EU Migrants: Cameron Finally Acts

November 28, 2014, 12:34 PM GMT+0

It has been a long time coming but David Cameron has finally announced his policy aimed at curbing the flow of European Union migrants into Britain. However, he has abandoned the more radical ideas that he himself was floating until very recently and, of course, he can’t guarantee that our EU partners will agree to even these more modest proposals. So will it work? Immigration is more than just a problem in itself it has the potential to cause him massive political difficulties. And what do his plans mean for his wider purpose of renegotiating Britain’s relationship with the EU prior to a referendum on whether we should remain in the union or not?

Figures published on Thursday showed how big a political mess Mr Cameron has got himself into. At the last election he promised he would reduce overall net migration into Britain to ‘the tens of thousands’, down from the 244,000 at which it then stood. But the latest figures revealed that the number of net migrants had soared by 43% over the last year, to 260,000, in other words to an even higher level than when he came into office. Net migration from the EU is now 75% higher than it was then.

Ever since Britain’s economy started to pick up immigration has risen to become the issue voters are most concerned about. It has also become a gift to UKIP. They’ve argued that since free movement of people is one of the founding principles of the European Union, Britain can get a grip of the problem only by leaving the EU and reclaiming total control of its own borders. Mr Cameron replies that it’s better to renegotiate the migration rules within the EU and then stay in the union.

The most radical idea he floated was to put a cap on the number of EU citizens able to migrate to Britain, or at the very least to put a temporary ‘emergency brake’ on migration at times when the numbers seemed overwhelming. But our EU partners, especially the Germans, made clear that they would not countenance a policy that so blatantly contradicted the very principle of free movement. It was pointed out that Margaret Thatcher herself was a staunch advocate of free movement of people, part of her championing of the single market.

So Mr Cameron has had to abandon this idea. Instead, in his much-trailed speech, he proposed new curbs on in-work benefits for EU migrants. He wants workers from within the EU who settle in Britain to have to wait four years before they can become eligible for in-work benefits such as tax credits and before they can be considered for social or council housing. This is a tougher version of ideas already put forward by Labour and his LibDem coalition colleagues. In addition he wants it no longer to be possible for EU migrants who claim child benefit to be able to do so for children not living in Britain, and he wants EU migrants who do not have a job to be sent home if they have failed to find one after six months.

In his speech he rowed back on ideas that seemed to challenge the principle of free movement. He said: “Accepting the principle of free movement of workers is a key to being part of the single market. So we do not want to destroy that principle or turn it on its head. But freedom of movement has never been an unqualified right and we now need to allow it to operate on a more sustainable basis in the light of experience of recent years.” He went on: “I say to our European partners we have real concerns. …. People have understandably become frustrated. It boils down to one word: control. People want government to have control over the numbers of people coming here and the circumstances in which they come. … People want a grip. I get that. They don’t want limitless immigration and they don’t want no immigration. They want controlled immigration and they are right.”

What lies behind all this is the belief that in-work benefits have acted as a ‘pull factor’ in drawing EU workers to Britain. Some newspapers and commentators have painted a picture of EU ‘scroungers’ coming here to live off the state without working, but the evidence is that there are very few who do this. Rather they come to work: 80% of EU immigrants of working age who have been here for between five and ten years are in employment compared with 69% of equivalent native British. They are net contributors to the British economy and indeed to government coffers. But it’s believed that the in-work benefits they currently receive do make the difference to many of them as to whether they are better off here or back home. So, it’s thought, a curb on the benefits is likely to reduce numbers.

But will our EU partners agree to the curbs? Jean-Claude Juncker, the new EU commission president, said emolliently: “If it is presented in a way that can be listened to by others, then we should discuss this carefully”. Mr Cameron may also take heart from the fact that some other EU countries would like to introduce similar curbs. Nonetheless, the ideas may require changes to the EU treaties that other countries may well baulk at contemplating. So Mr Cameron is far from sure of success.

If he doesn’t get his way, Mr Cameron has hinted darkly that he “rules nothing out”, implying that he might be prepared to campaign to take Britain out of the EU. In his speech he said: “The British people will not understand – frankly I will not understand – if a sensible way through cannot be found, which will help settle this country’s place in the EU once and for all.”

Eurosceptics, however, will point out that immigration, important as it may be, is only one concern within the wider issue of Britain’s relationship with the EU which he says he wants to renegotiate if he is returned to power next May. Some of the others are of even more fundamental importance, they believe, and they fear that immigration has been allowed to dominate the debate to such an extent that these other matters may get overlooked.

George Osborne, for example, has made several speeches in which he has said that what matters most regarding Britain’s long-term position in the EU is whether we can negotiate a new arrangement that safeguards Britain’s interests even while we remain outside the eurozone which is likely increasingly to dominate decision-making in the EU. That may be far harder to negotiate than altering benefit rules for EU migrants.

Some eurosceptics fear Mr Cameron may be tempted to focus all his energies in getting his newly-defined policy on EU immigration agreed in order to be able to fight his in-out referendum on that alone, believing he’d stand a good chance of winning it. But that would leave Britain in the worst of all worlds, eurosceptics argue, because, exhausted by a negotiation and referendum campaign focused on immigration rules, no one (least of all our EU partners) would want to contemplate going through the whole thing again on the more fundamental issues. In other words, Mr Cameron might win on immigration but leave Britain weaker (in their eyes) in the EU that then emerged.

Michael Portillo, the eurosceptic former Tory cabinet minister and now a political commentator, has warned that the whole renegotiation/referendum policy could end up strengthening the europhiles. His argument is that if Mr Cameron were to win a referendum to keep Britain in the EU but on terms that were scarcely better than the current ones, then the europhiles would say we had to make the most of our membership now that it had been ‘settled’, and even consider joining the euro, since the eurozone is where all the action will be.

That, however, is all some way off. Mr Cameron’s immediate battle is going to be over the immigration rules. Do you think what he is adopting is sensible or do you think he should be pushing for even tighter curbs? Do you agree with the principle of the free movement of people within the EU or not? Should we be prepared to leave the EU if Mr Cameron doesn’t get what he’s asking for? And do you share the view that there are other more fundamental issues that need renegotiating before we take a decision in a referendum on whether or not we should stay in the EU?

Let us know your views.