Immigration (Bulgaria and Romania)

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hollobone]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I think that a few Members thought that they had escaped with the ringing of the bell—saved by the bell. My right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex has escaped—he has heard me speak before—but, sadly, other hon. Members will have to endure part two.

I was telling hon. Members that I am no longer in favour of Britain’s being a member of the European Union. We are tying ourselves to a sclerotic trade bloc. We have to pay an annual membership fee of more than £10 billion and we have to open our borders to all and sundry. I do not believe that my constituents would be in favour of any of those three main conditions of our being a member of the EU. I do not take my constituents’ views for granted and I am delighted that the Conservative party has pledged a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, should we form the Government after the next election. Should I be back, I intend to hold the Conservative Government at that time to account on their election pledge. If my constituents vote to leave the EU, I will certainly join them. If they vote to remain in the EU, that is their choice and I am delighted that they will have that choice.

With regard to immigration from Romania and Bulgaria, this country cannot cope with a further wave of mass immigration. I do not believe in an ever-closer union in Europe or in the free movement of labour. Yes, we need skilled labour, whether from the EU or from around the world, but we should control that with a work permit or visa system. With our membership of the EU, effectively our borders are open to skilled and unskilled labour from across the EU. There are consequences and serious knock-on effects of large numbers of people coming to our country.

The right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) made a valid point in saying that Her Majesty’s Government needs to provide a sensible estimate of the numbers that might come from Romania and Bulgaria. It is sensible to start by seeing how many came to our shores from the A8 accession countries—the first wave of immigration from eastern Europe. We now have just over 1.1 million eastern Europeans from those A8 countries, which have a combined population of just under 73 million. That is a rate of 1.5%. That is a known—a fact—and it is indisputable. If we apply that same rate to the entry of Romania, with 21 million people, and Bulgaria with 7 million, the 155,000 from those two countries presently resident in the UK would climb to some 425,000. That means that we can, on average, expect three times more Romanians and Bulgarians than are currently resident in this country.

Those estimates tie in nicely with those from Migration Watch, a hugely respected, independent migration think-tank, which has estimated that the influx from Romania and Bulgaria will be between 30,000 a year, at the bottom end, to 70,000 a year at the top end, with a central estimate of 50,000 a year.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I pay tribute to the excellent work that my hon. Friend has done on this issue over the past few years. Is not the problem that some of our policy makers do not understand the impact of these large demographic changes on a small number of geographical areas? My hon. Friend knows that in my constituency 34,000 national insurance numbers were issued in eight years, in a city of 150,000 people. Some 41% of primary school children in my constituency do not have English as a first language. This is the reality of mass migration from the European Union.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Howarth, for allowing me to speak. I apologise for not being present for the whole debate: I have been on other House duties. It is a great pleasure to be able to contribute to this very important debate. I thank a number of people, but principally my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) for his courage in taking forward this issue, which has sometimes proved very contentious and difficult to ventilate in the public sphere. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), who has been stalwart and very persistent in taking forward these issues on behalf of his constituents. I reiterate the points raised by my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay), who sees many of the same issues as I do.

I feel in some ways that I have been a voice crying in the wilderness since 2004. I have been the Member of Parliament for Peterborough since 2005 and I have seen the impact of unplanned and unrestricted migration. Let me say at the outset that I defer to no one in my admiration of people who come from eastern Europe to make a better life for themselves and their families. I had the privilege of serving for eight years in the London borough of Ealing, from 1990 to 1998, which has the largest Polish population in the UK. Polish people are decent, hardworking and diligent; I have no problems with people based on their ethnicity, race, culture or religion, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering said. However, I have a problem with unplanned immigration from eastern European countries, the next iteration of which will be from Romania and Bulgaria from 1 January next year.

I deeply regret the catastrophic decision of the previous Labour Government to opt out of the moratorium on the free movement directive from 2004. I can understand in some respects why the decision was taken—the country at that stage was doing well, albeit fuelled by a particular credit boom—but more should have been considered and taken into account, such as the likely impact on not only the labour market, but welfare and dependency. It pushed young people, particularly men, who could have had the jobs that were taken by others, into welfare dependency and unemployment. It was an error of judgment, and the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), to give him his due, and others have shown some contrition.

