Immigration (Bulgaria and Romania)

Debate between Tobias Ellwood and Andrew Bingham

Thursday 19th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[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.