Truth about your takeaway drivers. You thoughtlessly open your door to these masked strangers when they drop off your food – so SUE REID asked hers a simple question. What she found is deeply disquieting

What I found strange about the delivery bikers arriving at my door was that I could never see their faces.

They were invariably masked in motorbike helmets, with only their eyes showing and, apart from a Canadian girl who apologised for arriving late with my Thai takeaway, were all male and spoke very little English.

I always asked these strangers to bring the food down the steps to my basement flat and put the bag on a chair near my front door. Over time, it dawned on me that, though they had my name and my address, I had no idea who they were.

This week it emerged that within hours of arriving on Channel boats, hundreds of newly-arrived migrants are finding work as fast-food delivery drivers in the UK.

A newspaper investigation found that these illegals are enjoying bed and board in Home Office asylum hotels while stacking up cash from the latest immigration scam facing the British public.

The migrants brazenly leave their bikes and bags branded with the names of large delivery firms piled up outside their Home Office accommodation, according to Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp, who made a surprise recent visit to an asylum seekers’ hotel in London.

Mr Philp says these easy-to-get delivery jobs are a strong ‘pull factor’ in bringing more small-boat migrants to Britain. He is blaming three of the biggest companies for ‘fuelling’ an already out-of-control borders crisis.

Meanwhile, a new campaign is calling for a boycott of takeaway giants until something is done: ‘These businesses are putting British citizens’ lives in danger. Do you want unvetted illegal migrants coming to your home?’

As a widow living alone, I first realised the risk posed by unvetted illegal migrants delivering takeaways back in February, when I was packing up my flat in London to move to a new apartment outside the city.

I was at home for three weeks. The kitchen drawers had been emptied of cutlery, while my elm dining table and chairs had gone to auction. With nowhere to sit and nothing to eat with, I soon got into the habit of ordering takeaways, eating them straight out of the brown paper carton using wooden cutlery.

I have ordered food deliveries occasionally for years. Yet during the period of preparing for my move, I became alarmed as more and more foreigners – all wearing helmets – turned up with the orders. Who exactly were they?

I decided to question the men who, invariably, phoned me from outside on the street – they often had my number thanks to the takeaway service or could call me through the delivery platform – shouting my name down the phone so every neighbour could hear.

When I answered, they would then approach my door before often stepping inside and banging the food down hurriedly.

I kept a tally of their nationalities. My trick to get them to tell me this was simple. They would nearly always ask me my age (a very nanny-state home delivery rule if you order a bottle of wine or a beer). I would answer with: ‘Do I really look under 18? Would you ask your own mother that? Where is she now?’ This always provoked the response I wanted.

I found that my delivery bikers in the month of February alone hailed from India, Bolivia, Afghanistan, Argentina, Brazil, Iran, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

One sweet, dark-eyed young man who claimed to be from Spain – although I suspect he was South American – admitted: ‘I am only in your country to make money.’

One day, my ‘mother’ question got me into trouble. A sinister-looking middle-aged man, wearing a helmet, of course, claimed to me in faltering English that he was from Italy.

I said I didn’t believe a word. He immediately dropped my delivery, ran out of my kitchen up the basement steps and roared off.

A day or so later, using my mobile number he had been given by the supermarket to tell me he was at my house, he sent me a picture of his genitals. This scared me.

He, of course, knew a lot about me. I knew absolutely nothing about him. I was alone and he knew where I lived.

I blocked his number immediately and felt relief that I was moving house soon.

This week, I went out into London to talk to other delivery drivers, following reports that many are illegal migrants or asylum seekers fresh off the traffickers’ boats.

All those who have crossed the Channel will have passed through Manston processing centre in Kent, where staff – as I revealed in the Mail last week – say background searches including criminal records checks are difficult because many migrants destroy their passports or identity papers before they arrive.

The result is: no one knows where they come from, who they are or why they are here.

Some will be economic migrants simply hoping for a better life. Others could be potential terrorists, paedophiles or murderers.

