Lorry drivers with negative Covid tests CAN enter France tomorrow

Anarchy was spreading across Kent today as fights broke out between lorry drivers and police at the Port of Dover and Manston Airport – and testing staff arrived in an attempt to get them across the Channel for Christmas. 

Dozens of truckers trying to reach their homes on the Continent tried to force their way past officers guarding the port today. Hundreds left their cabs and walked along the A20 to the port entrance in Kent at 8am jeering and whistling, with some shouting in English: ‘Open the border’, ‘We just want to go home’ and ‘F*** you, Boris!’

At one point several of them surged forwards towards a line of Kent Police officers who were forced to push them back as days of simmering anger at the chaotic situation amid the Covid-19 pandemic bubbled to the surface.  Some drivers showed police apparently negative results, but an officer said a lot of them were ‘fake test sheets’.

Tensions also boiled over 18 miles away at Manston Airport, where truckers whose lorries are being held staged a protest, broke down fences and blocked roads.  The Army and NHS staff are working together to administer Covid-19 tests at the airport, which are handed to drivers in their cabs to be self-administered under supervision. 

The result will then be communicated to the driver via text or email, identifying them via their numberplate. It comes as Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick warned it may take a ‘few days’ to clear the backlog of around 4,000 lorries waiting to cross the Channel. He said he hoped HGVs would begin crossing this morning.

A deal has finally been struck with France after a ban on arrivals from the UK was imposed by President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday, which has since seen thousands of trucks stranded in Kent, unable to cross the Channel.  

The agreement requires every driver to have been tested for coronavirus, using controversial lateral flow tests, which are able to turn around results in under an hour but have had their effectiveness questioned.

However experts warned the UK still faces an uphill battle to test 6,000 drivers a day for coronavirus – with the International Road Transport Union warning even a 30-minute test would be ‘absolutely a disaster’. 

Those who come back negative will be told by text message in as little as 20 minutes, and be given the green light to travel, but positive cases will get a PCR test – and if they are still positive, sent to a Covid-secure hotel to isolate.

Mr Macron had wanted lab-processed PCR tests which can take up to 72 hours before results are received. But he caved in after a third night of talks following pressure from fellow European leaders who urged a compromise.

A Whitehall source said: ‘Many of these are European lorries – there are a lot from Poland, for example – and [EU] member states have been telling France they want to get their drivers home. In the end, Macron folded.’

Until January 6, only lorry drivers and French and EU citizens or residents who have an essential reason to travel and who show a negative test result less than 72 hours old will be allowed into France.

A testing site has been set up at Manston Airfield, but it is unclear how the thousands of drivers who parked up in the town causing five-mile tailbacks and traffic gridlock are going to reach it. Another testing point was being set up today three miles away at the Dreamland amusement park in Margate to help increase capacity.

One angry Polish driver stuck at Dover today told MailOnline: ‘We are sick of this – I’ve been in Dover for two days and want to go home for Christmas. The French said their border was being opened but we haven’t seen any evidence of this being true. There’s thousands of people queuing to get through the port and the roads are all at a standstill. Nobody wants another night sleeping in their cab.’

However an unnamed police officer at the scene also said: ‘I understand why they are angry but they are directing their anger towards us when it’s the French authorities making the rules. They are insisting that only people who have tested negative for Covid-19 can come through. A lot of these drivers are waving fake test sheets.’ 

There are also concerns over shortages of fresh goods until the backlog is cleared. British Retail Consortium food director Andrew Opie said: ‘It is good news for consumers as the French borders have now reopened, however it is essential that lorries get moving across the border as quickly as possible. Until the backlog is cleared and supply chains return to normal, we anticipate issues with the availability of some fresh goods.’ 