In approximately eight years, 34,500 national insurance numbers have been granted in the Peterborough local authority area, a city that in 2001 had a population of 156,000. We can imagine the impact that has had. To pick up on a minor aspect of the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire, that has had a huge impact on the residential amenity of neighbourhoods in central Peterborough. Too many landlords, who should know better—grasping, greedy landlords, who do not care about those neighbourhoods or the people who have hitherto lived there—have put too many people into substandard accommodation, to the extent that Peterborough had to apply for extra funding to combat what they call “beds in sheds”. Whole neighbourhoods have changed overnight. We are very fortunate that we are a tolerant, decent and public-spirited people in Peterborough and Cambridgeshire; the British National party and other extremists have not prospered in that time and we have been largely welcoming, but there is a limit to people’s hospitality, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering said.

Fulbridge primary school in the centre of Peterborough is the second largest primary school in England with between 700 and 800 children. It is fortunate to be led by Iain Erskine—a fantastic head. More than 90 languages are spoken by the children. In my constituency, 41% of primary school pupils do not speak English as their first language. In itself, that is not a problem, but the churn is. Twenty-five per cent. of primary school pupils are not at the school at the beginning of term and 25% are not there at the end. Imagine the impact that that has on resource allocation, teaching time, educational attainment and standard assessment tests, and we can see why Peterborough is now in the bottom eight or 10 local education authorities in England, when, based on its demographic profile, there is no reason for that to be the case.

There are also concerns about health care. Our maternity services are under enormous strain, not least because the people who have come to Peterborough from eastern Europe are disproportionately young and therefore likely to have children, which is why we also have issues in schools. There are issues not only with eastern European people—Bulgarians and Romanians—but because a perfect storm of demographic and social factors have coincided. Due to the previous Government’s regional spatial strategy, which has continued, we have plans for organic growth in housing of 26,000 homes in approximately 15 years. My constituency and the city of Peterborough also has a large Pakistani-heritage community, the families of which are more likely to have larger numbers of children.

[Mr Ward]

Has the hon. Gentleman’s local authority suffered, as Bradford has, from the use of outdated census figures for the allocation of revenue support grant in an area of rising population?

[Mr Jackson]

The hon. Gentleman makes a pertinent and sensible point—that is exactly the case. We have worked with local authorities, such as Westminster, Telford and Wrekin, the London borough of Barking and Dagenham and others, and argued for some time that the measurement of population is too prescriptive, too opaque and does not take into account the speed of change in housing tenure and primary and secondary schools, or crime, policing and health, including additions to GP and primary care registers.

That is the background to where we are. I feel a sense of disappointment, not with the Minister, who is competent and capable, but with the lack of preparedness and the lack of an imperative from the Government to tackle the issue. They knew that it would be important to co-ordinate a policy around immigration upon their election in May 2010, yet there is a feeling that they are playing catch-up, chasing their tail and responding to the media or some Back Benchers. It is disappointing.

As hon. Members know, on 31 October 2012 I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill entitled the European Union Free Movement Directive 2004 (Disapplication) Bill. It received a Second Reading, but it has disappeared, as we know often happens, into the ether. Denis MacShane, in his swan song, was the only person who opposed it, with a passionate speech. Only he would have the chutzpah, the day before the Standards and Privileges Committee published its report, to oppose a Bill that was largely supported. I shall not digress, Mr Howarth. The Bill referred to Bulgaria and Romania and said that that the Government do not need to gold-plate the free movement directive. There is sufficient flexibility in respect of Romania and Bulgaria for us to invoke the key parts of the directive, such as public good, public safety, public health and the habitual residence test. We could do what Spain has done, as has been mentioned, and have a registration regime when someone arrives, when they get married, and when they change address or jobs. Those are methods of reducing the pull factor.

