Because you will be fined, even if it wasn’t deliberate.
Certainly a good way to encourage non-reporting if you do find yourself in that situation.
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They were lucky, lorry drivers with uninvited and unknown about guests were fined £2,000 for each one.
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I’m an immigrant, isn’t anybody allowed to take me home?
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In the nicest possible way, I wouldn’t want you to come home with me.
I must admit, I would not have turned him.
I’m not worried, I know a lot of people who are keen to welcome me into their homes.
My BIL got caught out several years ago. He got back to his yard andheard noises in the back of the trailer behind some pallets that were going onward with another driver. Several men came out and asked for the police, BIL phoned whilst holding them at bay with a big broom. His boss got fined, he did not as it was discovered the top of the curtains had been knifed and he could not have seen it from the ground. Since then, he has never parked less than 100kms from any channel port overnight.
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Difficult call this one … an illegal immigrant… smuggling himself into the country.
Until it actually happens none of us knows quite how we truly would respond.
With time to reflect on it… I’m wondering how would I feel if I did let him off and he later turned out to be a terrorist/bad guy/whatever and people died or were injured.
I am a gentle soul and want to help everyone… but…
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I think real terrorists have much less stressful ways of getting into Europe or the UK - probably business class on a plane with a false passport.
The idea that “many” illegal immigrants are rapists/murderers/thieves etc is a right-wing scare tactic to demonise people who by and large are fleeing war, persecution, famine or other disasters in their home countries.
This kid was a 16 year old from Sudan. Imagine the journey he must have had to get to the UK from his home.
As @JohnH said, fining people who didn’t knowingly bring a stowaway into the country is not going to encourage anyone to report the incident to the police if it happens again, which it will.
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Or getting elected as President of the USA …
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That works too. 
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I presume you give them a bell before dropping around 
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Scully, back in your box…
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Sorry 
(my second childhood).
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We were once stopped when travelling through Czechoslovakia and I was escorted to our caravan by two soldiers with machine pistols. They were obviously looking for people because they only wanted to check the large spaces. It was not something I want to do again.
The story has a Post Script that is longer than the story itself. We were on a long summer holiday with no real plan except to go to the Alps and to return via Colditz, a place I had wanted to visit ever since my childhood. We headed into southern Germany and stopped for a break in Garmisch. We were sitting on a low wall next to the road eating some pommes when a camping car pulled up at the pedestrian crossing in front of us. It was our next door neighbours. We exchanged greetings and they headed off to a lido near Venice. We spent a month in Austria then headed north via Prague and onto Colditz. We booked into the camp site and as it was in the mid 30s went to the town Schwimmbad. While we were there a familiar looking camping car drove by and we joked that it might be the neighbours. It was! That evening we were swapping traveller’s tales and we mentioned the interesting drive through Czechoslovakia, the 100km brothel, the 30km queue of lorries at the German border and being stopped and searched. My neighbour was a military man and where I had been terrified by the guns he has been fascinated and had wanted to ask to have a closer look at them. We visited the Schloss the following day. That was a once in a lifetime experience because although it was open to visitors it was still a working psychiatric hospital and the inmates looked so like I imagined the POWs to have been. The local Aldi was interesting too as it was in the old town theatre that was mentioned often in Pat Reid’s books. One of several strange coincidences I’ve experienced in my life.
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I already know some details firsthand from little kids (under 8) who entered France legally, fleeing a war zone. Their stories of horror and suffering is something I’ll never forget.
And, as I said further up the thread… none of us knows how we will react… finding a stranger hidden in ones transport.
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FFS
This is completely brain dead and (as noted above) is just going to mean people don’t bother to report stowaways.
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For me I’d let them go. The law truly is an ass sometimes.
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It’s petty - I know that ignorance of the law is no defence but a fine of which most people are unaware, punishing people for a situation not of their own making and which most will not notice until well inside UK borders is just vindictive.
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