Immigration (Bulgaria and Romania)

Mark Reckless Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hollobone]

That may well be right. I am sure my hon. Friend agrees that in a debate on a subject of such importance, some Liberal Democrat Members should have been present, not only to tell us their views but to listen to those of other Members of Parliament. Parliament is here to debate such issues, whether we agree with each other or not. By not turning up at all, Liberal Democrats are effectively refusing to engage with this important question.

Let me put my cards firmly on the table. I am not a supporter of our membership of the European Union. I believe that we should leave, and I support the Conservative party’s call for a referendum to give my constituents and others across the land their say about whether we should remain members. It represented a catastrophic loss of confidence in the nation’s future in the 1960s and 1970s that we decided to join the then Common Market, which mutated into the European Economic Community, the European Community and finally the European Union.

An individual would have to be in at least their mid-50s to have been able to take part in the referendum in 1975 on whether we should remain members, so a whole generation of the British public have never had their say on the matter. I am four-square behind the Conservative party manifesto promise to give the British people a say in 2017 on whether we should stay in or get out. I will vote to leave. I do not believe that renegotiation will work. I am not entirely convinced that Her Majesty’s Government will take the renegotiation as seriously as they should, but more or less nothing that could be achieved in the renegotiation would convince me that Britain was better off in the European Union. One reason for that is the cost; our annual membership fee is £10 billion and rising. Over the course of the coalition Government’s term, our total membership subscription will be almost twice what it was under the final term of the previous Labour Government. Our membership fee is simply too expensive. The other big reason why I will vote to leave is the reason we are here today.

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

Before my hon. Friend moves on to that point, he expressed a certain scepticism about the renegotiation. Is it his understanding that that renegotiation is happening now, or will it not even start until 2015?

[Mr Hollobone]

My understanding is that the renegotiation has not started. The Government are undertaking a balance of competences review—a ridiculous name that nobody understands the meaning of—and are coming up with a list of items on which we will apparently renegotiate the terms of our membership. As far as I can tell, no chief negotiator has been appointed and renegotiation is not a Government policy but a Conservative party ambition.

The Liberal Democrats and the Labour party are doing their best to frustrate the private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton), which promotes an EU referendum. I am not entirely convinced, because no member of the Government has yet clarified this, whether if that Bill were to succeed in the other place and become an Act, it would form part of Government policy. We wait to hear from the Liberal Democrats on that.

[Mark Reckless]

Can my hon. Friend help me in a related area? Is the target of cutting immigration from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands Government policy, or is it merely an aspiration of our party because the Lib Dems do not agree?

[Mr Hollobone]

I would welcome clarification from the Minister on that point, as would my hon. Friend. I welcome the Conservative party approach to cutting immigration, but I do not think it goes far enough. If I get to that part of my speech, I want to demonstrate why I do not think that aim can be achieved, not least because of our lifting of the restrictions on Romanian and Bulgarian immigration. I am as sceptical as my hon. Friend about the way in which Conservative members of the Government, or the Government as a whole, may or may not start to renegotiate the terms of our membership of the European Union. I welcome the opportunity that I hope my constituents will have in 2017, under a majority Conservative Government, to have a say in a referendum.

The previous Labour Government’s lifting of the restrictions on immigration from the A8 eastern European countries was a catastrophic mistake. I would welcome a clear and frank apology from the shadow Minister, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), for that huge “spectacular mistake”—the words of the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw). Under the leadership of the Labour party, the Home Office estimated a maximum net inflow from the A8 nations of 13,000 a year through to 2010. In the end, the total is one million and rising. Her Majesty’s Government under the coalition have declined to estimate the numbers at all, lest they make a similar error. That is not good enough. They should have at least tried to commission some research to have some feel of the number who might come to our shores, not least because local authorities, schools, hospitals and police services need to know the potential impact of immigration on their communities.

The only helpful estimate we have is provided by Migration Watch, which I think everyone agrees has a tremendous reputation on immigration matters.