Staff wearing fluorescent jackets bearing the NHS Test and Trace logo arrived in Dover last night ahead of the huge testing regime, having made a 230-mile journey from Doncaster. As many as 6,000 tests a day could be carried out in a bid to help clear the huge backlog, with 150 soldiers also set to be drafted in to help. It comes as:

• More areas of England could be put into Tier 4 from Boxing Day amid fears over the spread of the new strain;
• Experts have found the variant has already spread around the UK, with cases identified in Wales and Scotland;
• Health chiefs in Cumbria say the variant is in the county and could be behind sharp increases in new cases;
• Lancashire’s director of public health said there was a ‘high likelihood’ the new variant was in the county;
• Labour says it will back any Government moves to tighten restrictions if that is what scientists recommended;
• Sinn Fein has said an island-wide travel shutout should be introduced in Ireland to stem the variant’s spread.

Today, passengers from the UK disembarked from ferries in the port of Calais following Britain and France’s deal easing the travel ban imposed over the discovery of the new Covid-19 variant. Much of Europe swiftly banned entry by British travellers and UK freight after a more transmissible strain of the coronavirus was found in Britain.

The ‘Cotes des Flandres’ ferry – the first ship to leave Dover after the restrictions were lifted – arrived at around 3.30am local time (2.30am UK time), followed shortly afterwards by P&O’s ‘Spirit of France’. A handful of passenger vehicles disembarked from the two ships but traffic was not expected to pick up until late this morning.

Emil Herkt, 26, from Tczew in Poland had delivered a consignment of metal to a warehouse in London on Sunday and been stranded in Britain ever since. He said: ‘It’s a farcical situation – nobody is telling us anything. 

‘We have to apparently be tested for Covid but none of us know where to go. There is a testing site at Manston but that’s full already. Plus it’s nearly 20 miles away and the roads in and out of Dover are paralysed with traffic.

‘So how do we get there anyway? Why haven’t the authorities set up testing here by the port where everyone is? It’s ridiculous as people are battling to get back to their homes for Christmas. The French are being very awkward and I mainly blame them but the British authorities haven’t handled this situation very well either.’

Ovidiu Badoiu, 47, a Romanian lorry driver who drove to Britain at the weekend to deliver a stock of fans to a factory in Telford, Shropshire, has been stuck in Dover since Monday.

He said: ‘It’s really difficult, I picked up my load in Romania and took it to the destination in the Midlands on Sunday and came down to Dover the following day where I’ve spent the last two nights sleeping in my lorry.

‘There are no toilets here, nowhere to get washed. I live in Valencia in Spain and just want to get back to my wife in time for Christmas. I think the French are being over the top about this, why are they not letting the lorries through? Hardly any of us are stopping in France, just travelling through it on to other destinations.’ 

Roads into Dover were gridlocked today, causing traffic chaos with hundreds of vehicles parked up waiting to be allowed down to the ferry terminal. Residential streets as far as three miles away from the port were at a standstill.

Locals bared the brunt of the traffic backlog with some seen deciding to pull a U-turn and retreat home. Vehicles were held on the A2 Jubilee Way with queues building up for five miles back to the Honeywood industrial estate.

The traffic at the Whitfield Roundabout continued back on to the A256 – the main road HGV drivers who have had their Covid-19 test at Manston Airport near Ramsgate will use to return to the Port of Dover.

And Raluca Marian, general delegate to the European Union of the International Road Transport Union, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘We are definitely in a better place than yesterday. At least the border is now open. 

‘But the testing is a big issue. We have now several thousand drivers already at Manston Airport and in the Kent area, but we estimate around 10,000 and there are still around 7,000 to arrive there. 

‘We are happy that finally we have a deal, that the borders are open. At the same time this testing is a big challenge for us and we don’t think it will work. The backlog can’t be cleared if you get 30 minutes per driver, even with these quick tests, that’s going to be absolutely a disaster.

‘In spring, we had the famous temperature checks at the Austrian border in the first wave of the corona. It was much less than 30 minutes, round about five to ten minutes, and we had 60km (37 miles) of queues just because of these temperature checks.

‘Now that was a constant flow, so we didn’t have the backlog. Now we have 10,000 trucks piled up. So, New Year’s Eve, after New Year’s Eve, difficult to calculate.

‘We know that the European Commission is supporting and that pressure is being put on France to accept a better solution for testing. We know France insisted to have PCR tests for everybody, which is absolutely crazy, especially truck drivers.

