Immigration (Bulgaria and Romania)

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Nigel Mills]

I agree with what my hon. Friend says. He leads us to a fundamental tension. Can we allow freedom of movement when there are such disparities of wealth between the new nations joining the EU and others, and when the attractiveness of our benefit system means that it is very different from what people experience in their country? There is a tension between the welfare system that we would like and the impact that it has when there is free movement of people, and we must resolve that, one way or another.

It would be far better for the European Court not to produce such ludicrous decisions. Those of us on the Eurosceptic side of the debate probably welcome perverse decisions that further lower the reputation of the EU and the UK, but if I were in the Court’s shoes, I am not sure that I would be quite so creative.

The NHS is attractive to people coming here, and there are also concerns about whether we have enough housing to accommodate large influxes of migrants over the next five years. Those of us who are experiencing great discomfort due to local plans to comply with existing housing targets probably do not fancy adding a few more hundred thousand people throughout the country, and seeing how many more houses we will have to find on our green belt. There are also impacts on other public services, notably schools, in areas where there is high pressure from immigration.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend not agree that 2 million new people in this country over the past 10 years is far too many? We must find out what the Government foresee in future.

[Nigel Mills]

I think there is general agreement that the level of migration over the past decade was clearly higher than the country could cope with. Members of the previous Government are now recognising that they made mistakes, especially relating to the accession of the A8 countries a decade ago. It is worth reminding ourselves that 5,000 to 13,000 people a year were predicted to come from those countries, and more than 1 million actually came. That was a spectacularly bad prediction.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nigel Mills]

My hon. Friend is clearly right. However, sadly, I do not think that we can convince the Government to pull us out of the EU in the next fortnight, and so we probably need to take some different measures in the meantime. He may have noticed that the five-year period I am proposing for keeping the restrictions will take us well past the referendum that we hope will take place on our EU membership. At that point, the people will have been able to choose whether they want to stay in and have unrestricted migration or to leave and reintroduce our border controls. I hope he would agree that a five-year time frame for keeping the restrictions would be one way of helping to meet his aspirations in that situation.

[Mr Andrew Turner]

My hon. Friend said that the Bulgarians and Romanians have not joined the Schengen agreement, although that had been expected. Is that an agreement that they made but have subsequently decided not to stick with, or an agreement that they made with the rest of Europe in which we were not involved?

[Nigel Mills]

As I understand it, Schengen is an agreement between nations rather than a treaty, and, fortunately, one that we are outside as we were thankfully not required to join. Having had a pleasant meeting with the Bulgarian ambassador in a TV studio not that long ago, I know that there is some annoyance among those nations because they feel that they have met the criteria for Schengen but are not being permitted to join it. There were some strong quotes from Mr Barroso on why that was not to be the case; he used language that I would not want to use in a debate in immigration, but there we go.

I am a little over the time that I promised I would take with my remarks, so I will conclude. I do not think that any other measure has been trailed or announced that can tackle this matter in the right time frame. There is widespread concern, as anyone who reads almost any of the newspapers can see. I have already mentioned the Daily Express petition with 150,000 signatures; yesterday we saw a campaign in The Sun and today there is an editorial on the issue in The Daily Telegraph. It is an issue of great concern. The Government need either to give us convincing reassurance that the problem will not arise or to take some action to protect our employment market and protect those people in our constituencies who are struggling to find work. The only realistic answer is to keep proportionate restrictions on Romanians and Bulgarians in place for a further period. I urge the Government to act before those restrictions are lifted on 1 January.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bone]

I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman has prejudged my position on the referendum; I want entirely to hear what our Prime Minister achieves.

I am delighted that the excellent Minister for Immigration is here. The only thing I have to say about that is that we know that the Government have decided to give that Member of Parliament the most difficult area to deal with—the one that they are in trouble on. It is good to see him here, but it is a worry that the Government are relying not on getting the problem sorted out, but on having a very able Minister defend an absolutely impossible position.

One of the cornerstones and key strengths of the coalition is its tough stance on cutting immigration, which Labour allowed to soar to eye-watering levels. In 2010, we pledged to

“take steps to take net migration back to the levels of the 1990s—tens of thousands a year, not hundreds of thousands.”

That is a common-sense policy, with overwhelming support. After a decade of Labour incompetence on the issue, it is long overdue.

The progress that we have made on cutting immigration to date is testament to the efforts of the Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May). I strongly believe that lifting the restrictions on Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants would jeopardise all the good work we have done, not only on getting immigration down, but on building new homes, improving public services and lowering unemployment.

Bulgaria’s new ambassador to the UK has claimed that hardly any Bulgarians want to move to the UK once restrictions are lifted, and that, more than anything, the change will hurt their economy. If that is the case, he should welcome continued restrictions. Government figures show that although overall immigration is down, eastern European immigration is bucking the trend, and is increasing. The number of people from Romania and Bulgaria settling in the UK has risen sharply, up from 37 in 2011 to 2,177 in 2012. Clearly, if the restrictions are lifted, those figures will increase dramatically, making them completely incompatible with the Government’s aim to reduce immigration.

[Mr Andrew Turner]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for allowing me to interrupt him. The number that we wish to control is the number of people from outside Europe. It is true, of course, that until now, we have got the figures for migration from within Europe down as well, but there is no promise from the Government that that will continue.

[Mr Bone]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. There is no guarantee at all. I am arguing that because of the removal of the restrictions, we will break that important promise.

It is common sense for us as a country to continue the restrictions, and the only obstacle to that is the European Union. That, however, is not an arrangement that the British people signed up to. The last time the people had a vote on the European Economic Community was in 1975. Needless to say, we now have an EU. When the EEC was in existence, it was a small group of prosperous western European countries. Now, the EU takes in poorer countries in central Europe that were formerly in the communist bloc. Old EU regulations and laws that applied to the European Economic Community have become seriously out of date; as a result, the EU is forcing on us a wave of immigration that the British public do not want and did not vote for, and that will have negative repercussions for our economy and our people.

This is the time when we need to stand up to the European Union and say, “Enough is enough.” Parliament is answerable to the British people, and therefore has sovereignty over the UK’s borders. We do not need to be told by a post-democratic body what our immigration policy is. Earlier this year, the Prime Minister stated that our country should welcome only those who came here to work hard. Relaxing the current arrangements and deregulating immigration from these two countries would do exactly the opposite.

I thoroughly welcome the Government’s Immigration Bill, and the proposals to restrict the access that immigrants have to the wealth of benefits that we offer. One such proposal is for an initial three-month period before benefits can be claimed. Migration Watch UK concludes that there are “very strong financial incentives” for Bulgarians and Romanians to move to the UK, partly due to the much higher wages and living standards in the United Kingdom.