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[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to work under your chairmanship today, Ms Dorries.

I am delighted to participate in this important debate. It has been very interesting so far and I very much look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in response to many of the points that have been made. However, a myth can be halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on, so I welcome the opportunity this debate gives to add some facts and figures, and indeed corrections, to some of the quite barmy assumptions that have been made in the wider debate—not necessarily here today—that then get repeated and seem to gain credence.

I wish to challenge a couple of the points that have been made already today. My hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell), who is no longer in his place, suggested that we should adopt Switzerland’s immigration policy, or that our relationship with the EU should be that of Switzerland. Well, read any of the Swiss newspapers or visit Switzerland, and guess what the key issue is for the Swiss? It is immigration, and the numbers of immigrants into that country are proportionally much higher than they are for the UK.

The right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) is also no longer in his place; I do not know why people decided to depart just as I got to my feet. He made some interesting points about jobs. That issue needs to be clarified, because it is very much the case that Romanians and Bulgarians can work here. First, they have the right to travel here visa-free and, secondly, they can indeed work here, whether they are self-employed, have particular expertise—as doctors, nurses and so forth—or participate in agricultural work. There are restrictions in place, of course, for temporary work permits, and there are quota schemes, to allow low-skilled workers to come here too. I understand that the biggest group of foreign nationals who helped to build the Olympic stadium actually came from Romania. Apparently, there were more Romanians working on that stadium than people of any other nationality.

[Mr Joe Benton in the Chair]

I am not arguing that more or fewer Romanians and Bulgarians should come here. I am simply saying that this important aspect of the debate on immigration needs to be considered in a sensible and measured way. We need to have a policy that is not determined by fear. I genuinely worry that the debate around immigration—to mention this is to slip slightly into a bigger debate on whether we should be in or out of the EU—has become very binary. It is the little Englanders, if you like, versus the multicultural open-door approach, but I would argue that in many cases that does not apply, by any stretch of the imagination.

[Mark Reckless]

First, little Englanders versus the multilateral open-door people—I do not know if the hon. Gentleman puts himself in the second category, but if he does I wonder if it more a sign of his own narcissism than anything else.

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[Mr Ellwood]

Again, I am invited to wander away from the debate about immigration, into the wider, albeit important, debate about the virtues of the EU. What would happen if we went down my hon. Friend’s route and left the EU? If he thinks for a second that the countries remaining in Europe would leave tariffs as they are or allow us to have similar tariffs to Switzerland, and so on, he is wrong. We would then be seen as the competition and France would be first to say, “Let’s make it tougher for Britain to participate or trade with us.” That is exactly what would happen.

There is a notion that we can somehow say no to the EU or park the matter to one side and look to the emerging markets. Let us take one huge example. We tried to sell the Eurofighter to India, a close Commonwealth country, but it went with the French Rafale aircraft instead. It is not so simple to say, “Let’s ignore the EU” and suddenly embrace the Commonwealth, which we anticipate would have closer relationships with us.

[Mark Reckless]

Of course, my hon. Friend’s example may reflect the wisdom or otherwise of naming products we are trying to export with the “Euro” prefix. More worryingly, it is preposterous to say that tariffs would go up, when Germany sells more to us than it does to any other country in the world, including France. The EU is treaty bound to negotiate a free trade agreement with any state that needs it.

[Mr Ellwood]

I do not think the name of the aircraft was the precursor of the deal falling through or the reason why it did so. I could have said “Typhoon”, as my hon. Friend is aware.

The majority would agree with the approach that I have spelled out, but fundamental flaws, out-of-date practices and British schoolboy errors have allowed a scale of migration into the UK over one decade that is incomparable with the spikes in migration on this island in all its history, as I mentioned earlier. That is what concerns my constituents and those of other hon. Members.

Let us look at some of those mistakes. Like other hon. Members, I am sorry that there are now no Labour Back Benchers—[Interruption.] I am sorry; apart from the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), who was not here at the beginning, there are none here to put the case. And there is not a single Lib Dem here, either.

