Immigration (Bulgaria and Romania)

Peter Bone Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to start this debate on an important topic of great national interest. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for providing us with the time to debate this topic before the Christmas recess. I think that most of us here find it a pity that we cannot debate the matter on a substantive motion in the main Chamber, where we could have tested the will of the House with a vote.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Can my hon. Friend explain why that is? It was completely in the power of the Backbench Business Committee to put this debate in the Chamber, rather than the Rag, Tag and Bobtail Adjournment debate happening there at the moment.

[Nigel Mills]

I think I am grateful for that intervention. It is not for me to answer for the Backbench Business Committee; my hon. Friend has more experience of that Committee, so perhaps he can explain later.

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[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries, and to follow the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who, as usual, is speaking good sense. I was delighted to hear a shift in his position on the EU; up to now, he has been entirely against us coming out of the EU, and he has moved to being probably against us coming out. That is really good news.

[Keith Vaz]

I will definitely be on the other side from the hon. Gentleman on the issue.

[Mr Bone]

I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman has prejudged my position on the referendum; I want entirely to hear what our Prime Minister achieves.

I am delighted that the excellent Minister for Immigration is here. The only thing I have to say about that is that we know that the Government have decided to give that Member of Parliament the most difficult area to deal with—the one that they are in trouble on. It is good to see him here, but it is a worry that the Government are relying not on getting the problem sorted out, but on having a very able Minister defend an absolutely impossible position.

One of the cornerstones and key strengths of the coalition is its tough stance on cutting immigration, which Labour allowed to soar to eye-watering levels. In 2010, we pledged to

“take steps to take net migration back to the levels of the 1990s—tens of thousands a year, not hundreds of thousands.”

That is a common-sense policy, with overwhelming support. After a decade of Labour incompetence on the issue, it is long overdue.

The progress that we have made on cutting immigration to date is testament to the efforts of the Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May). I strongly believe that lifting the restrictions on Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants would jeopardise all the good work we have done, not only on getting immigration down, but on building new homes, improving public services and lowering unemployment.

Bulgaria’s new ambassador to the UK has claimed that hardly any Bulgarians want to move to the UK once restrictions are lifted, and that, more than anything, the change will hurt their economy. If that is the case, he should welcome continued restrictions. Government figures show that although overall immigration is down, eastern European immigration is bucking the trend, and is increasing. The number of people from Romania and Bulgaria settling in the UK has risen sharply, up from 37 in 2011 to 2,177 in 2012. Clearly, if the restrictions are lifted, those figures will increase dramatically, making them completely incompatible with the Government’s aim to reduce immigration.

[Mr Andrew Turner]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for allowing me to interrupt him. The number that we wish to control is the number of people from outside Europe. It is true, of course, that until now, we have got the figures for migration from within Europe down as well, but there is no promise from the Government that that will continue.

[Mr Bone]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. There is no guarantee at all. I am arguing that because of the removal of the restrictions, we will break that important promise.

It is common sense for us as a country to continue the restrictions, and the only obstacle to that is the European Union. That, however, is not an arrangement that the British people signed up to. The last time the people had a vote on the European Economic Community was in 1975. Needless to say, we now have an EU. When the EEC was in existence, it was a small group of prosperous western European countries. Now, the EU takes in poorer countries in central Europe that were formerly in the communist bloc. Old EU regulations and laws that applied to the European Economic Community have become seriously out of date; as a result, the EU is forcing on us a wave of immigration that the British public do not want and did not vote for, and that will have negative repercussions for our economy and our people.

This is the time when we need to stand up to the European Union and say, “Enough is enough.” Parliament is answerable to the British people, and therefore has sovereignty over the UK’s borders. We do not need to be told by a post-democratic body what our immigration policy is. Earlier this year, the Prime Minister stated that our country should welcome only those who came here to work hard. Relaxing the current arrangements and deregulating immigration from these two countries would do exactly the opposite.

I thoroughly welcome the Government’s Immigration Bill, and the proposals to restrict the access that immigrants have to the wealth of benefits that we offer. One such proposal is for an initial three-month period before benefits can be claimed. Migration Watch UK concludes that there are “very strong financial incentives” for Bulgarians and Romanians to move to the UK, partly due to the much higher wages and living standards in the United Kingdom.

