Immigration (Bulgaria and Romania)

Mark Harper Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Keith Vaz]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman; he is absolutely right. That is why we wanted the Migration Advisory Committee to assist.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

On that specific point, we asked the Migration Advisory Committee in 2011 the question about the labour market, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) referred. In its response, the committee stated:

“It would not be sensible, or helpful to policy makers, for us to attempt to put a precise numerical range around this likely impact.”

That was the advice it gave us, and that was the advice we followed.

[Keith Vaz]

I say to the Minister, for whom I have enormous respect—he is a hard-working and fair Immigration Minister, and I have seen quite a few in my time—he has obviously not had the time to read the evidence of Sir David Metcalf. I specifically asked him that question after it was also raised by others, and he said:

“we have never been tasked to make estimates of the numbers coming from Romania and Bulgaria.”

He said that last week. The Minister has quoted something from 2011, but frankly the chairman himself has not been asked yet.

[Mr Harper]

David Metcalf was right in what he said, and I have read the transcript. The point is that he and his committee said that asking them to do that work would not be sensible or helpful because of the uncertainty, so it seemed pointless to ask them, because they had replied to the point when we commissioned them in 2011.

[Keith Vaz]

That may be so, but that is not what he said to us last week. Perhaps the Government, because of the importance of the issue, should have kept in regular touch with Sir David Metcalf. If they had done so, perhaps he would have updated what he said in 2011.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hollobone]

I welcome the intervention from the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), not least because, as always, she knows what she is talking about. She is a proud champion of the concerns of her constituents, who will be rightly concerned about that issue.

[Mr Harper]

Given that two hon. Members have raised the question, and given that my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) takes part in crime fighting directly, I think it would be helpful to give an answer. The order I signed and laid before the House on 6 December, which I will set out in more detail later, enables us to remove from the UK people who are not here to exercise treaty rights—those committing low-level, but damaging crimes, begging and sleeping rough—and importantly stop them from coming straight back again, unless they are coming to exercise those rights. That is an important power and change that goes some way to addressing the concerns of my hon. Friend and the hon. Lady.

[Mr Hollobone]

It does indeed go some way, and I am grateful for it, but sadly the changes do not go far enough. Those people can be sent back under the order he mentions to their country of origin, but in a certain amount of time, they can come back to our shores. I have a private Member’s Bill on the Order Paper that would ban foreign nationals who commit an offence in this country from ever returning to our shores. I think that measure would enjoy popular support.

The scale of this crime wave is really quite startling. Romanians are seven times more likely to be arrested in London than British nationals; Romanians account for more than 11% of all foreign offenders in the UK, despite currently making up just a tiny proportion of foreign residents here; and last year Romanians accounted for almost half of all arrests for begging and a third of arrests for pick-pocketing in the capital. I declare in my interests that I am a special constable with the British Transport police on the London underground, and I can say that eight out of 10 pick-pockets are from Romania. So the whole thing is completely out of control and the Romanian authorities need to provide the British police with information about the Romanian criminals that they know are in this country far more quickly than they are currently providing it.

The background to all this is that we are a crowded island. What the British people object to is not the nationality of someone coming to our shores, the colour of their skin or the language that they speak. What my constituents object to—what the British people object to—is the numbers coming to our shores, with which our crowded isle cannot cope.

We are now told that, according to official Government statistics, some 43% of new housing requirements are because of immigration. Immigration is driving up our population to unsustainable levels, and we have a population boom that is fuelled by EU migration. Indeed, Polish immigration has contributed almost half of the UK’s recent population growth. Half of all foreign-born residents currently in the UK have come here since 2001. From 2001, the number of foreign-born residents rose by almost 3 million, and yet in the 50 years beforehand only 2.7 million people arrived in the UK from abroad. There has been more immigration to our shores since 1950 than there was in all the time between 1066 and 1950. We are one of the most densely crowded countries in the European Union.

