'You're in too deep, you can't turn round' - Britain's migrant smugglers

In the summer producer Paul Grant and I followed a young Eritrean man, Jonas, as he journeyed form Italy to Calais, crossing Europe's borders under the radar.

In Calais, we noticed the papers were full of court reports of people being sent down for hiding migrants in the boots of their cars - being paid to smuggle them across the Channel.

We watched one Briton - a father from Preston - being sent down for 12 months for doing just that. He was supposed to earn £500. A bit of digging led to the revelation that in the Calais region alone, about 100 Britons were jailed for the same crime last year.

Our latest File on 4 picks up where that programme left off. We managed, after a long wait and some persuasion, to sit down with three convicted British migrant smugglers. They told us in length who recruits drivers, and how, and the tricks of the trade. 

From there we work our way up the chain, to hear about the Mr Bigs in these organised crime gangs. Europol says it thinks more than 800 Britons on its database are involved in this business, to one degree or another.

The programme takes us from England, to Calais, Dunkirk, then Belgium and the Netherlands.

I hope you find it interesting.

A BITTER BREW - ILLEGAL CONDITIONS ON ETHICAL TEA ESTATES

For my latest File on 4 producer Sally Chesworth and I headed to the biggest tea-producing region in the world, Assam in Northern India. 

We knew from NGOs that there were concerns about dismal housing and sanitation for tea workers who live in the tea gardens. We didn't know whether we would be able to make the links between gardens breaking the law, and British brands of tea.

But we did. Gardens where houses leak and latrines are broken or don't exist, supplied Harrods, Fortnum & Mason, Taylors of Harrogate - and brands behind the every day cuppa, Unilever (PG Tips), Twinings and Tata (Tetley). You can listen to the programme here.

And you can read more online.

Harrods has taken some of its luxury tea off the shelves in the light of what we found.

The Rainforest Alliance which certifies the gardens we exposed is on the ground checking conditions. 

Ticket to hide...and Britons offering a ride through Calais

My latest File on 4 set out to test how difficult - or easy - it is for migrants rescued from the Mediterranean to leave Southern Italy and cross the borders into France - and the UK.

I met and followed the progress of 25 year old Eritrean, Jonas. An electrical engineer who says he was forced to leave Eritrea when the government came looking for him after a friend skipped the country, he wants to do a masters in the UK.

Some bits of his under the radar journey were surprisingly easy - others were hard.

Hear his progress in the programme on my Investigative page or here.

Also, read the exclusive story of the unexpected people smugglers we stumbled upon at the migrants' final hurdle, Calais.