Immigration (Bulgaria and Romania)

George Howarth Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr George Howarth in the Chair]

[Mr George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Mr Hollobone had the floor, but before I bring him back, as it were, it might be worth mentioning, for the convenience of those present, that we will conclude this debate, with time added on for the Divisions, at around 7.55 pm, give or take a minute or two. I hope that that is helpful.

[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.

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[Kris Hopkins (Keighley) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) on securing the debate. As he said, it is extremely important that we have these debates. For too long— this is particularly true of my party—we have avoided contributing to the immigration debate. There is some history with previous rhetoric and we disengaged from the subject. Making a measured and meaningful contribution to it, by offering a range of views on the issues that my hon. Friend raised, is important.

Nick Griffin, the British National party leader, stood in my seat of Keighley in 2005 and more than 5,000 people voted for him. In the same period, four councillors representing the BNP were elected. I have no doubt that immigration was one of the reasons why those people secured so many votes. It was a failure not only of the previous Government, to whom I will come in a minute, but of our party to challenge what was going on and to participate in the debate.

One of my previous roles was leader of Bradford council. The district owes much of its historic wealth to its migrant populace, which includes a huge German population, a huge Irish community and a massive east European community, as well as the Pakistani community that is dominant now. Each of those component migrant groups brought an immense wealth to our great city and district. One area is called Little Germany because of the huge work and wealth that the German migrant community and traders brought in. It has the finest architecture in the district. Although it is important that we have a conversation about migration and immigration, it is also important to contextualise some of the positive economic reasons why we need a balanced migration policy.

I will give the political response. When I was knocking on doors in my constituency before the general election, I saw a lack of confidence in our border controls. Many felt absolute despair that the previous Government had lost control of inward migration and could not even quantify the number of people coming in, which led to far right parties gaining more support. That was why it was important that I, as a more centrist member of the Conservative party, engaged with the issue. People wanted to hear sensible mainstream parties engaging.

I do not think the electorate sit there and try to differentiate between EU and non-EU. They see it as a migrant issue that we need to address. The Prime Minister spoke earlier this year about a cross-Government immigration system, and he picked up on a couple of issues. He talked about stopping a benefits system that people perceived as a soft touch and ensuring that the entitlement to public services was something that migrants earned, rather than had an absolute right to straight away, which is important. He also talked about cracking down on illegal working, and there was a significant amount of that in the district I represented. There is a grey economy that is unchecked and needs to be challenged.

As a consequence of the Conservative-led coalition, immigration has been checked and reduced by a third. That is a huge figure that will give many of my constituents confidence that we take the issue seriously. We are beginning to take control of migration and we are, with some more structural challenges, challenging the border control agency as well. The other points that the Prime Minister made were about cutting benefits for non-EU nationals after six months, which is important, and stopping the “something for nothing” social housing access.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) commented on health tourism, which we need to address. We get a significant number of people coming to our district with genuine health problems, and there is an issue with repeat prescriptions and people sending them back home. We need to understand and challenge that and, if we are going to offer that service, we need to charge for it, as other hon. Members have said. There is an issue that health professionals need to debate, because when someone arrives unconscious at A and E, they are not going to check their passport to see whether the person is eligible to be cared for. I would not want a system that did not ensure that people with that need were cared for first, before we started talking about their nationality.

We have robust and thoughtful immigration controls and management in this country. The politics of immigration should be led by the mainstream parties, not left to the far right.

[Mr George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Order. If the hon. Gentleman is making a general speech about immigration, he needs to relate it to the specific subject under debate, which is immigration from Bulgaria and Romania.

[Kris Hopkins]

Thank you, Mr Howarth. The next paragraph comes on to that very issue.

I am concerned that the Government manage the controls and the arrivals from Bulgaria and Romania. I am sure that the Minister will explain some of the interventions that he will put in place and give confidence to those who are worried. It is about managing expectations, not only of those in this country, but of those who may travel here.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) talked about the tone of these debates, which is important. There is a danger that the tone of the immigration debate, in particular on Romania and Bulgaria, will become increasingly ratcheted up in a race for crescendo, for the ideal hard-line rhetoric associated with immigration, but that would be self-defeating and, if we are not careful, it will play to the advantage of the far right. We want the right language and tone—as mentioned: factual arguments and a measured debate. People need to see that action is being delivered, that the control measures have been put in place and that we have managed borders. I believe that the Government are on the right track to addressing the many issues that Labour failed to address.