The vast majority of people who have come here in recent times have come from Poland. Poles are now the second largest group of foreign-born nationals in the UK, with only Indians having a larger presence. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that in 2011 there were 7.5 million non-UK-born residents in the country—13% of the population—and it is migration that has contributed to just less than half of that population change in the last 60 years. The non-UK-born population has almost quadrupled since 1951, from 4.3% of the population to 13.4%. My contention is that our crowded island cannot cope with this level of population increase, because our population is set to rise, according to official statistics from the ONS, by 9.6 million people by 2037, reaching a total of 73.3 million people, a level of population that our country has never had to cope with before.

Unless we close the door to immigration from EU states, my contention—on behalf of my constituents—is that our country will struggle to cope, and not just in our capital city or our other big metropolitan areas but in semi-rural areas, such as my constituency of Kettering, where the number of houses is set to increase by a third within the next 25 years.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Ruffley]

Indeed. I am reminded of Cecil Rhodes’s comment that to be born a free-born Englishman was to have won first prize in the lottery of life. English as the world language is obviously the reason why so many migrants want to come from within and outside the EU, and attend language schools in this country. My hon. Friend is correct in suspecting that London will be a huge magnet for Romanians and Bulgarians. There are perfectly understandable reasons for them to want to come to this country, and many will no doubt want to work hard. Perhaps some will take jobs illegally under the minimum wage level of £6 an hour. We do not criticise those individuals who want a better life; we merely suggest that what I have outlined is a luxury that the country cannot afford, now or in the future.

[Mr Harper]

On the argument about where people might go, my hon. Friend considered the facts regarding the number of Romanians and Bulgarians who are already here, but let us look at the other countries mentioned. Italy did not have transitional controls, and there are 1 million Romanians and Bulgarians there. Spain and Germany did, and 500,000 Romanians and Bulgarians went to Germany and 1 million to Spain. I do not say that that is conclusive, but it may be one aspect of what was meant when it was suggested that there is a range of options for Romanians and Bulgarians besides coming to the United Kingdom.

[Mr Ruffley]

One could argue that in Germany and the other countries my hon. Friend mentioned, job vacancies for Romanians and Bulgarians are perhaps pretty much full up now, and they may want to try their luck in the United Kingdom, where, if they do their research, they will understand there are many job vacancies that remain unfilled, despite the economic recovery, and that there could be rich job pickings. However, I do not think that the argument can be made conclusively either way.

I am getting rather tired with the argument that all immigration to this country is by definition good, in economic terms. First, I pray in aid a 2008 report of the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, which made the point that total output can be driven up by increasing the number of people in the country. The greater the population, the greater the economic growth. That is an economic truism that no one disputes. However, the Committee also said that that was beside the point. What matters is not GDP, but GDP per capita. A much larger population, generating a higher total output, means there is a bigger cake; but there are also more people who want a slice of it.

The key point, which the Home Secretary and her Ministers have identified, is that this is not just about getting bodies into the country to generate more economic growth; it is about getting the right people in, with the skills and specialisms that we need. That, almost by definition, means small numbers of immigrants, who will meet a high-skill, high-value-added specification—not tens or even hundreds of thousands, as there were in the case of Poland and other accession countries in 2004. I fear that what happened then will also happen with Romania and Bulgaria.

If anyone is thinking of references for the debate, many arguments have recently been made about work by University college London that argues that immigrants contribute more in tax than they ever take in benefit. I do not have time to say why that work is grossly inadequate. Another grossly inadequate body, in my view, is the Office for Budget Responsibility, which in the past six months has blithely said that, unless this country has 7 million more immigrants between now and 2050, we will not cut our deficit and our national debt. Those figures are “Through the Looking Glass” stuff. I repeat again that the current Home Office Ministers understand that truth, but they are not able to say that they have made it tougher for EU migrants to come here, as they have with non-EU migrants. As a result of the EU treaties, Ministers have not been able to impose such welcome discipline on the number of EU migrants coming into this country.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) talked about the polarity—which he helped to set up, if he will allow me to say so—between little Englanders and free traders. I like to think that I am a free trader, and I want to run the Prime Minister’s global race, as I am sure we all do. I can hardly wait to run that race. As a free-market, right-of-centre—nay, right-wing—Conservative, I believe in free trade and Britain facing outwards to the world, but we should still understand that the best way to earn our way in the world is not to open our doors willy-nilly to an undifferentiated mass of workers from other countries, when we have no way of sifting to see what skills they have and how highly specialised those skills are. We can do that for workers from the rest of the world, but we cannot do it for workers from the EU.

