Several individuals have been arrested on suspicion of immigration offences after a lorry was stopped on the A303 at the weekend.

Five men and a woman, all in their twenties, were detained on suspicion of immigration offences after being found in the trailer of a lorry near the Bullington Cross junction of the A303 with the A34. The individuals were all from Africa, five from Eritrea and one from Ethiopia.

A spokesperson for Hampshire Constabulary confirmed that the individuals had been detained, and referred further enquiries to the Home Office.

The Home Office said the individuals were being dealt with “according to immigration rules”.

The scale of illegal immigration in the UK is a grey area, with no official estimate on the subject since 2005, when it was suggested that around 430,000 people in the UK were illegal immigrants.

Since then, some organisations have suggested this figure could have topped one million, but the National Audit Office, when looking into the issue last year, did not attempt to validate these figures.

The government, however, has made immigration a key issue, and is seeking to reform the system with a “fully digital border”.

They have received criticism following an announcement in the Queen’s Speech to toughen laws to deny refugee status to any asylum seekers who have passed through a safe country before reaching the UK.

The proposal was condemned by the United Nations refugee agency and by charities who said it would be a betrayal of Britain’s historic tradition of providing protection to people fleeing persecution, with the chief executive of the Refugee Council, Enver Solomon, saying: “Refugee protection is, and always should be, a great British value”.

Following the individuals being detained on the A303, a matter of miles from a now-cancelled site for an immigration camp, a Home Office spokesperson told the Advertiser: “The UK Government continues to tackle illegal migration in all its forms and our New Plan for Immigration will speed up the removal of those who have entered the UK illegally.”

A spokesperson for Hampshire Constabulary said: “We were called at 3.52pm on Saturday 22 May to a report of people inside a lorry on the A303 near Bransbury.

“Officers attended and six people, five men and one woman who were all in their 20s, were detained on suspicion of immigration offences.”

Anyone with information regarding the incident is asked to get in touch using the reference number 44210198392.