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[Stephen Barclay]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. In terms of veterinary science, I was not aware of that pertinent point. Of course, all Members welcome people with skills joining the UK economy and the benefits that they bring, but the specific point is about the speed with which officials are willing to react to the regulatory risks that arise—whether from a vet, a doctor or from others—and their willingness as part of the renegotiation to take on some of the sacred cows of EU law and what it is alleged that treaties require us to do.

I put on record my thanks to the Minister for the specific action that he is taking on the pull factors. A tremendous amount of work, on which he is leading, is being undertaken across Departments, and it is particularly important. The issue is often discussed through the prism of the British perspective. In common with my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), as a member of the Public Accounts Committee, I am concerned about the impact that much of that inward migration has on taxpayers—a burden is placed on the taxpayer, on our benefits system, or on our NHS, particularly from those who have not contributed.

The other reason why I think the Government’s action on pull factors is so important is that, often, the most vulnerable people in the community that I represent have been misled—they have been mis-sold too. A ruse that operates in an area such as Wisbech involves people being promised a job and accommodation if they come and work in the farming community. When they arrive, the gangmasters, who are often illegal, say, “This week, we only have work for two days, and next week, we only have work for three days. The week after, we only have one day.” What modest savings people might have are exhausted very quickly. The gangmasters will then lend them money, because it is very difficult for someone who perhaps has borrowed money from family members to face the embarrassment or even the immediate financial difficulty of going home. Therefore, these illegal gangmasters get people into the UK on a false promise, then abuse them by getting them into debt, and from there, they have control—“You must buy our counterfeit goods. You must come in the minibus and pay a high daily fee.”

What is scandalous is that many of the most vulnerable people in our community are affected. They are not voters, nor are they visible, and often, where they are subject to crime, it is not reported, so the police then have difficulty, saying “Should we take action and fund work on this? It is not reported crime.” I note that the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee is here, and I hope that he and his Committee might address the issue of known crime that is not reported and is affecting many of the most vulnerable, and how resources are used, because that is a tension in itself.

The pull factors are bringing people here who are then being abused. The debate is focused through a British prism—travelling to Bulgaria and Romania and telling people that they should not come here because they will not be eligible for some of the benefits that they think they might be is very much about defending the taxpayer. It is right and proper that we do that, but I put the case that such intervention is often in the interests of those who might be persuaded to come here, because they are misled into doing so and then are subject to the illegal gangmasters who abuse the process.

Although we welcome tighter action and controls within the scope of the law—I commend the Minister’s work on the pull factors—the main thrust of my remarks relates to those who are here. In a sense, that may be slightly counter-intuitive, because the Bulgarians and Romanians are not yet here, but we know that they will be. If one looks at what has happened so far, there has been a failure across agencies to take action on the abuses to which people are subject once they are here.

For that reason, I have been working closely, as the Minister will be aware, with the Home Secretary and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs on the multi-agency task force that we have now set up in the fens. The issues apply not only to Wisbech, which I represent, but to Boston and Peterborough, where my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough faces such problems, and to Spalding, King’s Lynn and other places across the fens. The issues are so often seen as urban, as city issues, when the concentration in certain rural communities is out of scale and out of proportion with the communities that are absorbing them. The work of the multi-agency task force is extremely important. It is at an early stage—I ask the Minister to meet me in a couple of months for us to review progress—but I would like to draw three specific points to his attention and that of Chamber.

The first relates to houses in multiple occupation. The automatic registering of HMOs only applies if there are three storeys. That may be an issue in London, but in the fens, most of the accommodation is not on three storeys. In one example, 22 people were living in a bungalow. The census just does not reflect that, and that then feeds into many of the issues about antisocial behaviour, because if lots of people are living in one house, where do they go? They tend to go and have a drink on the street. That upsets neighbours. It creates problems such as that of urinating in public places. It just is intimidating to many people to see gangs of people, even if they are acting lawfully.

In my view, there has been a failure by agencies to take on the issue of houses in multiple occupation. There has been a licence system more recently in Peterborough. We do not still have one in fenland; I believe that we should. This is not just an issue for London and other cities; it is an issue that is acute in North East Cambridgeshire, and the sums of money involved are not inconsiderable. Some hon. Members might think that the more people there are in a house, the less the landlord will get, but that is not the case. The going rate in Wisbech is £50 per person; the more they have in, the more they get.

Sometimes the landlord does not even know what is happening. Sometimes the landlord has rented the house to a couple of people and is living away and is not aware that it is being used as an HMO. Some of the letting agencies are breaking the law, because they are under a duty to conduct a review every six months, but they do not do so; and again, officials tend not to act. There is also an abuse in relation to council tax. There is an abuse in relation to the tax on that revenue that is being paid. However, Government tend to see this as a rural issue. It is a bit too far from the desks in Whitehall. There are not too many national journalists reporting it.