‘This is really a lonely profession, they are alone in their cabins, they are not spreading. They are not only unnecessary, it’s a breach of France’s commitment earlier in the year when they committed to leave the logistics chain unaffected.

‘So we hope to have – at least if these tests are being kept, which we really hope not to be, we want no testing for truck drivers because even a 30-minute test is a disaster – but if these are kept, at least a kind of a compromise whereby you might have a testing corridor in France and not everybody stuck in the UK and tested there, could be reached and accepted by France, and we know the Commission is supporting that.’

Downing Street sources admit the programme ‘won’t be perfect’ from the off given its unprecedented nature, and warn that it could still be several days before traffic is flowing smoothly again. 

Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick told Sky News today: ‘We have had productive discussions over the last 24 to 48 hours, they have reached what seems like a sensible way forwards.

‘There is going to be quite a lot of work to do over the next few days and this isn’t going to be an issue that will be resolved immediately.

‘I wish events hadn’t played out in the way they have, but they have, we now have to move on and ensure that traffic can flow as quickly as possible across the Channel.

‘I hope that this morning you’ll see people and HGVs crossing the Channel at the short straits. We’re putting in place the infrastructure, so the Armed Forces will be doing that in the first instance to help us to set that up and to get through some of the backlog that you’ve seen.

‘They will then in turn hand over to civilians who will take this forward. We have a good operation in Kent that’s been tested very significantly in the last few days, led by the Kent Resilience Forum, but it has performed well.

‘So the work that had been done over a number of years to create the facility at Manston Airport, to create Operation Stack on the motorway, has worked quite successfully, but there is now a great deal to do.

‘The procedures are there. There will be testing at Manston and at multiple other locations. If you test positive using the swift lateral flow test, you’ll then be offered a PCR test, so you can get an even more refined outcome. 

‘If you test positive again, you will then be offered Covid-secure hotel accommodation, and we’ve procured the first one of those not so far away.

‘So the HGV drivers will be able to drive there, leave their lorry there, and self-isolate for the next ten days before they’re able to cross the Channel successfully.’

The Communities Secretary said as of 7pm last night that there were just under 3,000 lorries at the disused airfield site at Manston,.

Between 700 to 800 were part of Operation Stack on the M20, he said but ‘other HGVs and smaller vehicles are parked elsewhere in Kent’.

‘Whatever the number is, whether it is 4,000 or more, it is a significant number to work through,’ he acknowledged as he advised hauliers not to travel to Kent.

The Road Haulage Association said the testing regime ‘still means we will have delays at the border’. 

The RHA estimates between 8,000 and 10,000 delayed lorries are now in Kent and its surrounding areas, in truck stops and at depots waiting for borders to reopen and to cross the Channel. 

Chief executive Richard Burnett said: ‘It’s hats off to the Secretary of State for Transport for making this happen sooner than originally anticipated. 

‘However, I fear that the thousands of truckers stranded in Kent aren’t out of the woods yet. The massive backlog of vehicles will take time to clear and hundreds of drivers run the risk or not getting home in time for Christmas’.

The RHA added that on-site staff at Manston are providing tests to hauliers to be self-administered in their cabs under supervision. 

The result will be communicated to the driver via text message or email, identifying them via their number plate. The French Government will also carry out sample testing on incoming freight to the UK. 

It is expected the Department for Transport will set out further details of the testing programme.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said: ‘We have managed to get all those tests to Kent, enough for all the vehicles which will want to return before Christmas, so that won’t be an issue.

‘Obviously there’s a physical issue of providing the test, getting the results. A negative test allows you to leave.

‘But all of that requires operationalising and that can’t happen in an instant, so this will take two or three days for things to be cleared.’

France and the UK had previously been at loggerheads over which type of test would be required to allow trucks back on the road, with the travel ban imposed in response to fears about the spread of the more infectious coronavirus strain, which is spreading rapidly in the UK.

Mr Macron demanded the gold-standard PCR tests are used, which are more expensive, lab-based tests that can take up to 72 hours to process. 

