Immigration (Bulgaria and Romania)

Tobias Ellwood Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The public would have liked figures. Now that we have the former Foreign Secretary’s mea culpas on the issue of estimates, it is important that we have them, even though there are only 12 days to go. So the first issue is estimates. The second is the confusion about what will happen on 1 January. According to the permanent secretary Mark Sedwill in evidence to us last week, Olympic-style arrangements are being put in place at our airports from 1 January onwards. As far as I am concerned, that is pretty tough stuff. There is obviously an expectation that a lot of people will turn up on 1 January.

In her evidence to us on Monday this week, the Home Secretary said that it was business as usual. So we have the permanent secretary thinking that there will be Olympic-style security and the Home Secretary thinking that it will be business as usual. Just to be sure, the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood and I will be at Luton airport on 1 January. Mrs Dorries, that is not far from your constituency of Mid Bedfordshire. If you would like to join us, you are more than welcome. The first flight from Romania gets in at 7.40 am. The hon. Gentleman has said that he will be up at that time. The second flight comes in at 9 pm, but we will be there for the first flight to see what arrangements have been put in place and how many people turn up. If the only way to do it is with our own eyes, and nobody else wants to have estimates, I am afraid we will have to do that.

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

I am listening carefully to the right hon. Gentleman, who is going to make an excursion to an airport to see what is going on. I think he is doing that more for the media than for anybody else. I hope he recognises that there is already a right for visa-free travel for Romanians and Bulgarians to the UK right now. It has been in existence since 2007, so what will he achieve by going to an airport? He can see people coming through already, even today, let alone waiting until the new arrangements are in place in January.

[Keith Vaz]

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

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

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[Keith Vaz]

Let us be clear: I do not think that they are going to come here to go on benefits; I think that people who come to this country from those countries are coming to get jobs. I do not think they are coming here to be part of the benefits system.

[Mr Ellwood]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way very quickly on that point?

[Keith Vaz]

I shall make some progress and if there is time, I shall certainly give way again.

There is a more fundamental issue here—that of freedom of movement. One cannot have freedom of movement without movement, which is why I think the fundamental issue is our presence in the European Union and what we are prepared to take, as far as the negotiations are concerned, should the Government win the next election and should the Prime Minister start on his discussions with EU colleagues. At the end of the day, we need to have a fundamental discussion about that, and if it means changing treaties, so be it. That is why I favour a referendum on our membership of the EU, because this issue is a sideline. I will probably—most likely—be on the other side to the vast majority of those in here, but I am saying that I want the right to make that case. I think that this is a village story at the moment for Westminster. Why can the people not have a say on the whole issue of freedom of movement? We can discuss Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and what will happen when Turkey becomes a member of the EU, but at the end of the day, that is one of the fundamental issues that we need to address.

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[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 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.

[Mr Ellwood]

My apologies, Ms Dorries, I did not intend to make another intervention—I feel I have had my share already—but there is an important matter about my hon. Friend’s point. I looked carefully at the comparison with Poland and the Migration Watch numbers. It made a direct comparison with Poland, which I am afraid is disingenuous. When many Polish people decided in 2004 to come to the UK, other possible countries were closed to them, because they had used their rights and closed their borders. The Migration Watch numbers are slightly misleading because they compare the Polish numbers then with Romanian and Bulgarian numbers now.

[Mr Hollobone]

I am sorry to have provoked my hon. Friend into yet another intervention, welcome though it is. I am afraid he needs to read Migration Watch’s report more closely.

[Mr Ellwood]

I was given a presentation by Migration Watch.

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend needed to pay more attention to the presentation. The estimate is 30,000 to 70,000 a year, with a central estimate of an increase of 50,000 a year in the population for five years, as the right hon. Member for Leicester East said. The estimate is based in part on the precedent set by the A8, but also on the growth rate of the current Romanian and Bulgarian population in the UK and the number of national insurance numbers issued, as well as the disparity in incomes and living standards between the UK and Romania and Bulgaria. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) will appreciate that the disparity between us and Romania and Bulgaria is rather bigger than the one between us and Poland. A Romanian or Bulgarian moving to the UK to work at the minimum wage could increase his take-home pay by four and a half to five times, after accounting for the cost of living. Families could increase their income by between eight and nine times. To put it another way, workers on the minimum wage in the UK could earn in one hour roughly what could be earned in a day in Romania or Bulgaria.