[Mr George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman is making a very interesting point and making it very fluently, but perhaps he could relate it back to Bulgaria and Romania.

[Stephen Barclay]

Mr Howarth, you bring me on to the crux of the point. We already have a concentration of HMOs in Wisbech and the fens. That situation will only become more acute when Bulgarian and Romanian people come into those areas. We know that there is already a concentration within certain communities that are ill equipped to deal with it. I welcome what the Minister is doing to try to prevent people from coming in and to persuade, in relation to the pull factors, those who are coming in with, perhaps, a misguided view. I would love him to be 100% successful, but we know that despite his best efforts there will be an inflow of people from those countries and we are still not taking action on the problem that is here now, so let us get on with it. Let us attack it now in order to ease the pressure when those from Bulgaria and Romania come in.

I come now to my second point. Many people from Bulgaria and Romania will come in with vehicles that are registered in their country. Under the law, they have six months in which they can drive on our roads before the vehicles have to be registered. The House may not be aware of how many people were prosecuted last year for not registering their vehicle after six months. It was zero—not one. The Government seem to be under the impression—I note this for the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee—that every single person from eastern Europe who came in under the previous accession registered their vehicle after six months and not one of them continued to drive on the roads without doing that. Surgery cases that frequently come before me suggest that that might not be the case in my constituency, and logic would suggest that it is not the case. My point is this. There are constraints on what we can do under EU law and what we can renegotiate, but in terms of Bulgarians and Romanians coming into the country, we can at least show their neighbours, the British people, that the laws have been applied equally to them, because if my constituents have to MOT, license and insure their car but they see a rickety vehicle that does not look roadworthy and that they strongly suspect is not registered and they see a Government who never take action to prosecute someone for that, that feeds into the sense of grievance that all are not being treated equally. That is an issue that the Government need to tackle ahead of further migration from Bulgaria and Romania. It is not a big point, but I make it for illustrative purposes.

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[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.

[Chris Bryant]

Exactly, and Bulgarians and Romanians will be grateful to have heard precisely that point.

Just because someone is concerned about the levels of or the pace of migration, does not make them a racist. There might be some people who want to engage in the debate who have prejudiced views, but the vast majority of ordinary decent people in this country who have expressed concern do so from a position of no prejudice at all but simply because they are worried about the society in which they live. Let us face it, because of the now different travelling opportunities around the world, many countries have had to face a complete change. Italy was always a country that sent people abroad, and now it has had Bulgarians and Romanians coming in in significant numbers. Greece is exactly the same. It invented the word diaspora for all the Greeks who had gone all around the world, but in the past 10 years it has been a country of immigration, not emigration, completely changing the concept of what it is to be Greek.

I used to be a curate in High Wycombe, and there was a very large community of Poles there, who had arrived during and after the second world war and had become an integral part of the community. Similarly, there are more people from St Vincent living in High Wycombe than there are in St Vincent itself. They were deliberately brought to the United Kingdom after the second world war because we did not have enough people to make the chairs and keep the economy growing in such places. I believe, therefore, that a hermetically sealed country would be a mistake, leaving aside the fact that many British people have always wanted to go elsewhere in the world to make their fortunes. One thing that extending the European Union should have done is give British business and British individuals a greater opportunity to make their way in the world, in other countries, and many of them have done so in Spain, France and Italy, and also in Bulgaria and Romania. I hope that British industry will seize the opportunity of Bulgaria and Romania as a means of making money and advancing British business.

I note that there was unanimous support for enlargement when the proposal came to the House of Commons in 2004. The right hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) is not in his place at the moment, but the one thing I would say to him is that he could have made the point in 2004 if he had really believed that the Government had completely and utterly got their figures on migration from eastern bloc countries wrong. He could have tabled an amendment to the Act that implemented the treaty to say that there should be further transitional controls. He could have made a speech about it. He could have argued that Bulgaria and Romania should not be allowed to join the European Union and he could have forced a vote on the treaty. But he did not—no one did. We have to bear in mind sometimes that hindsight is a political sin and not a political virtue.

I agree with the hon. Members who said that migration must be controlled and sustainable, because otherwise local communities simply cannot cope. It is about infrastructure, schools, the health service and so many different things. I willingly accept that Labour was wrong not to have put in place the transitional controls for the maximum period that was allowed under the treaty when the A8 countries joined the European Union. As probably one of the most ludicrously pro-European Members of the House, I would say that we were not pro-European enough. The irony was that while France, Germany, Italy and Spain were saying, “Polish people, Estonians and Latvians, you can come here to live but not to work until seven years are over,” we decided to go it alone, and that made the problem infinitely worse because there was only one place where people could go. Talk about a pull issue! That was almost a push issue. I willingly accept, therefore, that we got some things wrong.