Under Labour, in 2004, there was a deliberate policy of uncontrolled migration, resulting in more than 1 million people coming from central and eastern Europe, who now live here. Why? Because the UK completely opted out of the transitional controls on new EU member states. Britain was the only country to do so, ignoring the right to impose a seven-year ban before new citizens could come and work here. We were almost all alone in Europe.

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[Mr Ellwood]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. Aside from the administrative errors, pressures on housing, benefits and health services, and so on, as he implies, the scale of migration in the last decade has challenged the very Britishness of some communities—what defines us: our values; our culture; who we are. Of course, that is an evolving thing and measured migration can be absorbed into it, but when overloaded—when diasporas move here on such a large scale—there is such an impact that it can be unmanaged, in that sense, and have a negative impact on those who are already here.

Let us not slip away from what Labour did in the last decade that was so wrong. It introduced eight Acts of Parliament, but it had no control over immigration despite those and illegal immigrants were free to abuse our state services. Migration from non-EU member states also increased during that time. Indeed, twice as many came from non-EU countries as EU countries. I hope that the Minister will confirm that that is so.

In the five years leading up to the economic downturn—this is the real message—more than 90% of the increase in employment was accounted for by foreign nationals. We were creating jobs in this country and giving them to people from overseas. That cannot be right. To put that another way, one in 10 new jobs was given to a British person. I am pleased to say that that is not the case today with the 1.1 million new private sector jobs that have been created. To compound matters, employers targeted eastern European countries, to pay less than the minimum wage. In 2009, for example, 2,000 firms were fined for doing this. Thanks to stricter rules, that figure has now fallen.

Another area of abuse was student visas, and we felt the impact in Bournemouth too. Bogus students were attending bogus colleges, but, thankfully, that has also now stopped. International education is clearly important, with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills estimating that it is worth £8 billion. It is important to get our approach right, and given the importance of language schools to Bournemouth, people there expect us to.

Arguably, Labour’s biggest failure was failing to inspire a younger generation to work. Thanks to the something-for-nothing culture, a skills gap developed. If it does not pay to work, or if British people lack the necessary skills, that creates a huge space in our labour market for people from overseas to fill. We cannot blame people for wanting to come here and work hard, but the real answer lies in training our own people to fill these jobs. If we add to that the way in which the benefits system was abused, we can see why we ended up with the mess we inherited in 2010.

I am pleased to see the changes the Government have introduced. When passed into law, the Immigration Bill will upgrade the previously dysfunctional UK Border Agency, making it easier to send offenders back overseas. It will also cut the abuse of the appeals process, which originally had, I think, 17 different stages that could be put to appeal. In addition, it will oblige temporary immigrants seeking to stay longer than six months to pay a surcharge on their visa to cover NHS costs, should they use the health service. Finally, it will tackle sham marriages, to which more than 10,000 visa applications were linked every year.

As the Prime Minister announced last week, we are building a welfare system that encourages work and that is not so accessible to migrants, so no one can come to this country and expect to get out-of-work benefits immediately. We will not pay those benefits for the first three months. If, after those three months, an EU national needs benefits, we will no longer pay them indefinitely. Migrants will also be able to claim for only a maximum of six months unless they can prove they have a genuine prospect of employment. In addition, there will be a minimum earnings threshold, and if migrants do not pass the test, access to benefits such as income support will be cut. Finally, newly arrived EU jobseekers will not be able to claim housing benefit.

Those are welcome changes. If people are not here to work, or if they are begging or sleeping rough, they will be removed. They will be barred from re-entry for 12 months, unless they can prove there is a proper reason for them to be here, such as a job. Such steps have already been taken by other countries, such as Holland and Germany.

As we have seen, the Government’s policies are having an impact, with a drop in net migration of more than one third. Immigration from outside the EU is now at its lowest level for 14 years. With the new measures I have described, however, that drop will continue.

[Mark Reckless]

My hon. Friend refers to a drop in net immigration of more than a third. Is he sure his figures are up to date?

