European Union (Accessions) Bill

The hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) has rightly described clause 2 as the provision that will regulate the migration of workers from Romania and Bulgaria to the United Kingdom. Many negative things have been said about migration. One does not need to look very far in the tabloid newspapers to see migrants being made the butt of nationalism, jingoism and, from time to time, racism. That is not peculiar to the United Kingdom, although our tabloids might be a little bit more energetic than others in generating public heat on the issue. From time to time, political parties are tempted to crawl down that path. We saw that at the recent general election, when more than one political party referred to immigration—they probably regret having done so. When my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe interprets clause 2, he should consider ““provision”” in a positive context. The tabloids, to which I have already referred, say that immigration sometimes has to happen and that it is generally negative because we do not want to change our way of life. I do not know what our way of life is in the United Kingdom, and I do not exactly know what our way of life is in Europe. Our way of life is internationalised and we operate in a global world. The movement of people is one of the key features of a global economy and an internationalised society, which is not something new—if one reads biblical history, there were lots of movements of people in the period before Christ. If one considers the history of the United States and Canada in the 19th century in particular, there were massive movements of people. From time to time, people have moved into EU countries. In the 1960s, Turkish immigrants into Germany specifically serviced the up-and-coming light engineering industries. In this country, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, we experienced waves of immigration from the Caribbean and elsewhere, again to meet our particular labour needs. We live in a different world in which the migration of people is not an exception—it is the norm—and people will continue to move more and more. In this country, highly skilled people who are looking for a better opportunity might go to work elsewhere in the EU or the United States. Why should we be different from people from developing countries or people from countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union and that have acceded or will accede to the EU? I suspect that we will see ever-increasing migration. It used to be said that the catering industry in London was full of people from all around the world, and particularly from some of the eastern European countries, but that is now true throughout the whole of the United Kingdom. In Scotland and the north-east of England, where I travel fairly regularly, many eastern European people are working in the catering industry. In what I call the direct works industry—house maintenance and, to some extent, house building—there is an ever-increasing need to use skilled labour from eastern European countries. An arm’s length management organisation runs council housing in Newcastle, and a programme has been agreed between the local authority, which sadly we do not control any more, and central Government.