Tony Blair’s Labour government has pressed ahead with plans to grant unrestricted access to the UK to migrants from eastern Europe despite growing concerns from senior ministers, according to newly released official documents, The Standart reports.
The documents, handed over to the National Archives in Kew, west London, show that Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw called for a delay, warning of a surge in immigration unless certain controls were put in place.
But others, including Home Secretary David Blunkett, argued that the economy needed “the flexibility and productivity of migrant labour” to continue to thrive.
The Home Office predicted that the impact on immigrant numbers of unrestricted access to the UK labour market when eight former Soviet bloc countries joined the EU in May 2004 would be relatively limited.
Just weeks later, files show that the number of arrivals far exceeded previous estimates. One official said they faced an “elephant trap” and advised ministers to “publish less, not more” when it came to releasing official figures.
Mr. Straw later admitted that not introducing any transitional controls, as almost all other EU countries had done, was a “spectacular mistake” with far-reaching consequences.
It is widely believed to have contributed to a significant increase in immigration in the years that followed – net migration rose to more than 200,000 a year, while cheap labour from Poland and other new EU member states was blamed for being inferior to local workers.
Successive governments have struggled to bring migrant numbers back under control, and this fuelled the anti-European sentiment that eventually led to the Brexit vote in 2016.
When the Labour government announced in 2002 that immigrants from G8 accession countries would be free to come to Britain to work from the moment they joined the EU on May 1, 2004, it was expected that other member states would follow suit.
With less than three months to go, however, Mr. Straw wrote to Mr. Blair urging him to rethink the situation, warning that it had changed dramatically in the intervening time. He wrote:
“If we do not think this through now, I believe we could be faced with a very difficult situation in early May, and could then be forced to take urgent action to suspend the concessions, in the least propitious of circumstances. In particular, whilst some EU member states were never going to give this concession, other EU member states who we thought would be joining us have begun to peel away. France, Germany, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Finland, Greece and Luxembourg are all imposing transition periods of at least two years. Portugal is likely to follow suit. Italy is undecided. Sweden, Netherlands and Denmark – who were with us – have all announced the introduction of work and/or residence permits for those wishing to avail themselves of the concession.”
He was backed by Mr. Prescott, who said he was “extremely concerned” about the pressure on social housing due to the sudden influx of new migrants.
But Mr Blunkett, backed by Work and Pensions Secretary Andrew Smith and the Treasury, insisted they must stick to the plan. He wrote:
“On purely technical, economic grounds there can be no doubt that our present policy is the right one. Our economy needs the flexibility and productivity of migrant labour which is a key part of our continued economic success.”
He said he would tighten rules to stop migrants coming to the UK just to claim benefits, but rejected calls for a system of work permits as “not only costly and bureaucratic, but I believe ineffective.” He also added:
“I fear we would only be storing up more deep-seated political difficulties in the very near future and closer to the general election. The ineffectiveness of any scheme would be quickly exposed.”
Mr. Blair appeared to be starting to have doubts, wondering whether tightening benefit rules on their own would be enough. He said in a handwritten note:
“Are we sure this does the trick? I don’t want to have to return to it. I am not sure we shouldn’t have a work permits approach also. Why not? It gives us an extra string to our bow.”
Warning of a possible influx of Gypsies from Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia seeking British benefits only heightened his fears about the need to send a deterrent “message.”
“We must do the toughest package on benefits possible & announce this plus power to revoke visa plan and message to Romas,” he scrawled in a handwritten aside.
After the G8 joined, the government tried to claim that all was going according to plan, with Mr Blunkett saying that “the predicted surge in arrivals had not occurred.” But behind the scenes, officials warned that the Home Office forecast of a net increase in workers of no more than 13,000 a year was not true.
In July 2004, Kate Gross, No. 10’s senior immigration adviser, wrote:
“Our approach has been to err on the side of publishing less rather than more, and to tell a clear and simple story. The key elephant trap is how these figures relate to previous HO projections of the impact of EU FMOW (free movement of workers). In practice, the actual number of new arrivals since May 1 is only 9,000. But at the current rate of increase this number will exceed the 13,000 prediction by the end of August, and if applications continue at the current rate would hit 50-60,000 new arrivals by May 2005.”