Over the past year, as we all know, the British economy has begun to recover, thanks to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his tenacity in sticking to his economic project. Private sector employment is now at an all-time high. In the past, as the number of job vacancies increased, the response from employers in this country would have been to increase wages to attract the best workers. When the economy grew, wages grew. That is a fairly uncontroversial proposition, but that link seems to have been broken in the current recovery. The number of people in employment has increased, but real wage growth has been flat.

With gross migration to this country running at some 500,000 a year, and with many of those migrants coming from low-income countries, there is not much incentive for employers to increase wages. In 2004, when the Labour Government lifted the restriction on Polish and other eastern European workers coming into this country, the average wage in Poland was just 42% of the average wage in the UK. If a Polish plumber could more than double his salary by coming over to fit bathrooms in Wellingborough rather than Warsaw, who could blame him for jumping on the next easyJet flight? Good luck to him.

Although some think that lifting restrictions on Bulgarians and Romanians will somehow produce a different outcome, we should bear in mind the following facts, which have been alluded to in earlier contributions. Average wages in Bulgaria and Romania are currently 31% and 34% of average wages in the UK respectively. That is even lower, relative to the UK, than Polish wages were in 2004.

Wage levels in the UK have been fairly flat recently, but since 2004, wages paid to workers in so-called elementary occupations, such as manual labourers and cleaners, have declined by 8%. Wages have not been flat. At the very lowest end, we have seen a very large fall in wages. Cleaning jobs and labouring jobs are hard, difficult and often monotonous work, but they are the sorts of jobs that many immigrants drift towards, at least when they first arrive in a country and need a job fast. Many immigrants have a strong work ethic. It is not surprising that several academic studies in many countries have found a close link, over time, between the scale of migration to a developed country such as ours and the wages of less-skilled workers. Those wages go down or stay flat.

If the restrictions are lifted—and it looks as if they will be—and there is an influx into this country of an indeterminate number of Bulgarians and Romanians, jobs in the elementary occupations might be paid at below the legal minimum wage. Why might that be? Paying below the minimum wage is, of course, illegal, but it is certainly anecdotally true that many immigrants do not have a tendency to inform the authorities that they are receiving £3 or £4 an hour, rather than the £6-plus that is the legal minimum in this country.

The problem of British workers being undercut by EU workers—in this case Bulgarians and Romanians—who are willing to accept extremely low wages, sometimes perhaps illegally low wages, may get worse in the coming year. This statistic has been mentioned before, but it bears repeating: the legal minimum wage in both Romania and Bulgaria is under 80p an hour; in the UK it is well over £6 an hour, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough recited. One factor that we all know, and which has also been referred to, is that British workers do not want low-paid jobs. We hear all the time that young people do not want to take jobs in domiciliary care, nursing homes and so on. Suffice it to say that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is doing excellent work in reforming the benefit system, but there is more to do.

We cannot say yet that the welfare reforms have been a success. As Andrew Green, the chairman of Migration Watch UK, reminds us, it is inexcusable for British employers not to give British workers a level playing field on recruitment. The key point is that, with 1 million young people not in employment or training, it is imperative that they are given a chance to get on the work ladder. The route to proper employment has to start somewhere, and 1 million young people in our country are not doing anything at all. It is fairly inevitable that the influx of Bulgarians and Romanians will crowd out the opportunities for young people to move off benefits and into productive work.

