Secret filming at UK rail station of cash payments to gang for illegal Channel crossings

Secret filming at a major UK railway station has captured associates of a violent smuggling gang collecting cash payments to secure migrant places on small boats.

Two men met a BBC undercover reporter on separate occasions on the busy concourse at Birmingham's New Street Station to collect envelopes containing hundreds of pounds.

The confrontation was part of a BBC News investigation - fronted by Paris correspondent Andrew Harding - into the French operations and UK links of the powerful gang taking people across the English Channel.

Another reporter, posing as a migrant wanting to cross, also helped us gain unprecedented access to the smugglers' notorious forest hideout in northern France - an area plagued by armed battles between rival gangs.