I am afraid that that is not true. I do not want to end up giving a lecture on this, but let me say that the previous Government made a simple mistake in allowing access before the transitional periods were up
for those from the entire A8 group of accession countries—Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and so on. Therefore a large number of people who could not get into Germany and France at that time came to this country, because they were allowed legitimately to do so; ours was the only big country to do that. As a result, we end up with a Polish community—with Polish shops, Polish newspapers and so on—and so where do Poles go when everything is opened up? They come to where there is an indigenous Polish community, and that is perfectly reasonable. All of this is rational behaviour on the part of people who want to work, make a living and get on in life, and I cannot disapprove of them doing that. So one mistake was made then and that is what it led to. We are not going to be in the same position in respect of Romania and Bulgaria, so it is difficult to predict the numbers. I was the shadow Home Secretary who challenged the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) when, as Home Secretary, he said that 13,000 eastern Europeans would be the total number coming to this country. He eventually got so nervous about this that he started saying, “I am the Home Secretary, but the Home Office is saying this.” He realised that his numbers were wrong and the real number turned out to be millions.