Clause 4 outlines, in its various subsections, how the transitional regulations will be structured. I do not propose, unless the Committee presses me, to go through each subsection in detail this afternoon. Suffice it to say that the Home Office will come forward in 2013 with a statutory instrument to implement the transitional regulations. I am sure that there will be ample opportunity at that point for the House to examine in detail exactly what those arrangements propose and how effective they will be in practice. They will no doubt go to a statutory instrument Committee and then to the House of Commons as a whole.
My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) used the debate on clause 4 to open up broader concerns about freedom of movement. There is no doubt that this issue troubles a lot of people, as he and my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) pointed out. I do not want to go overboard on this point. However, the fact that transitional controls were not imposed on the previous groups of countries joining the EU, along with the fact that the number of people who were thought likely to come from those countries to the UK was underestimated—the estimates were wrong by a considerable margin—has sapped public confidence in the principle of freedom of movement. It is therefore right that we should say clearly not just that rigorous transitional controls will be employed in the case of Croatia, but that it would be our intention to apply transitional controls to the full extent permitted to any future new accession country to the European Union. That is both right and a way of providing reassurance to our citizens.
People are understandably worried when they see suggestions that the principle of freedom of movement is being interpreted in a way that stretches beyond the rights set out in the treaty—primarily, the right to work and to seek work—and is at risk of being abused by people moving to gain from a more generous welfare system in an EU member state.