Immigration (Bulgaria and Romania)

Debate between Keith Vaz and Brooks Newmark

Thursday 19th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time today, Ms Dorries. I welcome the measured way in which the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) put his case. I congratulate him and the hon. Members for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley) and for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) on applying to the Backbench Business Committee for this debate. It is good to see so many people here in Westminster Hall on the day that the House rises, but what a pity it is that the debate is not being held in the Chamber itself, where we could have had an even longer and more detailed debate.

[Mr Newmark]

I respect the fact that the right hon. Gentleman is here, but I find it strange that an enormous amount of Conservative Members are here to discuss this important issue. I cannot believe that the issue is of concern only to those Members of Parliament who happen to be Conservatives or to their constituents. Surely there are Labour MPs with the same concerns, so why have they not joined him here today?

[Keith Vaz]

The remit of the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee does not extend to controlling the diaries of members of the parliamentary Labour party, but it is their loss: I think it is important that we should be here participating in this debate.

We should start by acknowledging the strong and important relations that we have with Bulgaria and Romania. I visited both countries while I was Minister for Europe, when we started the enlargement process. The ambassadors representing the two countries here are excellent, as are our ambassadors in Sofia and Bucharest; in particular, I want to acknowledge the way in which Martin Harris, our ambassador in Bucharest, is ensuring that good relations between our two countries are fostered even at this challenging time.

The Home Affairs Committee has been looking at the issue of the transitional restrictions for a number of years and has made a number of recommendations. Earlier this year, with the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless), who is currently sitting on my right, and the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison), I went to Bucharest to meet members of the Romanian Government and to talk with members of the Romanian community. If there are regrets—I have a few regrets in my speech—my primary regret is that the Immigration Minister and the Home Secretary have not taken the opportunity over the past year to go to Romania and Bulgaria and engage with those Governments. We talk about push and pull factors—why it is people decide to travel all the way from Bucharest or Sofia to live in Leicester, London or Manchester—and we should have worked with other Governments to find out the problems and look at the issues.

For example, in response to the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen), the hon. Member for Amber Valley referred to the number of talented people leaving Romania and Bulgaria. When we were in Bucharest, we spoke with the president of the Romanian equivalent of the British Medical Association. He lamented the fact that so many talented young Romanian doctors had decided to leave Romania to work in the United Kingdom and in other countries—on average they trebled or even quadrupled their salaries when they came to our countries—which was having a detrimental effect on Romania and Bulgaria. That is why I wish that the Home Secretary and the Immigration Minister had visited, because they would have been able to establish a dialogue and try to see what we could have done to help those countries.

One way in which we could have helped was in respect of the huge amount of money that was allocated to Romania when it joined the European Union. It may surprise Members to note that 87% of the £20 billion that was given to Romania in pre-accession funds have still not been accessed, because sufficient assistance is not being given to the Romanian Government to ensure that they get the funds. If those funds were accessed, the jobs that people seek to find here might have been made available in those countries. Across the House, we all support the enlargement of the European Union; I cannot remember an occasion in the past 26 years when any party has voted against enlargement. We allow countries to join the European Union, but then we leave them on their own. Our Ministers should have engaged more—under the previous Government and under this Government—to ensure that there was proper access to those funds.

The big question that remains unanswered is why we still do not have estimates of how many people will come here next year. On 21 October 2008, the then shadow Immigration Minister, the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green), said that one of the greatest failures of the last Government was the failure to predict the consequences of enlargement in 2004. Given that, research should have been conducted so that we would be aware—at least have estimates—of the numbers that would be coming into this country. For the reasons outlined by the hon. Member for Amber Valley—the pressure on housing, on schools and on the health service—if we had even estimates it would be helpful. When we went to Bucharest, we came across a university that had conducted research and had produced estimates. It is very remiss of this Government not to have done the same.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz]

The only thing that I can say to the hon. Gentleman is that he should come and join us. If he thinks for one moment that the media will turn up at 7.40 am after the biggest party of the year—31 December —he will be very surprised. I do not expect that any of them will be there, but the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood and I, who are not big partygoers and who both abstain from the usual parties on new year’s eve, will be there.

However, the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) makes a more valid point, in that people are already here. Of course they are, and therefore, if they are already here, we should also be considering what is happening to those people. At the end of the day, 1 January is the critical time. That is when the restrictions are to be removed.

[Mr Newmark]

I have been listening carefully to what the right hon. Gentleman is saying, and I am still not sure of his direction of travel, if I may say that. I am not sure whether he is saying that Romanians and Bulgarians will suddenly buy tickets to get on a plane to come here and live off our exceedingly generous benefits system, and if so, we have heard what the Government are doing, which is to put far greater restrictions on the ability of those to come here, before they can claim benefits or even housing or anything like that—the Government are trying to deal with that issue; the longest period of time that somebody can claim will be six months, and they have to wait three months—or is he saying that they are coming here because there are lots of jobs?