Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I thank the hon. Lady for her comments about my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea. As I said, the Government take this issue extremely seriously and we look across the board at what Government can do to deal with it. It is about helping communities themselves to eradicate this problem. Everyone in this Chamber will be concerned about the lack of prosecutions, and I am pleased that the Director of Public Prosecutions has issued a new action plan on FGM to the prosecutors, with the hope of getting prosecutions. We must recognise that education of a variety of sorts is important, which is why alerting people at various levels in the public services and in schools, and others, and helping girls to understand the threat themselves, is so important.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

2. What steps she has taken to control immigration from Bulgaria and Romania.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

3. What steps she plans to take to control the entry of Romanian and Bulgarian nationals to the UK from 1 January 2014.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

Speculative projections about future inflows cannot be made with any degree of accuracy and are, therefore, not particularly helpful. That is why the Government are focused on dealing with the abuse of free movement rights and reducing the pull factors for migration, and so I am chairing a cross-Government group of Ministers to examine controls on immigrants’ access to public services and benefits.

[Andrew Bridgen]

It has been estimated that some 250,000 Romanians and Bulgarians are currently resident in Germany, and an internal paper produced by the German Association of Cities has noted that that level of immigration creates social dangers. Will any lessons be learned from the German experience?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend is right to say that it is helpful for us to look at the experience of other European countries. We want to make sure that when people look at the access to our benefits and our public services nobody thinks we are a soft touch in this country, and the Government are taking action to ensure that people will not think that.