I will close my remarks by saying that we may have lost the argument on lifting the controls, but I hope that this debate, and the further debates that I trust we will have in 2014, will move on to new territory. That territory must include the views attributed to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, who I understand has floated a cap on EU migrants to this country of 75,000. EU migrants to this country should be blocked from claiming benefits not just for three months, but for three years or more. Finally, freedom of movement from poorer countries should be restricted, and we should insist that such movement may happen only when the GDP of those countries has reached 75% of the UK’s GDP. I hope that those of us here today, and those who support my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley, will press the Prime Minister to put such radical reform of freedom of movement at the very top of his list of renegotiation items when he comes to renegotiate this country’s future as it relates to the European Union.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) and I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) on securing the debate.

I was elected to this Parliament on the basis of a promise to cut immigration from hundreds of thousands a year to no more than tens of thousands a year. Many of my constituents voted for me on that basis. They had had enough of a Labour Government who oversaw uncontrolled immigration for year after year after year, and they wanted to see immigration cut. As a Member of this place and of the Select Committee on Home Affairs—I am delighted to have its Chair, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), next to me—I have found that whenever we hold an inquiry into immigration all manner of people want to come in to tell us why there should be more immigrants for their particular vested interest, but hardly anyone, except Migration Watch UK, which is a superb, independent and thoroughly respected think tank, will put the counter-argument—

[Mr Harper]

And the Minister.

[Mark Reckless]

And of course the Minister, and his predecessor from Kent, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), who also put forward that case.

Although the Government have taken a lot of action on immigration, much of which is in the detail of what has been done—I credit both Ministers for their work in that area—I am concerned that in several key areas we have relaxed what we should have done and perhaps originally intended to do. One such area was the number of people whom we allow in on inter-company transfers. When the Prime Minister went to India, he came under pressure, from Liberal Democrats and the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, to put in place this loophole whereby people with incomes of down to the £24,000 or £30,000 level are allowed to come in for a certain period but then leave, and other people come in and also earn below the proper cap for inter-company transfers. That has put people in the IT industry in particular under intense pressure in terms of holding down wages in that sector and, I fear, has also increased the number of people in the country.

Another area is post-study work, which expanded under the Labour Government. As far as I can see, anyone can come here and do any course, and then stay on and work afterwards, or indeed while they are doing the course, with few if any questions asked. I was delighted when the Home Office said that it would get rid of that, but unfortunately it was then watered down under pressure from universities and, as ever, the Liberal Democrats. I would love to hear from the Minister whether they signed up to that policy, and whether it is a Government policy.

We then said that anyone who comes here and gets a degree from a university can stay on and work. We are subsidising our university sector through our immigration policy. The Government go on as though everyone else does it, but they do not. I studied in America, and it is difficult to stay on there afterwards. I think only Australia has a more obviously generous system than we do. Our universities should compete on the basis of their academic excellence, not on the basis of “If you come and study with us rather than with some other competitor, you’ll be able to stay on and work in the British labour market, and potentially stay on for ever thereafter.” The fact that we have allowed that loophole makes net migration higher than it otherwise would be, and we are further from hitting our target.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) said that we have cut net migration by more than a third. I am afraid that his figures are significantly out of date, if indeed they had a solid basis when produced. He referred to a couple of weeks ago, “on Third Reading of the Immigration Bill”, which he may be aware has not actually happened yet.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hanson]

That would be valuable. We have to have some positive dialogue. Statements have been made in the Chamber today that paint a picture of people from Bulgaria and Romania in one particular category—not all individuals are in the categories referred to today by some hon. Members. We need to look at what measures we can put in place before 31 December, including those the Opposition have suggested in response to the issue.

Members have mentioned a number of issues. There is potentially downward pressure on wages, because of people being undercut. There are recruitment agencies recruiting solely from eastern Europe, which was mentioned again by the hon. Members for Rochester and Strood and for Christchurch (Mr Chope). There are pressures on certain economic markets run by gangmasters with minimum wage, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley); people are coming to this country because they believe that a £4 or £5 an hour wage packet is better than a £2 an hour equivalent wage packet in their home country. Whatever happens on 31 December and whatever numbers of individuals come to the United Kingdom, I therefore want to see a real focus by the Government on enforcement of the minimum wage as a starting point. We need to put some effort in, not only through Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, but by looking at the possibility of giving local authorities the power to enforce the minimum wage, so that we can have greater enforcement, potentially stopping the undercutting of wages that the hon. Gentleman and others have referred to.

