Calais queues costs Newport haulage firm £100k a month

A Welsh haulage firm has claimed it is losing the equivalent of about £100,000 a month due to delays at the Port of Calais.

The head of European operations at MCL Logistics in Newport said the company's European jobs account for a third of its turnover.

The company currently has three drivers stuck in queues to cross the channel.

It comes as Welsh politicians have called for long-term solutions to the Calais migrant crisis.

Glyn Meredith told BBC Wales queues are affecting the company, its drivers and its customers.

"We're losing revenue on vehicles, we're losing production time, meetings, we can't get our goods to our customers... it's just stemming back to everything," he said.

Mr Meredith said drivers are also having to deal with migrants trying to climb into their vehicles and are being threatened, adding "it is serious".

One of his drivers, Dai Martin, said: "You have to go for a meal, you have to leave your vehicle at the time. You come back and look and you can't see anything but you know there's something wrong.

"You open the doors to the trailer and you shine your torch and I've seen eyes looking back at me in the dark. And that is very frightening.

"There's that great fear that if we do go to check our vehicles for security... we never know if we are safe.

"I have been in this job for 40 years, I know the post inside out and upside down. I have never, ever, ever seen it like this."

On Thursday, Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood called for a humanitarian response to the refugee crisis at Calais and said "more fences and police will amount to little more than papering over the cracks".

She said EU states must accommodate a "fair share" of refugees and proposed increasing UK refugee quotas, setting specific quotas for each of the nations in partnership with devolved governments.

Conservative MP for Monmouth David Davies said the "generous" benefits system, which he believes is attracting migrants to Britain, needs to be addressed.

"In the long term, I think what we have to do is to take away the incentives to come to Europe and that's going to mean a hard decision," he said.

"I believe that what we need to do is actually remove people from Europe if they are here illegally and without papers."