Romanian and Bulgarian Accession

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Wednesday 27th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

Indeed, and a leading Labour party Front Bencher has already indicated that a Labour Government might consider increasing levels of immigration, were Labour to come back into power. Certainly this Government have been tightening up not just on the work permit route from outside the EU into the UK, but on every route of access into the UK. As the Conservative party committed to doing before the election and as was agreed in the coalition agreement, the Government have introduced a cap on non-EU economic migration into the UK. We have a limit on the number of people who can come here as tier 2 workers and we have reformed the other routes, and I am pleased to say that as a result we have seen immigration from outside the EU fall.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

Of course it is right for all Governments to target the abuse of benefits. Will the Home Secretary reassure us, however, that this measure is not designed specifically to deal with Romanians and Bulgarians as the transition ends in just 30 days’ time? Does she agree that the real issue is the push and pull factors? That is why it is necessary to work with the Romanian and Bulgarian Governments to find out the reasons and causes of this migration. Romania has not as yet accessed 87% of the funds it was given on accession. We need to work with the Romanians so that they can build on their infrastructure and their citizens are able to remain there—this applies to Bulgaria, too—which is what they want to do. We cannot have freedom of movement without movement, which makes this a fundamental issue for the European Union rather than one that can be dealt with by a change in the benefit rules.

[Mrs May]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his measured response and his question. Of course he is right to say that making the changes to tighten the benefit rules, seeking to remove people not exercising their treaty rights and then providing a year-long ban applies not only to Romanians and Bulgarians but to all those exercising their free movement rights and coming here from the European Union. What I took from the last part of the right hon. Gentleman’s question was, I think, support for the concept that this Government have set out—that we want to renegotiate the treaty. My party has certainly set that out, and the Prime Minister has set it out. We want the treaty to be renegotiated and, within that, we want to address the issue of free movement. Crucially, other member states across the EU are now working with us, because they also see potential problems arising from the abuse of the free movement right.