We need to look at enforcement of the Equality Act 2010. The hon. Member for Christchurch mentioned recruitment from eastern Europe. It is illegal to recruit individuals based on their race or nationality under that Act, but it is not widely enforced. I have discussed that with the Minister and he has agreed to look at it and refer it to the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

[Mr Harper]

I have done so.

[Mr Hanson]

I am glad the Minister has done that, because I recently gave chapter and verse in the Immigration Bill Committee on a number of recruitment agencies that are recruiting to fill positions in the United Kingdom solely with people from abroad.

We need to take greater action on the enforcement of housing regulations. Only yesterday, I was pleased to see the Prime Minister—again, I give credit when it is due—visiting a raid on a beds-in-sheds encampment in Southall. One aspect of immigration that greatly upsets my constituents in north Wales is when individuals share properties in squalid conditions and so are able to undercut wages locally, because the low standard of their accommodation means they do not have the outgoings that other people have. We also wish to look at extending legislation on gangmasters. It is perfectly reasonable to put controls in and extend gangmaster legislation to sectors to which it does not apply at the moment, such as catering and tourism.

There is action that we can take, but—and this is not intended to provoke a political fight—I genuinely do not think that the approach that some hon. Members are taking, of arguing that the transitional controls should be extended beyond 31 December, is the right one: we know, as do they, that that is a matter for treaty negotiation. Nor do I think, speaking with genuine humility, that the approach of withdrawal from the European Union is one that I can support. The European Union provides significant investments to constituencies such as mine. It also provides significant employment and a proper standard of working conditions across the board.

Furthermore, although this might not be a common thought at the moment, just under 100 years ago my grandfather was fighting Germans, Romanians and Bulgarians in the trenches and Turks in the middle east. But now, we have not had a world war for a generation and there is a stability that would surprise my grandfather if he were alive today. People from Germany, Romania, Bulgaria and Britain now sit in the same chamber to discuss issues of common economic and social interest whereas in his generation Europe was at war. That view of the European Union and the potential of a strong future Europe might not be a common one, but it is one that I hold passionately.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Benton. I agree with the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) that the blend of you and Ms Dorries could not have been bettered. I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), and for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley), who collectively made a bid to the Backbench Business Committee for the debate.

I will not spend a great deal of time being partisan—that is not my natural way—but I want to make a couple of points. Part of the reason for the concern that our constituents have—a number of hon. Members touched on this—is the record of the previous Government, and the fact that they did not put transitional controls in place for the previous accession of new EU member states. Of course, the important thing was not just that we did not have them, but that we were the only significant country that did not have them. That was the reason for the very significant influx then, and that is a different position from the one that we face now.

My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering tried to get the right hon. Member for Delyn to say sorry, but it is, of course, the hardest word, and he could not quite bring himself to say it. Interestingly, the Opposition have never said that they accept that they made any mistake on non-EU immigration. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) said, that was twice as large—twice as many people came from outside the EU—and it was completely controllable, as there were no issues about free movement. The Labour Government also messed that up, but not only have we heard no apology for that, we have not even heard an acknowledgement that it was a mistake. Perhaps in due course that statement will arrive; we wait with bated breath.

The other thing that we have been criticised for is not taking action previously. The shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), has criticised us for not having made changes to the benefits system. It slipped my mind during our debate on this topic last week, but she was the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in the previous Administration. I am sure that the right hon. Member for Delyn will leap up and correct me if I am wrong, but I do not recall either of them acknowledging at any point, while he was at the Home Office or she was the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, that there was a problem with benefits for immigrants; nor, frankly, do I recall them doing anything about it. We are being criticised by the Opposition for not having taken any steps when our Immigration Bill is before the House and we have laid out steps in secondary legislation to deal with people’s concerns; that is a little bit on the rich side, but we will not be spending too much time on that.

I am sure that you will be pleased to hear, Mr Benton, that I will not spend too much time on the bigger issue of our membership of the European Union.

[Mr Bone]

Go on!

