MP Charlie Elphicke has spoken out after a plane has now been used to try to smuggle migrants into the UK.

The standard methods for illegal immigrants has been getting into the backs of lorries going from Calais to Dover or trying via the Channel Tunnel.

Now, the Dover and Deal MP said, a “extreme tactic” was used with the unusual method of trying to fly migrants across the channel in a light aircraft.

Mr Elphicke said: “Yet again we see that ruthless people traffickers will stop at nothing to break migrants into Britain.

"We’ve cracked down on smuggling through lorries, dinghies and small boats. Now they are using light aircraft.

“We cannot allow this latest extreme tactic to take off.

“We must smash the trafficking gangs and end their evil trade of modern slavery.”

It was reported that the British pilot of a four-seat Cessna plane was arrested on Monday after it was stopped from taking off from France.

Two other British suspects were also arrested.

Four Albanian migrants were found on board the plane, three adults and a three-year-old child.

The French regional newspaper La Voix du Nord said that the aircraft had been intercepted by border police at the Louis Blériot airport in the town of Marck, just east of Calais.

Philippe Sabatier, the area’s deputy prosecutor, told the newspaper that people smuggling by air was unusual.

He said: “We are used to trucks and makeshift boats but this time we are faced with a new mode of transport.”

The closure of the notorious Jungle migrant camp in Calais last October, which had 10,000 inhabitants, was a major blow to the people trafficking racket.

But illegal immigrants continue to try to break into Britain from northern France.