Because Dover is located where it is there is so little overflow space. It takes relatively little for backlogs to pile up and clearly this has become really significant.

This is all the French immigration control rather than the UK immigration control.

The port of Dover and Calais is juxtaposed so the UK control is in Calais – and you go through that as you leave France – and the French control is in the UK and Dover and you go through the French control as you leave England.

So this is a lack of French staff. There are 12 lanes, I’m told, and at one point only four of those were manned.

Good morning. For a second day running, people hoping to travel through Kent to France are facing huge queues and hours of delays as a row over who is responsible for the gridlock at the port of Dover grows.

On Friday – one of the busiest periods for foreign travel from the UK as most schools in England and Wales break up for summer – people queued in the cars for over six hours to pass through border control.

Foreign secretary and Tory leadership hopeful Liz Truss said the delays and queues were “unacceptable”, blaming a lack of staffing by the French at the border.

This awful situation should have been entirely avoidable and is unacceptable.

We need action from France to build up capacity at the border to limit any further disruption for British tourists and to ensure this appalling situation is avoided in future.

We will be working with the French authorities to find a solution.

The Port’s chief executive added travellers were being “let down” by poor resourcing at the French border, which he described as “immensely frustrating”.

But a French politician blamed Brexit for the chaos.

Pierre-Henri Dumont, Republican MP for Calais, said the problems at the Kent port would reoccur.

This is an aftermath of Brexit. We have to run more checks than before.

Mr Dumont also said the Port of Dover was “too small” and that there were too few kiosks due to lack of space.

We’ll bring you the latest updates and developments on this story throughout the day.