[Mr Harper]

Tempting though I find the invitation from my hon. Friend to say more, I will just observe this: we were not, as we have discovered, blessed by the presence of any Liberal Democrats in this debate, but I note that there were only two Labour Back Benchers here—sadly, neither is here now. Interestingly, both support a referendum on our membership of the EU, and both attended the House on a Friday to support the excellent European Union (Referendum) Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton). The right hon. Member for Delyn is a little isolated: the only Labour Members who were here today, aside from him, are in favour of a referendum on our EU membership, want us to renegotiate that membership, and were willing to vote for that excellent Bill. Perhaps he should reflect on that and think about whether it might be more sensible for the Labour party to change its official position to support the Prime Minister when he leads that renegotiation after we win the general election with a Conservative majority Government, and then support us when we put that new position to the people.

I will say a few words on our record. We have reduced net migration. I will act as referee between my hon. Friends the Members for Bournemouth East, and for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless): net migration is down by nearly a third since its peak. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood was right about the latest figures, but what my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East said was correct before those came out. The reduction is now nearly a third, rather than over a third. Non-European economic area migration is at its lowest level for 14 years, and is back to the level that it was at when we were last in power by ourselves. That is significant progress.

[Mark Reckless]

I was talking about the last year under the previous Government, rather than the peak. Is the Minister concerned by the increase in visa applications? They had gone down to 500,000 a quarter in the first half of the year, but are now up to about 530,00 for the third quarter.

[Mr Harper]

It depends on the sort of visa applications. Some people coming to Britain do not count as immigrants, because they are not here for a long enough period of time. I will have to check the information, but my understanding is that our visa numbers suggest that the downward trend on non-EU migration will continue, based on our reforms. It is right to say—this goes to the heart of the debate—that the reason for the increase in the last set of figures was an increase in migration from the European Union, but not from eastern Europe. Interestingly, it was from the more traditional countries—the western European countries, with which there is not a massive disparity in GDP, although our economy has been rather more successful than theirs in creating jobs.

My hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley made a key point about employment. We might disagree about the solution, but his concern is well placed. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East made this point strongly, too. Between 2003 and 2008, when the economy was growing under the previous Government, more than 90% of employment growth was accounted for by foreign nationals. Yes, the economy was growing under Labour, but the benefit was largely going to people who were not UK citizens—not the people for whom we all work. We have made a difference. Since the Government came to power, our immigration and welfare reforms have made it more worth while for British citizens to be in work.

Our skills agenda, more rigorous education and more apprenticeships are helping to make a difference. Since the second quarter of 2010, there has been a 1.1 million net increase in employment, and more than three quarters of that rise in employment has been accounted for by UK nationals, so the employment growth that we have seen since we came to power has largely benefited UK citizens, which is a significant turnaround. It is exactly what we wanted to achieve, and it is being achieved not only by the Home Office, but by our policies on immigration, on welfare, and on apprenticeships, training and education, which are all aligned and delivering the same outcome. That is significant, and it means that hundreds of thousands of families in Britain today have somebody in employment; they would not have had somebody in employment if the policies followed by the Labour had continued. That is welcome, and it is something of which we can be proud.

We are still committed to bringing down net migration. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood referred to the Prime Minister’s remarks. Just to be clear, he was drawing attention to the difficulty of the task, particularly given the problems in some of our western and southern European neighbours’ economies. In the interview, he reasserted the importance of delivering on our policy; he was simply drawing attention to the fact that it is a little more difficult than we had first thought, because of the difficulty in the European economies, but we are absolutely still committed to the policy.

It is worth putting the numbers in context. It is still the case with our reforms that, even having driven down migration from outside the European Union, 48% of immigration to Britain is from outside the EU, compared to 36% from the EU; the remainder are British citizens who have been overseas for more than a year and are returning to the United Kingdom. We should remember that many British citizens go to other European countries. According to the 2010 figures, there were 2.2 million EU nationals in the UK and 1.4 million Brits in EU countries. Interestingly, only five European Union countries have more than 100,000 citizens in the United Kingdom, and it is not the ones people might think: France, Germany, Ireland, Italy and Poland. In the case of Ireland, there are historical reasons not connected to the EU. Poland is the only non-traditional country that has a significant number, which is 500,000.