An Istanbul-based people smuggler has told an undercover reporter at the Telegraph that Britain is the country of choice for illegal migrants because ‘all you need is a mobile phone and a bike’ to make ‘good money’.

And official Government figures show that 42 per cent of delivery riders stopped during a probe by Home Office immigration officials in April 2023 were working illegally.

Digging deeper, I found that the takeaway industry has recently been hijacked in yet another enormous immigration scandal.

Delivery companies, by law, have to subject their riders to employment, immigration and identity checks. But on social media platforms, there are tens of thousands of delivery accounts being ‘sublet’ for up to £100 a week, or for a share of the rider’s monthly earnings.

This allows asylum seekers (who are not allowed to work) and illegal migrants to slip into the trade. And, believe me, they can make a good living out of it.

By some calculations, an illegal migrant being housed at taxpayer expense in a central London hotel (avoiding rent on a studio flat of, say, £1,600 per month), paying no council tax or utility bills (which would total perhaps £3,000 per year), enjoying three free meals a day, as well as just under £10 a week spending money in cash courtesy of the taxpayer, and then earning a modest but achievable £18,000 as a delivery rider over 52 weeks, would need to be earning an equivalent salary of more than £50,000 as a working taxpayer to fund a similar lifestyle.

Many delivery riders use modern electric scooters that are essentially unlicensed motorbikes – some of these can travel at 50mph, and have been implicated in a raft of serious accidents and other criminality, including phone theft. Others use more familiar mopeds, some petrol-powered.

In a further madness, riders are able to use L-plates for up to two years. To get a provisional licence, they pay a few hundred pounds for an easily passed test (with no theory exam, immigration or English-language checks) at government centres around the country.

This week, in the affluent streets of Chelsea, west London, I found L-plated riders delivering groceries, takeaways and expensive restaurant meals to the homes of wealthy local customers.

Down a side street tucked away off the Earls Court Road was a large scooter parking bay where the riders congregate.

At 10am on Thursday, I counted 14 bikes there, with more arriving as lunchtime approached. All the bikes had large food boxes from well-known delivery companies and restaurants attached.

The men (there were no female riders) were shouting at each other so loudly in different languages that, at one point, I saw a woman emerge from a hotel to tell the throng to pipe down. They ignored her.

By midday, the men had their mobile phones to their ears as orders began to come in.

My photographer and I followed several riders as they drove at speed through the traffic to make their deliveries to private homes. Not a single one removed his motorbike helmet as he rang the doorbell and handed over the food.

What was particularly alarming was that these men – some of whom may have landed on a boat at Dover within the past few days or weeks – were buzzed into blocks of flats where they then disappeared for several minutes. It doesn’t need much imagination to see the potential hazards.

I spoke to several delivery riders after they had finished dropping off the food. First up was a French-speaking, 24-year-old Algerian who politely put up his helmet visor to talk to me.

He admitted to being in Britain illegally after flying in on a tourist visa. But why had he not chosen to work in Paris as a delivery driver? He replied in perfect English: ‘It’s so easy here in London.’

I then found two Afghans in their early 20s relaxing on the Brompton Road, one of whom I had seen delivering food to a nearby property. They were sharing an orange-coloured vape and had dumped their bikes in front of them, blocking the pavement.

The taller one, with good English, told me he had been in Britain for five months, while his friend had arrived just a few weeks ago. Both were living in migrant hotels.

‘Did you come on the Channel boats?’ I asked.

‘Yes, it’s the best way for everyone now,’ they told me.

The riders I met were relaxed and willing to speak. They didn’t seem afraid of any consequences for either having entered the country illegally or working in breach of their asylum conditions.

During the long, hot day, I saw hundreds of migrants zigzagging at speed to make their deliveries through clogged traffic in this well-heeled area of the capital.

Past red lights they went.

Some raced up one-way streets in the wrong direction. I watched two bikes cut across corners of pavements in front of startled pedestrians.

Over eight hours, I never saw a single police officer – either on the beat or in a patrol car.

In what is now lawless London, no one seemed willing to do anything to stop the migrant bikers behaving however they wished – many of them earning good money while living here for free at our expense.