Mr Howarth, you bring me on to the crux of the point. We already have a concentration of HMOs in Wisbech and the fens. That situation will only become more acute when Bulgarian and Romanian people come into those areas. We know that there is already a concentration within certain communities that are ill equipped to deal with it. I welcome what the Minister is doing to try to prevent people from coming in and to persuade, in relation to the pull factors, those who are coming in with, perhaps, a misguided view. I would love him to be 100% successful, but we know that despite his best efforts there will be an inflow of people from those countries and we are still not taking action on the problem that is here now, so let us get on with it. Let us attack it now in order to ease the pressure when those from Bulgaria and Romania come in.
I come now to my second point. Many people from Bulgaria and Romania will come in with vehicles that are registered in their country. Under the law, they have six months in which they can drive on our roads before the vehicles have to be registered. The House may not be aware of how many people were prosecuted last year for not registering their vehicle after six months. It was zero—not one. The Government seem to be under the impression—I note this for the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee—that every single person from eastern Europe who came in under the previous accession registered their vehicle after six months and not one of them continued to drive on the roads without doing that. Surgery cases that frequently come before me suggest that that might not be the case in my constituency, and logic would suggest that it is not the case. My point is this. There are constraints on what we can do under EU law and what we can renegotiate, but in terms of Bulgarians and Romanians coming into the country, we can at least show their neighbours, the British people, that the laws have been applied equally to them, because if my constituents have to MOT, license and insure their car but they see a rickety vehicle that does not look roadworthy and that they strongly suspect is not registered and they see a Government who never take action to prosecute someone for that, that feeds into the sense of grievance that all are not being treated equally. That is an issue
that the Government need to tackle ahead of further migration from Bulgaria and Romania. It is not a big point, but I make it for illustrative purposes.