[Mr Ellwood]

I agree with my hon. Friend that EU laws are out of date, and that the income per capita is different in other countries, and that that is why people might want to move, but does he agree that rules are already in place allowing any Bulgarian or Romanian to come and gain work here? Doctors, nurses and so on can come already under the current arrangements, so my question is: who will be in the tranche of people arriving in January and February?

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[Mr Bone]

I am grateful for that intervention; my hon. Friend makes a very good point. He is right to say that Bulgarians and Romanians can come here if they satisfy the current requirements. I am absolutely in favour of continuing with that. The problem—it is a good point that he brings up, and it is one that I was moving on to—is that in Bulgaria the minimum wage is 73p an hour, and in Romania it is 79p, but in the UK the minimum wage is £6.31 for over-21s—nearly 10 times more than in Romania and Bulgaria. Bulgaria and Romania are two of the poorest members of the EU and do experience, I am afraid, levels of corruption. In 2010, gross domestic product per capita was £3,929 in Bulgaria and £4,682 in Romania, compared with Britain’s £22,426. Furthermore, there are 1.5 million people seeking work in Bulgaria and Romania.

It undoubtedly makes economic sense for individuals from these countries to migrate to the UK, regardless of whether they have the skills that we require. By lifting current restrictions, we leave ourselves wide open to a new wave of economic refugees, hoping to reap the rewards that this country has to offer. Those are pull factors that clearly cannot be addressed by reforming what benefits are available to immigrants. The UK is a fantastic place to live, and that is something to be proud of. Reforming the benefits system can only do so much; it cannot go far enough on its own when the fundamental issue is the lack of control that we appear to have over our borders.

The EU states that it has the power to control such reforms—common-sense reforms that are so badly needed to stop the abuse of public services by immigrants whom the EU is apparently forcing on this Government. There are still questions about how far the Immigration Bill can go before it is incompatible with EU law and the free movement of people. We are therefore left in a preposterous scenario in which the EU is trying to control not only who can come into this country, but what they can claim when they get here. It is an outrageous state of affairs, and we, the Parliament of the United Kingdom, need to say that we are ultimately sovereign over our own borders and the laws relating to domestic affairs.

The truth of the matter is that we do not know the extent of the upheaval that the removal of the restrictions will mean for our country, because we do not know how many people will come over. That is exactly the point that the right hon. Member for Leicester East made so powerfully. We learned that lesson from the 2004 influx of Polish immigrants. The Labour Government got it completely wrong and estimated that only 13,000 Poles would arrive; the figure turned out to be more than 100,000 a year at its peak.

Migration Watch UK has estimated that 50,000 immigrants will arrive from Romania and Bulgaria per year over the next five years. People might say, “Well, that’s Migration Watch,” but an independent think-tank, the Democracy Institute, has found to its surprise that

“the most alarming of the forecasts…is actually insufficiently alarmist.”

The institute projects that at least 70,000 immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria will arrive in the UK annually for the next five years, if the restrictions are lifted.

A poll by the BBC—not an organisation favourable to Eurosceptics—found that 1% of Romanians and 4% of Bulgarians said that they were looking for work in the UK. That would translate into 350,000 potential jobseekers in the UK. That is wholly contrary to our policy aims of cutting immigration and protecting the UK’s interests. At a time when we are making real inroads into cutting unemployment, the impact that an influx of immigrants would have on the job market would be detrimental to those looking for work and those on low wages.

[Keith Vaz]

In a very helpful intervention, the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) pointed out that of course Romanians and Bulgarians can at the moment work in this country as self-employed people, and the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) said that he was happy with that. Does he agree that if we were able to speed up the length of time that it took them to get national insurance numbers, that would be one way of ensuring that the system works without having to change it?

[Mr Bone]

I am grateful for that intervention. The simple answer is no. I think that we need to control our own borders. I do not think that we should be tinkering with the mechanisms; we should have complete control of what we do, as I think the right hon. Gentleman said in his concluding remarks.

