John Humphrys asks: Is David Cameron taking the right path on immigration?
Immigration, especially by people from eastern European countries who are now in the European Union, has become probably the hottest issue in British politics. It is creating intense feelings of resentment and anger in certain parts of the country and is proving a headache for all the major parties. It has become a recruiting agent for UKIP. Now the Prime Minister is taking action. But is it the right action, and is it enough?
One of the central tenets of the European Union has always been that there should be free movement of labour: any member of any EU country can work in any other EU country. The principle is central to the single market, something even eurosceptics tend to support. But many people think it has got out of hand, especially since former communist bloc countries have joined. Mr Cameron claims that about a million eastern Europeans came to Britain after 2004 and blames the last Labour government for allowing them to do so.
Tony Blair’s government was alone among EU governments in deciding to opt out of transitional arrangements that would have delayed for up to seven years the right of workers from recently-joined countries such as Poland and Hungary to work in Britain. His government massively underestimated the numbers who would take advantage of the chance to come there. Former Labour home secretaries such as Jack Straw and David Blunkett now admit they made a big mistake, “spectacularly” so, according to Mr Straw.
For the second wave of eastern European EU-entrants, from Romania and Bulgaria, the Labour government imposed a five year delaying period. That was extended to seven years by the coalition government. But it comes to an end at the end of this year and there has been fear of another massive influx next year.
Of course the last wave of eastern European workers brought benefits as well as costs. The ‘Polish plumber’ has become a byword for cheap and efficient labour. Our hotel and catering industries seem increasingly to depend wholly on often highly educated young Poles, Hungarians, Lithuanians and others, just to keep going. Even highly eurosceptic MPs, like the Tory backbencher, Mark Pritchard, acknowledge that hard-working immigrants have been a boon to our economy. The same might be expected of new Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants.
But there are big problems, nevertheless. First, it seems too many people simply wrong-headed to import eastern European labour, however good, when there are hundreds of thousands of native British people unemployed. There is a sense of real grievance that hard-working immigrants are ready to put up with worse working conditions and lower pay than many British workers are used to. It is claimed they are not only undercutting British workers but also removing any incentive employers might have to train young British workers to fill their places.
Secondly, there is a widespread belief that many EU immigrants are coming here not so much to work as to take advantage of a more generous welfare benefit system as well as our education and health systems.
And thirdly, there is the often fractious effect on communities when large numbers of foreigners, unable to speak English, arrive. In many cases there is no problem because young, educated eastern European workers quickly learn English and integrate into British life. But there are plenty of instances where things are much more difficult. Recently, David Blunkett warned there could be riots in his native Sheffield because of the presence on the streets of gangs of Roma, whom many people find intimidating. It is in the context of these concerns that David Cameron has decided to act.
He also has a political imperative. A real threat to the Conservative Party vote comes from the right in the form of UKIP, which has been campaigning strongly on the issue of EU immigration. Next year will see the elections to the European Parliament, elections which many voters use as an opportunity to register a protest vote. There is a common expectation among political commentators that UKIP will come top of the poll, a result that would be hugely embarrassing for the Prime Minister a year before the general election.
Up to now the coalition government has been attempting to defuse the political problem immigration causes by reducing overall net migration into Britain. It has had some success in getting the numbers to fall towards its goal of ‘tens of thousands’, but in recent months the figure has started to go up again.
Now Mr Cameron is proposing specific measures with regard to EU immigration, and particularly welfare entitlements. He wants to deprive new arrivals of their current right to claim out-of-work benefits straightaway and require them to wait for three months before they become eligible. He wants job seeker’s allowance to be available for no longer than six months for foreign nationals and for housing benefit to be denied to newly-arrived EU immigrants looking for work. He proposes that there should be a minimum income test for non-British EU workers applying for income support. And he wants newly arrived Romanians and Bulgarians who beg or sleep rough to be deported and denied the chance to return for a year.
Such measures naturally please those eurosceptic Tory backbenchers who have been calling for action for months. But they are also supported by Mr Cameron’s deputy, Nick Clegg, whose LibDem party is the most europhile among the main political parties. Mr Clegg called these measures sound and reasonable, adding: “Anyone who believes we are better off as an outward-facing nation should support these changes. If we don’t get to grips with these issues, pro-Europeans surrender the debate to the UKIPs of this world.”
These, however, are short-term measures and Mr Cameron wants to go much further. He wants the blanket right to free movement of labour within the EU to be restricted and is proposing various ideas as to how this might be done. One possibility is to deny the right of a worker from a newly-joined EU country to work elsewhere within the EU until that country’s national income has risen to some agreed share of the average EU income. Another is to give each EU country the right to set an annual cap on the number of EU immigrants it is prepared to take in.
But these ideas are much more fundamental. They strike at one of the very ideals the single market and the EU itself were set up to fulfil, free movement of labour. Mr Clegg has certainly not committed himself to agreeing to this. Indeed Mr Cameron knows that he will have a struggle to get the EU as a whole to agree. So these longer-term ideas are for after the next election when Mr Cameron promises, if the Tories are returned, to renegotiate a whole range of the terms of Britain’s membership of the EU and then to put the result to a referendum about whether Britain should remain within the EU or not. These ideas will be part of that negotiation. The Prime Minister claims he already has indications of support for such ideas from Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. But there is serious opposition too. The European employment commissioner told me on Today it might show Britain as a “nasty” country.
In the meantime, Mr Cameron faces an election. With immigration such a key issue, his latest measures could be crucial to whether he wins or not. Are they the right ones? And are they enough?
