It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall). All his speeches on EU matters have reflected his close interest on this subject, and it is right that he should bring his concerns to the House before Croatia’s accession. I do not agree with what he said, but he has every right to express his views and to have the House debate their merits.
I congratulate the Minister for Europe and the Government on how they have conducted the negotiations that mean that Croatia will become the 28th member of the European Union. As a former Minister for Europe whose responsibility was the EU enlargement that brought in the first major set of accession countries since the reunification of Europe after the fall of the Berlin wall, I know how difficult these negotiations are. We had to visit quite a number of countries, and I am sure the Minister has had to do the same, but at least we are dealing now with just Croatia. It must have been a very difficult task and I congratulate him on what he has done. It is right that we should focus on the amount of money that the EU has given Croatia; I think that about €1 billion have been given in support. So Croatia is ready for accession and we look forward to welcoming it.
The amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Bury North deals with immigration, which is always a contentious subject in the House, but in recent years EU migration to the UK has also become contentious. I should place on record my belief that the arrival of eastern European migrants in this country has made Britain a better place. They have contributed enormously to our country, helped our economy, provided new skills and brought in an enviable work ethic. Not all of them, incidentally,
have arrived in huge numbers and then decided to stay. Some, of course, have stayed; some have returned to their countries of origin.
Enormous numbers of Poles, we were told, were coming to flood our towns and cities, take our jobs, take over our pubs and take our women—or whatever the saying is when foreigners arrive in a different country. That did not happen. The myths put about by some tabloid newspapers did not materialise. In fact, those immigrants have been model citizens contributing to our country in cities such as Bristol, Leicester and London. We welcome them and we welcome what they have done.
We need to have the argument on EU migration in the context of what has happened before. If we focus almost exclusively on all the negative aspects of EU migration, we miss the real importance of enlargement and the way in which these countries have made the European Union stronger and wider, and have created more jobs in our country. I think that as a result of Croatia coming in, exports from our country to Croatia will increase, as they have done to other EU countries.
I want to examine two aspects of what the hon. Member for Bury North said. The House needs to know that his arguments were directed against the whole notion of Britain being in the European Union, rather than just against letting little Croatia in. He makes arguments much deeper than the ones about enlargement, and those are for another day. As the House knows, I favour an in/out referendum because it gives the British people the opportunity to have their say on this and other issues, so on that matter I am on the same side as the hon. Gentleman, and I supported his Bill when he put it before the House.
If we look at the immigration issue and are sensible about it, however, we will find that we are limited anyway in extending transitional arrangements beyond what has been agreed by the Government. When the Minister replies, he will be able to tell us whether we are right or wrong, but the seven-year transition is the same arrangement as we had for Romanians and Bulgarians. That has not been a huge success, if I may say so. I have had representations from the Romanian and Bulgarian ambassadors about the length of time it takes for their citizens to exercise their treaty rights in order, for example, to get their permits to work in this country—their worker registration cards.
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The fact is that it now takes between eight and nine months for a Romanian citizen to write to the UK Border Agency and get approval to work here. I do not believe that this helps our reputation as a country that welcomes people from the EU who want to come here and work legitimately. We are not talking about people coming to work here illegally, or about people who do not wish to comply with the law of this land. We are talking about people who want to pay their tax and national insurance, want to be part of Britain and want to comply with the law. They are having to wait up to eight months just to get their cases seen to by the UKBA.
Opening up the can of worms that is the UKBA is not the purpose of today’s proceedings, but interestingly, according to the report of the chief inspector last week,
he discovered that at one stage last year 100,000 letters from MPs, applicants and solicitors were left unopened in Liverpool. Some of the applications from Romanian and Bulgarian citizens to come into this country may well have been among those letters, which could explain why things have taken so long, but the fact is that it takes the UKBA a very long time to process such applications.
I hope that as well as telling us whether the transition period can be extended, as the hon. Member for Bury North would like, the Minister can give us an assurance that once Croatia comes in, if its citizens wish to apply for their certificates and accession documents in order to work here, the process will be smooth and efficient
I did not quite get the point that the hon. Member for Bury North was making about English as a second language. In countries such as Romania and Bulgaria, English is a second language. The Romanian, Bulgarian and Croatian citizens whom I have met speak English beautifully. I am not saying that every single Romanian, Bulgarian and Croatian is expert at speaking English, but I did not understand the hon. Gentleman’s point. He will find that they understand and speak our language extremely well. If they want to live and work here, they make a big effort to learn English so that they can speak it well and get jobs in this country.
I would be interested to know, perhaps not today but at another time, what the hon. Gentleman meant. I find that all those who have come from eastern Europe—Poland, Hungary and others in the first wave of accession countries, right the way through to Croatia—want to be able to come here, settle in, integrate and be part of our country, in the same way as the 1 million British citizens who currently live and work in mainland Europe, if I may call it that, are able to contribute to the economies of Poland, Romania, Croatia and France. Over 1 million British citizens and their dependants live in the European Union and work there, but I do not see those countries and those Parliaments having the kind of arguments that we sometimes have here about those who come from EU countries.