The A16 motorway – the main artery for freight and passengers heading for Britain either via the Channel Tunnel or the Calais port – was blocked as hundreds of trucks and tractors drove slowly to clog transport routes.
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The wall, part of a £17m Anglo-French security package, will be created to prevent migrants from trying to clamber aboard vehicles heading along the main motorway to the port in northern France.
But industry bodies have said the wall is a “waste of money” and will simply push the problem further down the road.
Ms Rudd told the Home Affairs Committee the wall was “not a new initiative”, but what mattered was making sure the French had the right amount of security to prevent “illegals” trying to get to the UK.
However, Richard Burnett, chief executive of the Road Haulage Association, called the plan a “poor use of taxpayers’ money”.
“Refugees are the first victims of the blockading of the border”, he said, a reference to a 2003 French-British accord that effectively puts the British border in Calais, where they are stopped from entering Britain, and puts the onus of the migrant plight on France. Currently, drivers are advised they should not to stop within 150 miles of the port. This will be a tiny concrete alleyway that will serve very little objective and not provide any security’.
In July official figures showed that one migrant is caught trying to sneak into the United Kingdom every six minutes – with 84,088 detentions at the country’s borders previous year.
French Police Commissioner Patrick Visser-Bourdon has said the defenses of the port road were breached 22,000 times in June of this year, compared to just 3,000 times in January, the Telegraph reports.
Home Office Minister Robert Goodwill says the kilometer-long (0.6 mile-long) barrier is part of a 17 million pound ($23 million) package of security measures agreed to by Britain and France.
Construction of the wall is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
She told peers refugees in Calais should first claim asylum in France and insisted: “We all want the same thing for these children – for them to be safe and to be in an environment that’s in their best interests, certainly away from the Jungle in Calais”.
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French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve promised during a visit to the Jungle last week to close the camp down “as quickly as possible” but said it would be done in stages.
