The Prime Minister has let it be known that he plans to make a big speech on the subject of European immigration. It’s not hard to see why he wants to. The issue is providing lethal ammunition to his political enemies in UKIP. But working out what he should say in order to disarm those enemies and prevent the issue from torpedoing the Tories’ electoral chances next year is proving a very tough challenge. What are his options? And what, in the end, is the right policy for Britain?
Immigration has been one of the most controversial issues in British politics for at least a decade, if not very much longer. The reason is quite simply that the number of new immigrants swelling Britain’s population has risen sharply over this time. The Conservative policy has been to reduce ‘net’ migration –the difference between the numbers coming into the country and the numbers leaving – to ‘tens of thousands a year’. The trouble has been that one of the major elements in this equation, the number of citizens of the European Union choosing to move to Britain, has been out of direct government control. That’s because the right of all citizens of the EU to live and work in any EU state they choose is a founding principle of the EU itself.
The enthusiasm of many EU citizens, especially from poorer countries in eastern and central Europe, to take up this right is what has boosted the numbers. It has also provided a huge electoral gift to UKIP among those voters who are hostile to immigration in general and European immigration in particular. UKIP has a simple solution. Britain should leave the EU. Then the right to free movement would end and controls could be brought in.
This issue was highly significant in UKIP’s victory in the Clacton by-election earlier this month and may well play a decisive role in the Rochester by-election next month. That’s why Mr Cameron wants to address the matter head on in a major speech, though whether he plans to deliver it before or after Rochester voters have had a chance to make their views known is not yet clear.
The impression he wants to convey by trailing this speech is that he would go far beyond the ideas for restricting European immigration that are either already in place or are already being floated.
For some time now there have been controls temporarily limiting the right of free movement to people from countries newly joining the EU. The last Labour government, unlike many other EU governments, chose not to take advantage of this provision when Poland and other former communist countries joined the EU over a decade ago. The result was a far larger wave of immigration to Britain than the government had expected. When Romania and Bulgaria joined some years later, the Labour government took advantage of the opportunity to postpone the freedom of their citizens to move here and the coalition further tightened those restrictions. Similar restrictions apply to the newly-joined Croatia.
But Mr Cameron wants to do something about the rights of people from all EU member states, not just the newly-joining. One idea that has been floated is for there to be new restrictions on entitlements to welfare benefits in the countries to which EU migrants move, the idea being that this might deter immigration and so reduce the numbers. This proposal has met with some support among other EU governments, notably the German government, and it is thought that an agreement could be forthcoming on it in negotiations Mr Cameron plans to hold before a referendum on British EU membership, if he wins the election.
Much more radical, however, is the idea of restricting outright the free movement of EU citizens between EU member states. How this might be done remains a matter of head-scratching. One possibility is for Britain to dust down a largely unused provision within existing EU treaties for a country to apply a temporary ‘brake’ on such immigration when an emergency situation is deemed to have come about. Another is for Britain to impose a quota on the number of national insurance numbers it issues: without such a number no one can work legally in Britain.
Neither of these ideas, however, is likely to meet with much favour among our EU partners. On the emergency brake idea there would inevitably be dispute about whether circumstances justified using the break. More fundamentally, both proposals are a direct challenge to the very principle of free movement that is enshrined in the Treaty of Rome itself. So it’s highly unlikely to get agreement from other member states.
Mr Cameron might be tempted to announce that he would go ahead unilaterally and simply impose some restriction or another on the numbers of EU immigrants. But if he did so, Britain would undoubtedly be hauled up before the European Court of Justice which would certainly rule that the action was illegal.
Bernard Jenkin, the senior backbench Tory MP, acknowledges that such a move would indeed be almost certainly illegal but he thinks Britain should be prepared to contemplate doing it anyway. His argument is that when we signed up to the Treaty of Rome, there were far fewer countries involved and, in that pre-globalisation world, there was far less movement of people in general. Furthermore, he argues that Britain, outside the eurozone, is proving itself to be a far more successfully growing economy with much less unemployment than is the sluggish eurozone, and that that is acting as an incentive for EU workers to move here.
These arguments are unlikely to persuade our partners, however. They will point out that even with current levels of EU migration to Britain, our employment levels remain historically very high; in other words, these migrants are not stealing British jobs. And they argue that if there is to be free movement of capital and of companies within the EU, there must also continue to be free movement of labour.
Mr Cameron’s problem, therefore, is that if he proposes changes that have some likelihood of being agreed with our partners, they are most unlikely to be sufficient to appease those who think radical measures need taking. But if he takes those radical measures unilaterally, he will be leading Britain to the exit from the EU. For many eurosceptic Tory MPs, of course, that’s absolutely fine, which is why they are keeping up the pressure on the Prime Minister.
There is, though, a wholly different approach to the issue. It’s to say that we shouldn’t be worrying about EU immigration in the first place. The Tories may have got themselves in a pickle over the policy of reducing net migration and so ending up in potential confrontation with our EU partners, but that’s their problem, not the country’s. From Britain’s point of view, these critics would say, immigration in general and from the EU in particular is a good thing. Our hotel and catering sector, our building industry and even parts of the City (which has attracted large numbers of high-earning French and German people) have all benefited from these immigrants and our country is wealthier and more efficiently run than would be the case if their numbers were restricted.
In the current political climate, in which UKIP seems to be making the weather, few politicians seem willing to make this case. But once Mr Cameron has made his speech some may feel that the case for continuing unrestricted EU migration should not go unmade.
What’s your view? What do you think the Prime Minister should propose - not just in his own political interest but also in the national interest?