If we balance the figures with the countries in which our citizens live, there are only two European Union countries where the net number of EU citizens in the United Kingdom is more than 100,000. There are 145,000 more Germans living in Britain than vice versa, and Poland has a significant number—519,000 more. Of course, Spain is the opposite way round: there are 750,000 more Brits living in Spain. It is worth putting that in context, so that we can have the rational, sensible debate that the right hon. Member for Delyn talked about.

Turning to the specific points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley, and to his new clause to the Immigration Bill, it is worth remembering—I agree with the right hon. Member for Delyn on this point—that for that Bill to take effect, it has to go through our House and the other place. Whether we had debated the new clause this side of Christmas or the other side of Christmas, it would have made no difference, because the measure cannot become law until the Bill progresses through Parliament, and that is not likely to happen until towards the end of this Session. As the Leader of the House has said, the legislative agenda is quite packed. Only yesterday, five or six Acts of Parliament got Royal Assent, and—this is rather above my pay grade, so I have to be very careful, because the usual channels are in the room—the business will be scheduled in due course, but it will not make a difference to when the measure becomes law.

I fear that the right hon. Member for Delyn is right: the previous Government signed the accession treaties and we supported them. Of course I am not pretending that we did not support them. The treaty came into effect in 2007, and the seven-year transitional controls expire at the end of the year. It is worth being careful about language. We are not lifting them; they expire. They cease to have any legal effect, because of the terms of the accession treaties. I am not doing anything to lift them; they simply become legally ineffective at the end of the year, because of the provisions.

[Mr Bone]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Mr Harper]

If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I am trying to cover the points made in the debate. I have listened to the debate, and I only have three and a half minutes to try to cover the other points that people have raised.

Unlike the previous Government, who chose not to apply controls, we have extended them to the maximum length possible, so I feel that the strategy of my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley is not going to work. Although it is perfectly reasonable for colleagues to have concerns, I hope that they will have seen—of course, I knew these things were in the pipeline when we debated them in Committee, which, obviously, my hon. Friend did not—the order that I signed a couple of weeks ago, which puts in place tough rules about limiting jobseeker’s allowance to six months. It puts in place the controls that I talked about in response to points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering and the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey).

We will be able to remove, and stop returning to Britain, people who are here not exercising their treaty rights—who are here begging, rough sleeping and engaged in criminality. If Members look at some of those tough changes, they will see that they address things that our constituents are concerned about, so I urge Members who have signed the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley, and those who have not done so, to look at the changes that we have brought forward. I think that they will see that they address many of their concerns.

My right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have laid out their thinking about the discussions we need to have on the new accession countries and free movement generally. We can have that negotiation only when there is a new Government. We are constrained by the coalition with our Liberal Democrat colleagues. The renegotiation strategy is not the current Government’s policy, but it is the Conservative party’s policy, which we will put before the people at the election.

The final point is that we should remember that the transitional controls are about employment. A significant number of people—102,000 Romanians and 53,000 Bulgarians—are already here, according to the Office for National Statistics. They are working, or are self-employed, self-sufficient or studying. They are already in Britain. As one or two hon. Members suggested, some people already here might not entirely be doing what they purport to be doing. They might be working. We might find that they regularise their status in the new year. The point is that the controls are about whether people can work, not whether they can come to Britain. People can come to Britain for three months, but they can stay only if they are exercising treaty rights. We have given ourselves the power to remove people if they are here not exercising treaty rights—not working, studying or being self-sufficient—and we can stop them coming back to the UK to cause damage.

We want people who come here to work, contribute and pay taxes. The legislative changes that we will make with the Immigration Bill, and that we have made in secondary legislation, address the concerns. I urge hon. Members to study the changes. If they do so, they will be reassured that the Government are taking the tough action that our constituents want. We have a good story to tell our constituents.

Question put and agreed to.