European Council

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Anders Borg is an excellent Finance Minister. The Chancellor of the Exchequer and I work very closely with him. I believe that if a financial transactions tax is not introduced simultaneously around the world, the transactions will just go to the lowest-cost destinations. That is why it is totally self-defeating. The European Commission’s own piece of work on such a tax showed that it would cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and millions of pounds of revenue, not just in the UK, which has a large financial services industry, but in the rest of Europe.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Prior to the entry of a large number of eastern European countries to the EU a few years ago, the previous Government made the hideously inaccurate forecast that just 13,000 eastern Europeans a year would come to our shores. The total is now 1.5 million and rising. Next Christmas, the transitional controls for Bulgaria and Romania will cease, but the Home Office has refused to make an estimate—on the principle of once bitten, twice shy—of how many people will come to our shores. Have the Bulgarian or Romanian Governments apprised the Prime Minister of their estimates of how many of their citizens may be coming our way?

[The Prime Minister]

To answer my hon. Friend directly, I have not asked those Governments for an estimate. He is right to say that the transitional controls are coming off and that the previous forecasts were wrong. I will discuss this important issue with the Home Secretary in the months ahead.