The UK, on the other hand, had wanted to use the faster lateral flow tests which can provide results within an hour – even though these are considered less effective unless administered by a nurse and were even dubbed effectively useless. 

In a statement, the French foreign affairs ministry said that from midnight today there would be a ‘limited resumption of the movement of people from the United Kingdom to France subject to negative health tests sensitive to the variant’.

It added that a negative test result, taken less than 72 hours before the journey, is required and this can be either a PCR or lateral flow test sensitive to the new variant, though a Department for Transport statement only mentions the quick tests.  

Those who can make journeys include French and EU residents, British or third-party nationals who normally live in France or the EU, as well as some other groups.  

The deal marks a significant breakthrough after a long period of deadlock, with Brussels having called for an end to the border blockade which has seen 4,000 more lorries park up in Kent. 

Mr Shapps had tweeted last night: ‘Good progress today and agreement with the French Government on borders. We will provide an update on hauliers later this evening, but hauliers must still NOT travel to Kent this evening.’

French transport minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari added: ‘French nationals, residents and those with a legitimate reason to be here must provide a negative test.’ 

Eurotunnel said only pre-booked passengers who had already tested negative should go to its terminal.

‘From 23:00hrs on 22/12/2020, to travel to France passengers will need: – A negative result from a Covid-19 test accepted by the French Government – Taken in the last 72 hours – An email or SMS certificate issued by the testing facility. Please ensure you meet the French Government’s criteria before travelling to our terminal.

‘There is no Covid-19 testing facility at Eurotunnel. Go to our website to book or amend tickets. PLEASE DO NOT ARRIVE WITHOUT A BOOKING AS WE ARE FULLY BOOKED.’

It comes amid reports that the British military is preparing to test up to 6,000 hauliers a day with the controversial lateral flow test.

The EU has urged European countries to drop all travel bans imposed on the UK, including on the movement of freight, as a growing number of trucks now fill the motorway and side streets near Dover.

The bloc’s recommendation suggested rapid tests should be used to avoid disruption to cargo flows. 

The European Commission also published guidance at lunchtime yesterday recommending all non-essential travel to and from the UK should be ‘discouraged’ because of the risk posed by a new mutant strain of coronavirus which spreads quicker than its predecessor. 

But it added: ‘Flight and train bans should be discontinued given the need to ensure essential travel and avoid supply chain disruptions.’ 

On the specific issue of UK lorry drivers being allowed back onto the continent, Brussels said that where a member state requires them to take a coronavirus test before being allowed in – something France has pushed for – the process ‘should not lead to transport disruptions’.  

There has been a furious behind-the-scenes row over the issue of testing lorry drivers with France and Britain both arguing for different methods of testing.  

Operation Moonshot, Number 10’s ambitious plan to use the rapid kits to test million of people, came under fire from top scientists, with the Department of Health admitting they miss around a half of infections.

Furthermore, damning evidence now shows they may be effectively useless when self-administered, despite Downing Street’s current testing scheme relying on people taking their own swabs.   

Hundreds of soldiers are being deployed to the former Manston airfield, according to the Times, where they will use the 20-minute lateral flow tests on drivers, with those returning positive results told to isolate in hotels.

Even despite last night’s breakthrough, the scale of the backlog on both sides of the Channel means disruption at the ports is expected to last until at least Christmas Eve, with supermarkets warning of potential shortages of fruit and vegetables unless solutions are sped up.  

Rachel Reeves, Labour’s shadow Cabinet Office minister, has accused the Government of ‘dither and delay’ over its handling of the situation in Kent.

She said: ‘Once again, our communities, local businesses and restaurants are having to step up to the plate to feed lorry drivers who are stranded and exhausted.

‘All this while businesses exporting British produce are halted and put under even more strain by the chaos. We really don’t need any more dither and delay from this Government.’

Elizabeth de Jong, policy director at business group Logistics UK, has said it is ‘vital’ that testing procedures are ‘stood up fast to ensure drivers can be processed and get home for Christmas safely’.

She added: ‘The backlog of traffic across the region will take time to clear so hauliers should wait for further news before travelling to Kent.’