|
Column Number: 003
Third Standing Committee
on Delegated Legislation
Monday 26 April 2004
[Mr. David Taylor in the Chair]
Draft Accession (Immigration and Worker Registration) Regulations 2004
4.30 pm
The Minister for Citizenship and Immigration (Mr. Desmond Browne): I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Accession (Immigration and Worker Registration) Regulations 2004.
The regulations were laid before the House for approval on 25 March.
I welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Taylor; it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. Although there may be complexities relating to the statutory instrument and its interrelation with other regulations that are still being drafted, I trust that we will ensure that our comments stay strictly relevant this afternoon.
As this is the first time that I have spoken in the House since my appointment as Minister for Citizenship and Immigration, I should like to make a few remarks about my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Beverley Hughes). In my view, her untimely—and characteristic, given her honesty—resignation is a significant loss to the Home Office. I observed from another Department her work as a Minister in the Home Office with significant admiration, and every day of the three weeks plus that I have been in this job has increased my admiration for her. She carried out her job very efficiently.
My right hon. Friend made a significant difference in the delivery of Government policy in the areas for which she had responsibility, and I have been struck by the number of hon. Members, particularly including Opposition Members, who have sought me out to say so. I am disappointed that, when she needed them to come to her aid, they were conspicuous by their absence. They know who they are and why they thought that she was a good Minister: it was because she dealt efficiently and considerately with the constituency cases that they brought to her attention.
Mr. Jim Marshall (Leicester, South) (Lab): I agree with my hon. Friend's points about his predecessor. I was about to say—the observation is now a little redundant—that it shows his expertise and knowledge of his subject that he does not require any Home Office advisors to be present. In view of one of the reasons for the departure of our right hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston, which showed that some responsibility may be placed at advisors' desks, that may perhaps be an advantage for him.
The Chairman: Order. I was happy to allow the Minister to make his comments, but we must move on to the statutory instrument.
Column Number: 004
Mr. Browne: Thank you, Mr. Taylor. I will move on, having first recognised my hon. Friend's remarks about my predecessor.
The draft regulations are of the highest importance. They set out the arrangements that will govern the rights of citizens of eight of our new European partner nations to work in this country after 1 May, or accession day, as I think it has become known.
The United Kingdom has been at the forefront in calling for the early accession to the EU of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Malta and Cyprus, because of the benefits that enlargement will bring to the UK and Europe. We were encouraged by the fact that all the main political parties supported the accession treaty when it was presented to Parliament early last year. It was clear from the cross-party support for the European Union (Accessions) Act 2003, which obtained Royal Assent in November, that we are in agreement in this House that enlargement is good for the accession states, Europe and the United Kingdom.
The draft regulations set out the transitional measures that we are putting in place for citizens of eight of the accession countries; Malta and Cyprus are the exceptions.
Mr. John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): Will the Minister tell us whether, if the regulations are passed, it will be easier or more difficult than previously for a migrant worker from the accession states to get into Britain?
Mr. Browne: That is a very generalist, comparative question.
Mr. Redwood: It is a simple question.
Mr. Browne: The right hon. Gentleman knows very well that the question is not a simple one. The fact is that the rights of workers from accession states to work in this country are governed—and will be governed if the regulations are passed—by the accession treaty. It is not the Government's intention to put obstacles in the way of people who want to exercise their right to work and consequently reside in the United Kingdom and make a contribution. Through the regulations, our intention is to monitor and regulate that process. From the information gathered, we will measure its effect on our labour markets and, if appropriate at some time in the future, we will respond to developments. I will refer to that matter in more detail if he will bear with me. He will then get the details of the answer, taking into account the complexity of his question.
The regulations are part of a package of measures announced by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary on 23 February that will be complemented by other regulations being laid by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the Paymaster General and the Deputy Prime Minister. The accession treaty provides that, after accession, nationals from all of the 10 new member states and their families will be able to travel freely throughout the EU for any purpose. However, under article 39 of the treaty, and as set out in section 2(2) of the European Union (Accessions)
Column Number: 005
Act 2003, member states are allowed to regulate access to the labour markets by citizens of the accession states concerned. The accession treaty allows us to put in place transitional arrangements for a period of up to five years, with a review after two years, and the draft regulations provide for those arrangements.
The draft regulations, which were approved in the other place last Friday, and which I am satisfied are compliant with our obligations under the European convention on human rights, do two things. First, they implement the European Community legislation that ensures that citizens of the accession states will have the same free movement rights as citizens of existing member states. That legislation gives citizens the right to enter the UK and live in this country if they are working, studying, self-employed or retired and self-sufficient, subject to the registration requirement in the regulations.
The fact that the rights of accession country nationals to reside in Britain will be modified in that way has implications for the benefits to which they will be entitled and the tax arrangements to which they will be subject. Those implications are not drawn out in the regulations, which are designed to regulate the labour market, but in related regulations for which the Inland Revenue, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister will be responsible. Those will be placed before Parliament for approval under the negative procedure. Together, the regulations embody the position that we have taken consistently, which ensures that accession does not create new opportunities for benefit shopping.