A recent report on the economic effects of immigration found that those on the lowest wages feel the biggest impact of immigration, as immigration holds back the wages of the least well paid. We should be supporting those hard-working people, not eroding their wages by allowing uncontrolled immigration from countries with such vast economic differences. Moreover, although unemployment is down, youth unemployment is proving stubbornly high. With nearly 1 million under-25s still unemployed, the focus should be on helping them into jobs, not allowing into the job market an inpouring of immigrants who are looking for work.

[Mr Newmark]

Will my hon. Friend at least acknowledge that the Government’s policy, in the autumn statement, of abolishing the jobs tax for under-21s will encourage many small businesses, especially retailers, to hire young people? I go back to the question that I asked my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills): there is a skills gap at the lower end, so who will fill that skills gap if we do not have people coming in from eastern Europe to plug that hole?

[Mr Bone]

I am grateful for that intervention. No one in this Chamber is prouder than me of what this Government are doing to lower unemployment, and of the great efforts that the Prime Minister is making, but my hon. Friend is completely wrong on the second bit of the argument. We should not be paying jobseeker’s allowance to people who have the opportunity to work, but do not want to work. That is how those jobs will be filled—not by bringing people in from central Europe. Gosh, I got quite cross about that.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this Government’s policy of raising personal allowances in order to incentivise our indigenous population to take lower-paid jobs and to find work provides a further incentive for immigrants to come to our country?

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[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend proves the point that the basic requirement is to regain control of our borders. We do not have to worry about all the different arrangements, but we should be able to say to people from the EU, “No, you cannot come in unless we say so.” As the right hon. Member for Leicester East said, this goes back to the fundamental issue of whether we can get that control and still remain in the European Union. If we do not take decisive action now to control who settles in the UK, the figure will only rise. If we do not continue the restrictions, more unemployed migrants without the skills that we need will arrive in this country.

Not only is unrestricted migration from Romania and Bulgaria detrimental to many of the coalition’s key values and policy, but public opposition to lifting the restrictions is overwhelming. Two of the country’s leading newspapers, The Sun and the Daily Express, which many Members in the Chamber will agree speak for the British people, regard it as essential that the restrictions remain in place. The Sun found that

“42% of Brits believe slamming the door on EU migrants is of utmost importance and another 20% say it should be a major aim”.

The newspaper went on to say that if the Prime Minister could not achieve that, we should come out of the European Union.

The Daily Express has consistently opposed our membership of the EU. Its petition demanding the continuation of restrictions attracted more than 150,000 people, all of whom went to the trouble of cutting out a little slip from the paper and posting it. Many hon. Members in the Chamber had the great pleasure of taking those slips to Downing street and delivering them to the Prime Minister. On an e-petition on the Downing street website, another 150,000 people are demanding that the restrictions be kept in place. On the last day of term, 22 Members of Parliament have come to a Westminster Hall debate, in which we cannot even divide on the matter. Even the Chief Whip is here to listen to the debate. We know that the Chief Whip and the Government really want to tackle the problem, but the issue that they are wrestling with is whether to put the EU first and stay part of the club. Do they want to avoid offending the political elite and the leader of the Liberal Democrat party, or do they want to put the British people first?

I hope that later in the debate the Chief Whip will catch your eye, Ms Dorries, and stand up and say that he has a message from the Prime Minister that the restrictions on Bulgarian and Romanian immigration will continue.

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[Mr Ellwood]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I listened to his contribution earlier too. I was making the point that, during the past decade, huge mistakes have been made—I will discuss them shortly—but now there are measures in place to rectify that situation.

I am honoured to represent Bournemouth East, a wonderful part of Great Britain that very much reflects the national approach to running a liberal, open, free market economy. As a seaside town, we are reliant on both domestic and overseas visitors. We are served by an international airport and we have a university that is internationally recognised as one of the best in the world for digital and creative arts. We attract international businesses. JP Morgan, a US bank, and one of the biggest banks, is the largest employer in Bournemouth; our water company is run by a Malaysian company; our Yellow Buses transport company is French-owned; and, yes, the football club is owned by a Russian. Our tourism sector is huge. We are heavily reliant on overseas workers to do the jobs many British people refuse to do, because the dog’s breakfast of our benefits system has perverse incentives, resulting in people being worse off if they gain part-time employment. That left gaps in the employment market that needed to be filled.