[Mr Ellwood]

The best person to clarify that will be the Minister, but those are the figures that I have been presented with. Indeed, they were put forward by the Home Secretary when the Immigration Bill was read for the Third time a couple of weeks ago.

To return to a point on which I think there will be more common ground, given what my hon. Friends have already said, the EU needs to change. It needs to recognise that its rules are out of date. There is a disparity between the income per head of joining members and that of other member states. It is so large that it is not surprising that some people will choose to abandon their own country and move to a richer one.

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[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.

[Mr Ellwood]

I said Second Reading.

[Mark Reckless]

I believe you said Third Reading. We shall see what the record says.

However, Third Reading has been delayed. It will not happen till the new year, although we do not know when. Perhaps the Minister can tell us that as well. Many of us think that it would be sensible to have a debate, or indeed a vote, on the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley before the restrictions are lifted on 1 January rather than afterwards.

At the moment, the latest figures, up to June 2013, give 182,000 as the net migration figure, compared with the figure for 2009-10, the year before the election in which the coalition Government came to power, when it was 214,000. So net migration has been cut by just under 15%, which is barely one seventh, not more than one third, but I promised my constituents that if they elected me—if they had a Conservative or perhaps at least a Conservative-led Government—we would deliver on our promise to cut immigration from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands.

I was extremely concerned to read an interview apparently given by the Prime Minister to The Daily Telegraph in which he seems—perhaps I am wrong—to set aside that target. He seems to accept, or at least suggest, that the immigration target might not be hit, because we are taking in more people from the European Union. If we are not going to hit the target, as we promised our electors we would, we should change policy to ensure that we do hit it, either by getting rid of loopholes for Indian IT workers, post-study work or numerous others I could mention, or by taking some action on EU immigration.

I am pleased to say that at least some action is taking place. The change on benefits to three months is sensible, and I am pleased that it will be introduced before 1 January. It shows that Government can work on such things quickly when they want to. It is a shame that the same has not happened with regard to the Immigration Bill. We need the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley.

We have talked about estimates. To quote the Minister in The House magazine—I hope that this is accurate; I am sure it is—

“We consulted the Migration Advisory Committee on that question, and it advised us that making an estimate was not practical because of the number of variables, so we have not done so.”

The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee mentioned that point and asked Professor Sir David Metcalf:

“If Ministers had said to you, ‘Sir David, could you please give us some estimates about the number of people coming in after 31 December?’, you would have happily obliged?”

He answered:

“Yes, that is the role of the Migration Advisory Committee…if we were tasked by the Government to make such an estimate, it would be absolutely our job to do that, yes”.

But that estimate did not come.

I do not know what the numbers will be. I look forward to my trip to Luton on 1 January. Perhaps the Victoria coach station will also be another big point of entry. We can talk to some of those people and ask them whether they will be employed, or whether they purport to be self-employed, as they have had to do in most cases before. That will give us some interesting answers.

The big difference is that respectable, proper employment agencies can now go out and recruit proactively in Romania and Bulgaria. They can go to employers and offer them the service of bringing in people, often highly skilled people prepared to work hard, sometimes for much lower wages than people here, although we have a minimum wage in the formal sector. We do not know how large that sum will be; the Government have not given us an estimate.

My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) made many strong points. I do not share his confidence or certainty that the numbers will be very large, but it is certainly possible, and we should have had a strategy to deal with that and prevent large numbers from coming here. It is good that we now have policemen from Scotland Yard out in particular villages in Romania to spread the message, but when the Select Committee went to Bucharest, I did not see any evidence of such a strategy.

Indeed, I said to Martin Harris, the excellent ambassador there, “What are you doing to reduce the numbers likely to come after 1 January?” He looked at me as though he had misheard or misunderstood what I had said and answered, “That’s not our job.” I said, “How do you mean? You work for the Government.” He said, “There’s free movement. Under EU law, they’re allowed to come. It’s not my role to reduce the numbers. I haven’t had any instructions to that effect.” He was managing the process and explaining things to both sides, but he did not see it as his role in any way, or think that it was Government policy, to try to hold down the numbers of people coming.