Secondly, the regulations provide that the eight accession state workers, as opposed to other economic categories, will generally only have a right to reside in the UK if they are authorised to work for their employer under the new worker registration scheme. Part 3 of the draft regulations will set up that scheme, and I shall explain the reasons why before dealing with what the regulations say about who will be subject to it and how it will work.
Mr. Redwood: Can the Minister tell us how many people have entered the country legally under all the different permitted routes from the accession states during the past year? What is his forecast for the numbers effecting legal entry for the coming year?
Mr. Browne: I do not have that information for the right hon. Gentleman, and as he knows and has been repeatedly told by my right hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston, I am not in the business of forecasting the numbers that may come in future.
There have been a number of attempts to make such forecasts. Most recently, the Evening Standard published some information on the issue. However, I was not privy to and have no way of assessing the methodology by which it arrived at its figure. The Home Office has published independent work by University college London—not by the Home Office—that indicates a figure of 13,000. The Home Office has not, however, accepted or adopted that figure; it has merely published the information to show what other work people have done and what the methodology is.
Column Number: 006
Our position—I shall deal with this again in more detail later—is that there are currently between 500,000 and 600,000 vacancies in our labour market. Unfortunately, we do not have the people with the skills to fill many of those jobs. It is manifestly obvious that in parts of the country, people do not want to do some of the jobs that are available. So our labour markets can work properly, there are opportunities for people to come here and make a contribution. In the first instance, that will substantially be a matter for employers. The contribution will be made through those people's work, the tax that they pay and their support of our system. We believe that that process will operate as it did in 1971, the previous time of accession. Our view is that some of the suggestions that the numbers will be significantly greater than we can absorb or than our labour markets or other structures can support have been exaggerated, and that that is as much the case now as in the past.
The citizens of the accession states will be welcome to come here and take up employment, provided that they comply with the conditions of the worker registration scheme. Nationals from the accession states will have the right to free movement, and the scheme is entirely consistent with that right. We have always been clear that the UK needs migrant workers to fill acute skills shortages and gaps in our labour market.
UK employment is at a record high—it is up by 1.7 million or more since spring 1997—and the UK has one of the lowest International Labour Organisation employment rates in the EU; indeed, it has historically low levels of claimant unemployment. The benefits to our economy of having migrant workers with the skills, flexibility and willingness to work are clear, and our sense of those benefits is shared by many of the stakeholders whom we have consulted on the regulations. There is significant support from employers for allowing migrant workers with the skills that they are looking for to work and make a contribution in the UK. However, people consistently say that we need to be able to regulate that access and to measure its effects on our labour markets.
The scheme will allow us to monitor the impact of accession on the UK labour market and to take action, possibly in particular sectors or regions, if and when any adverse impacts are detected. However, we do not expect that that will be necessary. As I have said, the experience of the accession of Greece, Spain and Portugal to the European Union suggests that this latest enlargement will benefit the economies of the accession countries themselves and that disparities in wage levels, for example, will reduce over time. There has already been some evidence in that regard; in Poland, for example, the process of enlargement has attracted significant foreign investment, helping it to achieve rapid economic growth.
Nevertheless, if there were evidence that the influx of new workers posed a threat of serious damage to the UK labour market or any part of it, we would be able to introduce further restrictions. I know that there has been concern, particularly in the media, about the numbers of people likely to come here to work, and we
Column Number: 007
have heard varying estimates over the past few weeks. As I said, the figure of 54,000—a truly speculative figure—was quoted last week in the Evening Standard, but the methodology was not produced to explain how it was arrived at, and it does not appear to me to have been particularly well researched.
The reality is that, from 1 May, accession state nationals will be able to exercise their free movement rights and to take up employment. Many nationals from the accession states are already working legally in the UK, providing a vital contribution to its construction, hospitality, health and farming sectors. I could go on, but I am sure that hon. Members know from their own experience the contributions that are made by hard-working visiting workers.
Some of those workers will be required to register under the worker registration scheme if they have been working for less than 12 months uninterrupted or if they change employers after 1 May. I will say more shortly about how the scheme is intended to operate, but suffice it to say that nationals of the accession states who take up new employment from 1 May will be required to register. They will need to register every time they start work for a new employer, and that will affect the numbers of people who are registering. The arrangements that we are putting in place will enable people to work legally in the UK from 1 May and pay taxes and national insurance, rather than work illegally and, in many cases, be exploited.
The key point is that we will be monitoring those who register to work under the worker registration scheme and we will be open and transparent about what data we have and what they mean. That means that we will be able to take account of the effects of accession when considering how to operate existing employment routes to the UK.
I know that concern has been expressed about the timetable for the arrangements. We have always taken a positive stance towards enlargement of the European Union, but it is only right that we should have taken the time to consider other member states' positions before formulating our measures. That is what we have done and we will be in a position to bring those arrangements into force on 1 May, as I have explained. Since the announcement by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary on 23 February, we have benefited from discussions involving a range of interested parties, including employers—principally the CBI and the Recruitment and Employment Confederation—the TUC, the National Farmers Union and the Health and Safety Executive. The practical arrangements that we are putting in place are all the stronger for that extensive consultation.
| 