There are other factors to consider. Spain and Italy, where unemployment is now very high, especially among the young, have nearly one million Romanian and Bulgarian workers each. A worker from Romania or Bulgaria could increase his take-home pay in Spain or Italy by at least 50% if he or she were to move to the UK. Another serious issue, to which I have not had a satisfactory response from the Minister despite raising it on the Floor of the House, is that Romania is known to have issued some 600,000 passports to ethnic Romanians from Moldova. Moldova is not a member of the European Union and yet a significant proportion of its population has the right to move to, live in and work in the UK. I am sure that that was never the intention of the accession treaties. The number of ethnic Roma from Romania and Bulgaria who might migrate is another factor to consider, but the numbers are extremely uncertain. Substantial numbers of Roma people live in poor conditions in a number of EU countries. An estimated 2.5 million Roma live in Romania and Bulgaria.

There have been welcome changes, such as the Government’s announcement about out-of-work benefits for people coming from Romania and Bulgaria. The announcement was good, but do the measures also apply to tax credits? I would like a specific response from the Minister. Does the new three-month rule for entitlement to out-of-work benefits extend to people from other EU member states or only to those from the new entrants, Romania and Bulgaria?

Crime is a big concern. To put the issue into a pithy sentence, I would say that we are importing a wave of crime from Romania and Bulgaria. I put it as strongly as that deliberately. There are no powers to deport EU citizens, unless they have been convicted of an offence that attracts a two-year prison sentence or a sentence of 12 months or more for an offence involving drugs, violence or sexual crime. We should be able to deport any foreign national, whether from an EU or non-EU state, to their country of origin if they are convicted of any crime in this country. That is one thing on which I agree with the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), who said that on the Floor of the House when he was Prime Minister, but sadly his Government did nothing. The right hon. Member for Leicester East, who is currently conversing with you, Ms Dorries, mentioned Judge Sean Morris, who said in court the other day to Romanians and Bulgarians,

“don’t come here and commit crime.”

He has delayed sentencing one such criminal, because of his frustration with delays of six months and more in obtaining criminal records from the Romanian authorities, and he has called on Ministers to do something about it. In Westminster Hall some months ago, I raised directly with the Minister the issue of the number of criminals from Romania and Bulgaria coming to our shores. There is a crime wave, particularly in London and particularly on the London underground, to do with Romanians.

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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]

The hon. Gentleman makes my point for me, because in trying to make his point, he brackets me. I am trying to say that we should not have these brackets, but unfortunately the way that the arguments often go is that people get shunted, one way or another, into these brackets. I am saying that they are wrong and it does not help the debate about what we are focusing on today, which is immigration and dealing with the prospect of what will happen on 1 January with Bulgaria and Romania. I would like to have a more cognitive debate, a more measured debate, and less one that is based either on fear or emotion. Consequently I apologise to my hon. Friend if in any way he felt offended by what I said.

Managed migration certainly has enormous benefits: for education; for business; and for filling the gaps in the labour market, which have been mentioned already.

[Mr Chope]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Ellwood]

I will just finish this point. However, the key word is “managed”. I am looking around the Chamber and—Ms Dorries, you seem to have changed. [Laughter.] I am looking around the Chamber and I think that we would all agree, bar possibly the Front-Bench spokesmen, that migration has not been managed well, particularly during the last decade.

I give way to my hon. Friend from a neighbouring constituency.

[Mr Chope]

I was going to take up the same point about the issue of “managed” migration. Is not the issue that we face, in dealing with our constituents’ concerns about immigration, that at the moment we as a country are not in a position where we can manage our own borders and decide who can come to our country, and who can stay and receive benefits. Surely we should be emphasising that, as a sovereign country, we should be able to determine these issues ourselves and not have solutions to them imposed on us by the European Union?

[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.

[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.

[Kate Hoey]

On that point, many members of the Labour party were against that at that time. Indeed, my hon. Friends on the Front Bench at the moment have said that that was the wrong decision and have apologised for it.