It is worth bearing in mind what has happened in relation to Bulgarians and Romanians in member states that have removed transitional controls ahead of us. For instance, in Germany, the numbers went from 158,000 in 2009 to 272,000 in 2012. It is worth pointing out, of course, that Germany is now actively promoting immigration, because it believes it needs it. One of its Ministers recently said:

“While our population is ageing, we have a low birth rate. Currently, of the total population of 80 million in Germany, 41 million are employed. Over the next 15 years, we could lose about six million workers just for demographic reasons”.

The Germans therefore want to encourage more people to come to their country.

[Chris Bryant]

It is actively campaigning at the moment to encourage inward migration, and particularly skilled migrants. [Interruption.] I see the civil servant shaking his head, but we will doubtless hear from the Minister when he is inspired by his civil servant to correct me.

[Mr George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman is an experienced Member of the House, and he knows that he should not refer to those who are not within the confines of the Chamber.

[Chris Bryant]

My inexperience shows itself so frequently that it is a delight to have your experience in the Chair, Mr Howarth—[Interruption.] However, since you are talking to me while I am speaking, I cannot hear you. Spain removed the transitional controls much earlier and put some of them back in place in 2011. [Interruption.] I am so sorry; I am not sure where that comment came from, Mr Howarth. There are more than 1 million Bulgarians and Romanians in Spain, and similar numbers in Italy, which has also withdrawn the transitional controls.

It is important that we consider what drives where an EU migrant might go, although I might reach a slightly different conclusion from some others. Among the most likely things to decide what country an EU migrant, such as one from Bulgaria or Romania, goes to are, first, the law—whether they are allowed to migrate there—which explains the situation we have at the moment. Secondly, there are personal connections. If a person already knows somebody in a country, they are more likely to go there than to another country.

Thirdly, there is language. Several Members have referred to the fact that English is a key factor. Short of persuading Britons not to speak English any more, I am not quite sure what we can do about the fact that English has become the language of business around the world. However, it is also true that one reason many Bulgarians and Romanians have gone to Italy and Spain is that Italian and Spanish are still taught in schools in Bulgaria and Romania, and other Romance languages are a more easy fit; it is much easier for a Bulgarian or a Romanian to learn Italian or Spanish than English.

The fourth factor is where there is work; that is absolutely vital. That is why Germany is still the No. 1 destination for Bulgarians and Romanians. Interestingly, a couple of Members have referred to the “Newsnight” report coming out today and the different ways it has been reported. We could read the figures in many different ways, as hon. Members have, but one figure was quite interesting. When asked whether the benefits system would make a difference to the country they went to, 72% answered, “Not at all”, 8% said it would to a small extent, 5% said it would to a great extent and 3% said it would to a very great extent. We therefore need to be cautious about stating that the benefits system drives whether somebody comes to the United Kingdom, although, as several hon. Members have said, there is a significant difficulty with family benefits provided on a non-contributory basis. Those are tightly regulated by the EU, which is very keen to enforce its directives and case law. That is something we need to look at.

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[Chris Bryant]

I will not, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind, because we have to hear the Minister, and we do not have many Ministers—sorry, many minutes left. We have plenty of Ministers left, but not many minutes.

On unscrupulous employers, we know there are employers who will bring people from countries where labour is cheap, take exorbitant amounts from their wages for substandard accommodation and transport—their daily transport in the UK or their transport from another place in the EU—and still not even pay them the national minimum wage. Those workers are financially bound to their employers and feel they cannot complain, which is one of the problems we have with enforcing the national minimum wage. If there is one issue we could tackle that would most dramatically affect that situation, it is accommodation. Nobody should be living in substandard accommodation. Such a situation leads to the exploitation of workers who come here, and it unfairly undercuts workers here, who have no choice about how much their housing costs will be. The hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay) was absolutely right that we need to address the issue of houses in multiple occupation, but I think we should have a licensing system for all landlords. We should also extend gangmaster legislation to other areas of employment.

Finally, the national health service was created by British people for British people. It should, as the hon. Member for The Wrekin said, be primarily a national health service for those who have contributed. However, we have to have certain exceptions. Obviously, one is emergencies. Another is notifiable diseases; otherwise, we could have a real problem in some parts of the country with tuberculosis and other diseases. Thirdly, there is mental health. In London, in particular, there is a problem.

[Mr George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Order. I call the Minister.

[Chris Bryant]

I will finish there.