There has been more evidence over the last weeks, and possibly months, that that is the policy, and I hope it succeeds. If it does not succeed, and if the Migration Watch numbers are coming from Romania and Bulgaria, it is difficult to see how we will hit the net migration target, as I promised my constituents we would. I hope that we will hit it, and that we will see action to do so.

My hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley tabled his amendment, and then the Minister came to the Select Committee and told us that the amendment was illegal. I found that comment extraordinary. It is an amendment to primary legislation. For a Minister to come to the House and say that an amendment to primary legislation is unlawful comes close to contempt of the House, although I do not accuse him of that. It is this House that sets the law, and the Government who are bound by the law as determined by this Parliament, yet he seems to think that some other law might be higher and bind him in a way that the law of this Parliament does not.

The Minister has a reason for thinking that. The ministerial code says:

“The Ministerial Code should be read alongside the coalition agreement and the background of the overarching duty on Ministers to comply with the law including international law and treaty obligations”,

but in this country, our constitution has always been dualist in its approach to international law. International law binds, and binds Ministers, only to the extent that it is also the law of the land as passed by Parliament. If the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley succeeds, that will be the law that binds Ministers, not any previous agreement they may have happened to enter into with their counterparts overseas, except to the extent that that is part of our domestic law.

On that issue, the Thoburn case of the metric martyrs, involving Lord Justice Laws, is often quoted, but in my view, my hon. Friend’s amendment is consistent with that principle. It suggests that there are some bits of legislation that we have passed that are not to be repealed by accident; we must be express and clear that we intend to do so. However, my hon. Friend’s amendment refers to the European Union accession treaties. It would make no sense for him to add “notwithstanding the European Communities Act 1972”, because those European Union treaties flow from that Act.

If my hon. Friend, as the promoter of that amendment, says clearly that it is intended to have that effect, and if those Members who vote for it succeed, as I hope, in amending the legislation to include it and put it into law, that will be the law. The Minister, like anyone else, will be bound to apply that law, as will our judges. If Romanians and Bulgarians come to this country and take employment contrary to that law, we will look to the courts to enforce it. We made a promise to our constituents to cut immigration from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands per year. We must keep that promise.

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[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.

[Mark Reckless]

I am sorry to hear that the right hon. Gentleman’s grandfather was fighting the Romanians during the first world war, because I understand that Romania was on the allied side in that conflict.

[Mr Hanson]

My grandfather was fighting Germans and Bulgarians, but let us put that aside. He was in the trenches at Neuve Chappelle in 1915 and at the Somme in 1916, and in Sinai in 1917. He was fighting people who now sit in the same Parliament here and elsewhere in Europe. That is good for the stability of Europe. Perhaps I made a slip, but the point I am making is that the stability we have gained, through a wider economic union and through shared social conditions, is a good thing. Hon. Members have stated we should withdraw, but in my view that would be a bad thing.

We need to look at how we can put labour market conditions in place after 1 January to strengthen our position. I would also, if I may, stretch out a hand of friendship to the hon. Member for Bournemouth East, who made a strong case for looking at other areas of immigration, including student immigration, tourism and business investment. There may not actually be that many people coming from Bulgaria and Romania in January at all—whether to claim benefits or to work—but the danger is that today’s debate could send a signal that Britain is closed for business, when there is a positive case to be made for some aspects of immigration and for managed migration. However, we need to have controlled migration, to remove people who are here illegally and to ensure that we have strong borders. We also need to ensure that we deport foreign criminals, as the hon. Member for Kettering said; I have to tell him that since my time as Prisons Minister, the rate of removal of foreign national offenders has fallen by 13.5%.

There are things that we can and should do, but we should approach the matter in a calm and measured way on 1 January. I also look forward to a calm and measured debate on the remaining stages of the Immigration Bill.

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[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.