Illegal migrants and drug dealers build the pounds 5.2bn Channel rail

ILLEGAL immigrants who smuggle their way into Britain are landing jobs building the pounds 5.2billion Channel Tunnel rail link.

Asian gangs are giving them fraudulent National Insurance documents to work on the high-speed line between London and Folkestone.

Phoney marriages to EU nationals are also for sale. Another gang specialises in cloning the identities of British citizens.

Incredibly, the Government-backed consortium building the link has laid on an on-site English school to improve the immigrants" language skills.

Investigations by the Sunday Mirror have also uncovered a rampant drug culture on the vast Stratford Box complex in East London.

About 30 workers - some in safety-sensitive posts - have been sacked recently after testing positive for cannabis and amphetamines.

Others who have taken cocaine and Ecstasy call in sick or quit rather than face random drug tests.

Our revelations raise worrying concerns about safety on the site, which is criss-crossed by live rail lines carrying passenger and freight trains.

The link is the UK's first major new railway for over a century.

It covers the 68 miles from St Pancras in North London to the Channel Tunnel. It will feature new terminals at Stratford and St Pancras.

The link is owned by Network Rail, Railtrack's successor, and London & Continental Railways. It is due to open in 2005 and will reduce the London-Paris run from three hours, 20 minutes to two hours, 15 minutes.

Our investigation began after a tip-off that asylum-seekers were finding it easy to get work at the site because of the large number of vacancies due to the drug problem.

We were told they were quickly being given National Insurance documents and earning pounds 400 a week.

Within minutes of arriving at the main site in Stratford, our undercover reporter - posing as a Pakistani immigrant who had entered Britain through the Channel Tunnel - had been offered forged documents offering the key to a new life.

He was approached by an Indian worker, Jarnail Singh, who quickly boasted about his "one-stop" service for illegal immigrants.

Singh bragged about how he smuggled people into Britain and then sorted out their National Insurance papers for an extra pounds 850.

"There is plenty of work here but you need a NI number," he said. "We will sort something out, but it will cost you money.

"But you'll be able to earn pounds 7 an hour and make back the money you spend on the NI number in a month."

Singh works for the site contractor VGC.

Later that evening our investigator met Singh at Stratford underground station.

Singh said: "You will not get the NI number in one day. It will take around a week as the number will not be a fake. It's going to be genuine. It's around pounds 800 to pounds 850."

During the meeting Singh got a call on his mobile inquiring about a similar scam.

Singh was heard saying: "I need you to give me your date of birth, name and address. The job will be good."

He later bragged about other people he helped on the site in similar circumstances and offered to help our investigator smuggle a friend in from Paris.

Our man was given a temporary NI number by Singh - and accepted for work at VGC by the foreman.

His first job was to attend an induction course in which new recruits learn about safety. During the class, our investigator was approached by a worker who arranges phoney marriages. The man said: "I've got a group of Portuguese women who do it all the time. I can arrange for you to marry one. They are EU citizens - so that will make you one. You'll be legal."

Our investigator also sat in on language classes where non- English speakers are taught the basics.

Workers learn simple health and safety words such as "stop", "go", "sprain", "twist" and "accident".

About 20 immigrants attend the hour-long classes every Tuesday and Thursday morning, happy to be learning English free on work time.

An Iraqi man in his early 20s said: "I look forward to Tuesday mornings because I'd rather be in the classroom than on the building site where it's usually miserable, dirty and wet. The course has been running for about six weeks now and my English has improved.

"I'm very grateful. I didn't think that I would be learning English when I got the job."

On his third day of work, our investigator was offered a cloned identity by a Pakistani fixer called Mohammed who said: "There are between 20 and 50 Pakistanis here using this method.

"It's simple. I know British-born Pakistanis who go back to Pakistan regularly. They use their own Pakistani passports to get there, so there's no record of them leaving Britain.

"With their permission, I use their documents and give them to Pakistani lads who've just arrived in England. It benefits both people because it looks like the man who has gone to Pakistan is paying tax in the UK." One illegal immigrant told our investigator that many Asians do not bother to get false documents.

They can work for three months until their tax files are processed - at which time they disappear.

It is impossible to quantify how many of the 600 workers at Stratford, or the 3,000 across the project sites, are illegal immigrants.

An administrator who works at the site office at Channel Sea House said she suspected eight foreign workers of being illegal immigrants.

Another office worker said some Nigerian men had got jobs using false documents.

Some men from the Ukraine and Romania were also suspected of working illegally.

Meanwhile, a second Sunday Mirror investigator was discovering just how easily available hard drugs are on the site. Posing as a fence-builder, by day two he had rival dealers bidding for his custom.

A worker called Hilts who is employed by the project's main contractor, Skansa, offered to get "any drugs you want". He sold our man 50 Ecstasy tablets for pounds 300.

Hilts, who admitted taking Ecstasy on site, offered to supply cocaine at pounds 50 a gram and cannabis at pounds 130 per ounce.

Another dealer called Kevin Flint sold our reporter 5g of cannabis for pounds 10. He revealed he had smoked cannabis and taken Ecstasy while working on the Channel Tunnel site.

"I had two Ecstasy pills at work. An hour later, I was rushing. I was totally cabbaged."

At a second meeting, Flint admitted he was working on a "safety- critical" part of the site near Stratford train station.

He said: "They stopped us tipping the tipper lorries because they were next to the power lines on the railway.

"They reckon it could tip over on to the cables and the railway track. We're about nine metres from the tracks.""

Such is the scale of the problem with drug abuse that two medical- testers are employed on the site.

In the last fortnight alone, seven people have tested positive and lost their jobs. But for hardened users like Flint it's all a game.

He said: "All the lads in this game are into the pills and coke. I don't like this regime - the testing, the medicals. It's a liberty."

A spokeswoman for Channel Tunnel Rail Link said: "These are very serious allegations and we will investigate them thoroughly.

"On the drugs issue, we have stringent testing because we take health and safety very seriously."

Sean Fitzpatrick, managing director of contractors VGC, said: "I take these allegations incredibly seriously and there will be a full internal investigation."

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-RAIL CHIEF SAFETY SCANDAL: Page 33

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