Keith Vaz
Main Page: Keith Vaz (Labour - Leicester East)Department Debates - View all Keith Vaz's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(11 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
The Foreign Secretary is a great champion of enlargement and knows the importance of the freedom of movement of individuals. Is it the Government’s intention to put advertisements in the Romanian and the Bulgarian media saying that they do not want people from Romania and Bulgaria to come to this country? That is in the public domain; it has been mentioned. How does that square with the website of the British embassy in Bucharest, which encourages Romanians to come to work and study in the United Kingdom?
Mr Hague
I think that the right hon. Gentleman’s latter point relates to the GREAT campaign, through which we encourage people to visit the United Kingdom. We encourage people to come as tourists to the United Kingdom and so on. On the question of advertising, I have to tell him that we are very stingy about advertising because we are reducing one of the biggest budget deficits in the world, and the Government do not pay for much advertising anywhere around the world, so we do not at present plan to place the advertisements that he describes.