Immigration (Bulgaria and Romania)

Debate between Andrew Bridgen and Nigel Mills

Thursday 19th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Nigel Mills]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. One of the drivers of the Government’s welfare reforms is to encourage people to take work if they are offered it; if they choose not to take work that is available, they do not get the benefits that they would presumably like to keep. For the welfare reforms to work, however, we need jobs to be available, so that people can be gently encouraged to take them, even if they are perhaps not their first choice. If the jobs that exist are taken by those who have just arrived in this country, those necessary and important welfare reforms become much harder to achieve. We must remember that a first job can be the start of the career ladder; it is not necessarily the end of it. Encouraging people to take jobs even if they do not think that they are suited to them, or if the jobs are not quite what they are after, is perfectly appropriate policy.

I shall try to get back to the thread of my argument. Let me set out why I tabled an amendment in Committee to keep in place transitional restrictions—and I am grateful that 73 other MPs have chosen to sign that amendment for Report. Looking at the criteria in the accession treaties that allowed us and other western European nations to keep restrictions until the last possible minute, we were allowed the restrictions, and chose to keep them, because there was still serious disruption in our employment market.

Two years ago, the Government commissioned an independent assessment from the Migration Advisory Committee of whether the test was still being met. The main criteria looked at were levels of employment and unemployment, the claimant count, and vacancies, both in 2011 and pre-recession. The pre-recession level of employment was 72.7%; two years ago, that was down at 70.6%. Unemployment before the recession was 5.1%; two years ago, it was 7.8%. The claimant count was 3% pre-recession and 4.6% two years ago; vacancies had been 621,000, but were down to 469,000. Those figures were the justification for saying, “We need to keep these restrictions for another two years. Our labour market can’t cope with the potential disruption of a large number of people arriving.”

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

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. He has the problem in a nutshell. In my constituency, unemployment is down to 2.4%, but many of those who remain unemployed are harder to place, and we need to do more work with them. The last thing that they need is competition from another wave of immigrants. We also need to look at the argument about what the level of immigration could do to the Romanian and Bulgarian economies. What effect will the departure of their brightest, young and best—the keen people willing to travel across the continent to find work—have on the Romanian and Bulgarian economies? That needs to be taken into account.

[Nigel Mills]

My hon. Friend is right. The idea behind those nations wanting to join the European Union was to grow their economies and to provide better living standards for their people. That must be harder to do if what looks like the best option for their brightest people is to leave for a better wage elsewhere.

I return to the test that was run two years ago. If we were to apply it now, with the excellent unemployment data from the end of November announced this week—we all accept and welcome those figures, which are a great improvement on where we were at the start of this Parliament, or even on the position two years ago, or at the start of the year—employment would be at about 72%, which is still down on where it was before the recession. Unemployment is still 7.4%, which is well up on the 5.1% before the recession; the claimant count is still at 4%, compared with 3%; and vacancies are up to 545,000, which is still down on 621,000. My contention is that if the treaty had allowed us to extend the restrictions for a further period, I can see no reason why we would not have sought to retain them, in the light of that analysis.