It would be churlish and ungrateful of me not to concede that the Government have acted. I thank the Minister for his letter of 9 April, in which he comprehensively outlines the Prime Minister’s and Home Secretary’s intentions for welfare, housing and health. However, I must say that I do not believe that the Home Office officials advising the Minister have looked sufficiently robustly at what we need to do to reassure our constituents that what they see as unfair will not come to pass from January next year. We have a lot more to do on the habitual residence test. We must start collecting the data on how much child tax credit is being remitted to Lithuania, Poland and the Czech Republic.

[Stephen Barclay]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and for the work that he is doing on behalf of not only Peterborough, but the fen region. He repeatedly highlights issues that are pertinent to not only one constituency, but several. With regard to the specific point he is making, would he explore with the Government whether they have had discussions with the British Bankers Association on whether banks are able to track transfers from accounts in the UK to specific countries? In my former career, I worked in financial crime prevention, transaction monitoring and such areas, and I would have thought that Whitehall does not need to struggle with this, because the capability is already there. People can, in fact, track such flows. The information should be available through a quick phone call.

[Mr Jackson]

My hon. Friend tempts me down a path that might get me into trouble with the Chairman, but he has put that important and pertinent point on the record.

We do not need to speculate and look into the crystal ball; we know what happened. In 2004, the London School of Economics put together a research paper, which the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) tells us was 85 pages long. The Government seem to have disregarded the paper and to have allowed the media to speculate that the number that would come to this country would be between 13,000 and 15,000, whereas we know that it was well over 1.1 million.

My final point is that we must have a fact-based empirical analysis of how likely we are to have the numbers on which Migration Watch UK is speculating. It is simply not acceptable for the Government to say, “We have no idea, guv. They could go to Stornoway, Lostwithiel, Aldeburgh or Chichester.” We are in government to take decisions. Our Ministers are in government to work for the good of the people who elected all of us, and part of that means using the machinery of government to give people facts and data with which to make decisions. I will not name the Government aide concerned, but I was very patronisingly told last week by a Parliamentary Private Secretary: “Oh, we don’t know any of the facts. We can’t speculate. We’re just going to have to suck it and see.” That is not good enough, and I do not think that my constituents or hon. Members here would expect that to be the position.

I pay tribute to the heroes of the public services in Peterborough, who eight years ago did not see the deluge of unrestricted, unplanned migration coming towards them. The teaching assistants, the teachers, the police officers, the housing officials, and my city council—with which I do not always agree—have done a fantastic job in keeping the lid on what could have been a very difficult situation. I look to the Minister to give us some answers, to tackle this most pressing problem, to keep the faith with our voters, and to reiterate that it is for us and this sovereign Parliament to decide who comes to our country and what they do when they get here.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is a great delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. It is something I have never done before. This is also a great opportunity to commend the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard). I prefer his speeches when he is attacking the Prime Minister rather than the Opposition, but he put his argument very well and, although I hate to embarrass him, I agree with quite a lot of what he said.

I agree also with a lot of what the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) said, and I will go through some of the issues line by line. His last sentence, however, slightly antagonised me, because although he commended the staff working in the local services in Peterborough who, he said, did not foresee the deluge that was coming, I think that quite a lot of the people who came ended up working in those same public services. It is not, therefore, quite a dichotomy between them and lots of people from outside the UK who have ended up doing nothing for this country because, in many cases, those are the people who have worked the hardest.

One thing that I think everyone who has spoken thus far has said—and I am sure the Minister will do the same—is that migration and migrants have brought a great deal to this country, economically and culturally, and not just in the generations that we have been part of but in many before. The Rhondda would certainly not be the constituency it is today, with rugby players with surnames such as Sidoli, if it were not for migration from Italy in the 19th century when people came to work in the mines. We actually allowed an awful lot of people to come from England too, which was a moral dilemma for us but, seriously, migration has affected every element of our country.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

May I just set the record straight? I represent a constituency which has had, in no particular order, Irish, Italian, Polish and Pakistani immigrants, and I do not have a problem with the essential integral concept of immigration. It is just the speed and the scale that is the issue.

[Mr George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Order. All that is very interesting, but I am afraid it needs to lead towards Bulgaria and Romania at some point soon.