Immigration (Bulgaria and Romania)
Debate between Tobias Ellwood and Andrew Bridgen(10 years, 10 months ago)
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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 It needs to recognise that its rules are out of date.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.