I worry that, unless our debate on immigration is measured, rational and, of course, resolute, the unintended consequence of leaping to solutions, such as those calls we heard today to leave the EU, will damage or possibly kill off genuine international interest in inward-investment opportunities, as well as export prospects and British influence abroad. The perception will prevail—indeed, it will be promoted by other countries that are competing against us—that Britain is not open for business.

We should not forget our heritage and who we are. We are a nation with a rich history of immigration, as my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark), who is sadly no longer in his place, articulated in a previous immigration debate. This island has been invaded, or settled in other forms, by Angles, Jutes and Norsemen in the dark ages, Normans, Jews and Huguenots in the middle ages, Italians and Irishmen in the 1800s and, more recently, people from the Caribbean and the Asian sector, as well. Our monarchy was, on more than one occasion, short of an obvious candidate for the top job, and we invited outsiders to fill that post, such as William and Mary of Orange, for example, or George I, Queen Anne having no surviving children. We need to be honest about our past.

We have also taken more than a shine to emigrating to all corners of the globe in the past 600 years. Britain has prospered, since the war, thanks to expanding trade links with Europe, and British and European security has improved, thanks to Britain championing the case for bringing nations that languished behind the iron curtain into NATO and the EU. We have been one of the strongest supporters of the single market. Naturally, our concerns about Bulgaria and Romania will be repeated when, in due course, Turkey, Ukraine and Bosnia hopefully enter the wider market. It is in our interests that the European market should grow, for all our citizens and businesses to have the opportunity to work in other European countries.

It is no coincidence that our attitude to being international now means that 80% of the cars that we produce are exported, 50% of them into the EU. That would not happen if we did not have the approach to internationalism that we have today.

[Mr Bone]

It is blatantly obvious that, when there is a £50 billion current account deficit with the EU, it will continue to trade with us and export. It is absurd to make any other argument.

[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.

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[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

I thank you, Mr Benton, and your co-Chair, Ms Dorries, for sharing today’s proceedings. The debate has been interesting and has generated some important issues that we need to reflect on, and I welcome the opportunity to do so. In particular, I welcome the fact that today I have learned about, if nothing else, the new year’s eve and new year’s day arrangements of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) and the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless). In itself, that has been illuminating—that was said before you were in the Chair, Mr Benton, but they are spending new year’s day morning at Luton airport to check on the immigration status of arriving individuals and their destinations accordingly.

I also welcome the fact that the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) brought the debate to the House. We had a similar debate on his new clause in the Immigration Bill in Committee on 19 November. We completed consideration in Committee on that day, but the Bill has still not returned to the House—according to today’s business statement, its return is not planned even for the first week of January. The hon. Gentleman has, however, tabled another amendment to the Immigration Bill for consideration on Report.

Many hon. Members have mentioned the new clause tabled by the hon. Gentleman. The debate on it will be an interesting one to have—in essence, it will be the same as today’s. I must say to the hon. Gentleman, the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood and others who have referred to the new clause, however, that that is still primary legislation. For the measure to take effect, the Bill would have to complete its passage through the Commons and another place and, even then, as the Minister said in Committee on 19 November:

“The only way of doing so would be to negotiate a change to those treaties. Given that this would require the unanimous agreement of all member states, including Bulgaria and Romania, the Government’s judgment—which I think is the right one—is that there is no prospect of achieving it.”

[Mr Bone]

Is it right for the House to interpret therefore that Her Majesty’s official Opposition will not be supporting the new clause?

[Mr Hanson]

That is perfectly correct. The new clause is trying to unpick treaties that are the responsibility of Government to negotiate. Primary legislation would not impact on that. Even the hon. Member for Amber Valley said in Committee a little later that

“trying to get this country to breach various treaties it has signed is probably not a very sensible way of pursuing our diplomatic mission, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.”––[Official Report, Immigration Public Bill Committee, 19 November 2013; c. 401-02.]

I say that simply because the issue is important, and we need to address it, but I am not clear that the new clause or having the debate before or after Christmas would change the fundamental position.

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[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.

[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.