[Mr Ellwood]

I am not sure that the apology will be accepted by a nation that is now having to live with the consequences. As we have seen, the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) is now embarrassed to admit that that was a huge mistake. I am sorry that the hon. Lady was not more vocal at the time or that her voice was not listened to, because that decision has had a profound effect, not only in respect of migration, but on the balance in the UK, as has already been mentioned.

[Andrew Bingham]

Does my hon. Friend agree that that has also had a profound effect on the British population’s approach to migration, as we face 31 December?

[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.

[Andrew Bridgen]

My hon. Friend mentioned rough sleeping. What does he think the impact on the number of rough sleepers in London and our major cities will be of relaxing the transitional arrangements with Bulgaria and Romania after 31 December?

[Mr Ellwood]

In a way, that point has already been answered. There are those who get through the system and who are here already, which is why it was rather bizarre that the right hon. Member for Leicester East was going to go to Luton airport to watch people coming through. If people are determined to get through the system, they can already get here visa-free. However, the Prime Minister has made it clear that that will no longer be tolerated under the new rules.

It is important we take the lead in the EU. Some of my hon. Friends have no faith in what can be achieved, but I believe that, for the first time in many years, Britain is taking the lead in the EU, and British influence is increasing. Labour gave away our opt-out and our fishing rights, and it opened our borders when Germany, France and others decided to keep theirs closed. In contrast, this Government have managed to secure a trade deal with South Korea, and there is a trade deal with America in the offing. We have also had the first ever reduction in the EU budget, and there is an EU patent agreement—something that extends right across Europe.

Those things came about not just because of agreement in Europe, but because they were British-led initiatives. When we decide to step forward and we understand what is going on, other nations around Europe follow us. I am not sure Labour particularly understood that, and nor, if we are fair, did this Government. We can influence the direction of travel in Europe; we do not have to leave that to France and Germany, and we should not have an attitude that says we should. If we do leave things to them, and we do not affect the decisions that are made upstream before legislation is created, we have no right to complain about the outcome.

In conclusion, migration is a sensitive subject at any time, but thanks to the disastrous decisions taken by the previous Government, it has become very emotive indeed. We are overdue tougher migration rules, and I am pleased this Government are now producing them. However, the challenge posed by new EU immigrants could have been avoided had tougher decisions been taken further down the line.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

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[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hanson]

The hon. Gentleman should accept that, as the Front-Bench spokesman for my party in this Chamber today, what I am saying on behalf of my party is in support of what my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has said, that we made some mistakes in 2004. Those mistakes had consequences; we should have interrogated the numbers further and we should have looked at the possible impact both culturally and economically over that time. I know that the combination of immigration and inadequate labour standards in many cases meant that there was a pressure on wages and employment; some of the jobs that came into the country through economic growth were taken by people from outside the United Kingdom. I know from my own constituency in north Wales that there are pressures even now on the labour market and on cultural issues, because of that immigration.

[Mr Ellwood]

As the right hon. Gentleman is in confessional mode, perhaps I can encourage him to recognise as well that, even once the gates were open, the reason why so many chose to come to the UK was simply the benefits system—people could come here straight away, not even bother to work and gain benefits immediately. Does he agree that that was also a mistake back in 2004?

[Mr Hanson]

That was, which is why in March of this year my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), on behalf of the official Opposition, suggested the measures that the Prime Minister introduced only yesterday—some 14 days before 31 December, when transitional controls for Romania and Bulgaria expire.

Lest we think that the problem is now solely an Opposition one, let me quote what the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady) said in 2005, on 24 November, in the debate on the accession for Bulgaria and Romania:

“There is broad cross-party agreement on the objective of bringing Bulgaria and Romania into the European Union…The Conservative party has always been an enthusiastic supporter of enlargement, whether that has involved the 10 states that joined last year, or Bulgaria and Romania, or Turkey and Croatia.”

There are no Liberal Democrats present in the Chamber today, but in the same debate the Deputy Prime Minister said:

“I should also like to join in this festival of cross-party consensus, which I trust will be a rare, if valuable occasion.”—[Official Report, 24 November 2005; Vol. 1641, c. 1716-18.]