European Union Free Movement Directive 2004 (Disapplication)

Denis MacShane Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I rise to oppose this sad and bad Bill. The Bill is sad because I find it uncomfortable to hear in the House remarks about fellow Europeans that cast them in a uniformly negative light. There are more British citizens living and working in other EU member states as a share of our population than there are EU member states’ citizens living here. The Bill is a message to the 700,000 to 800,000 British citizens who are made to feel welcome in Spain despite complaints that they are taking advantage of Spanish health care, old-age care and social security services; it is gravely worrying to the many British citizens who are opening businesses all over the EU; and it is an insult to the many EU citizens who live and work in our country and contribute enormously to all levels of our economy.

This is a bad Bill, and I wonder whether the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) has discussed it with employers in Peterborough and the wider region, which is one of the great agricultural and food processing centres of our economy. The east Europeans are there, as they are in Hull, which is also a great food processing centre in the English national economy, because local employers cannot find local workers to do the work. That has been the pull of immigration throughout the ages. Enoch Powell had to allow many people from different Afro-Caribbean countries into the NHS, and the textile factories and foundries of west and south Yorkshire had to invite many people from Pakistan, because they could not get the legendary indigenous working class to do those jobs.

Mr Evan Davis of the BBC made a programme on that very subject. He went to King’s Lynn and the region and tried to find local workers who were willing to get up at 5 am to fill the sandwiches or to pick fruit and vegetables in uncomfortable conditions, but he could find none. The Bill would condemn to abolition the many firms in the hon. Gentleman’s region and elsewhere in the country that use that labour.

Let me turn to my more fundamental objection. The Bill is part of the growing attempt by the Conservative party to break apart our relationship with the EU. The four freedoms—the movement of goods, capital, people and ideas—are fundamental. We cannot sustain the other three freedoms and say that we cannot have the free movement of people. In the 1980s, we were grateful for the free movement of people, when the “Auf Wiedersehen, Pet” generation had to leave their own country because of the disastrous economic policies of the Prime Minister—I forget her name—and go and find jobs in Germany.

If the hon. Gentleman wants to destroy the four freedoms, he should come out and say so, but he should not think we can have sauce for the British goose, but not sauce for the German Gans or the French oie—I do not know what the Polish word for “goose” is. We cannot have a rule that says we will control every EU citizen who comes into our country and not have the 26 other EU member states saying exactly the same thing. The Minister for Immigration has made that point repeatedly in Home Office questions.

Specifically on the question of the 2004 enlargement, the hon. Member for Peterborough has confused—I do not mean this disrespectfully, but he may be confused—the free movement of citizens and the free movement of workers. The moment countries join the EU, their citizens have complete free movement as citizens. They must obey local laws—they must register with a police station in Germany, and register and have a residents permit if they want to live in France. I do not object to that part of the hon. Gentleman’s Bill. That is why I was in favour of national identity cards—I do not want to raise old issues, but they are how the rest of Europe has some idea of who comes to live within the different frontiers of EU member states.

The hon. Gentleman is right that the free movement of workers could have been delayed by seven years. To begin with, France and Germany applied those measures, but within two years they found they had become unworkable and lifted them. With the free movement of people, Poles, Slovakians and so on came into France and Germany. Different nationalities go to different areas of the world. People from south-east EU member states, including the incoming Romanians, tend to gravitate to Italy and Spain, while we get Poles—for historic reasons, we have a huge Polish community here, and have had since the end of the war. We have Ryanair and easyJet flying backwards and forwards with utterly full planes between all the main British and Polish cities.

I welcome that for one simple reason: Britain has always depended on a flow of European workers, particularly the citizens of the sovereign Republic of Ireland. The greatest number of non-British EU workers on the Olympic games site, which was finished magnificently and on time thanks to a huge input of EU workers, came from the Republic of Ireland. If the hon. Gentleman’s Bill was put into full force, we would be saying to every friend and family in Ireland, “You’re not welcome here, except on highly restrictive terms”. Coming partly from a Scottish-Irish family, I find that very depressing. The free flow of people between our two countries has been a positive thing.

The hon. Gentleman is right that after 2008, when we had the crash and the sudden spike in unemployment, employment conditions got extremely tight. As we speak, unemployment is rising in Leeds, Bradford and Rotherham, as again we create a two-nation Britain under this Government. The plain fact is that hundreds of thousands of firms as well as landlords, as well as our tax and national insurance system—everyone who works has to pay taxes and NI—have benefited from the contribution of non-British EU workers. Hundred of thousands of firms that might otherwise have relocated outside the UK in search of hard-working and, yes, low-wage workers—that is a problem—stayed in the UK.

The answer to that is to build more houses and schools, and to ensure that workers in all firms are treated properly. We should be applying the agency workers directive and the new living wage idea to ensure that employers cannot discriminate against local employees—because they would have to pay everybody fairly. That is my solution to the problem. The solution is not to put up barriers or destroy the free movement of people. If we do that, we kiss goodbye to the free movement of goods and capital. Let us not think that we can take away one pillar of what makes the EU work and assume that the other pillars will stay standing. They will not. Any discrimination that we choose to apply against any fellow EU citizen will be turned back and applied to us. We need visas to go to Australia and many Commonwealth countries, and many of the latter refuse to accept our agricultural products, but they are fully accepted in every EU member state.

I once asked Radek Sikorski, the Polish Foreign Minister, “What about the Poles coming to Britain?”, and he said, “Every time a Pole feels he has to leave Poland for Britain it is a disaster, a national tragedy, a loss to our nation.” He is right. We need to build the economies of these countries. Mrs Thatcher massively increased UK contributions to the EU in the 1980s in order, she said, to help grow Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Greece. At that time, those countries were growing, and Ireland became a country of immigration, not emigration.

For those reasons, I ask the House to reject the Bill. I do not propose to divide the House, but, without wishing to challenge the integrity or position of the hon. Gentleman, I hope that every decent Member of Parliament will think a bit more deeply and understand that a Britain open to the world is good for us. We cannot be open for business and closed to foreigners.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Mr Stewart Jackson, Heather Wheeler, Mr Frank Field, Priti Patel, Mr Philip Hollobone, Gordon Henderson, Henry Smith, Mr Andrew Turner, Zac Goldsmith, Caroline Nokes, Kate Hoey and Mr James Clappison present the Bill.

Mr Stewart Jackson accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 14 December 2012, and to be printed (Bill 86).

Local government Finance Bill (Programme) (No. 3)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),

That the following provisions shall apply to the Local Government Finance Bill for the purpose of supplementing the Orders of 10 January 2012 in the last session (Local Government Finance Bill (Programme)) and 21 May 2012 (Local Government Finance Bill (Programme) (No. 2)):

Consideration of Lords Amendments

1. Proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion three hours after their commencement at today’s sitting.

Subsequent stages

2. Any further Message from the Lords may be considered forthwith without any Question being put.

3. The Proceedings on any further Message from the Lords shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour after their commencement.—(Mark Lancaster.)

Question agreed to.