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Mr. Michael Moore (Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale): As the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Mr. Spring) would expect, I listened carefully to him moving the amendments and the manner in which he did so. I agree with some of his remarks, for example, on the need for proper and adequate information and on the need for Government accountability to be at the forefront of all that we do in this House. However, we Liberal Democrats support the principle of the Bill, which is that all citizens of the accession countries should have full rights in the EU from day one. They will have the freedom to travel and to stay in this country and we believe that their having the right to work here makes good sense. In practical terms, that must remove any suspicions from those who seek to enter this country under their freedom to travel rights, and police and others will no longer need to spend a lot of time questioning the motives and activities of people from new member states who have come to this country.
Let me say up front that I do not suggest that the hon. Gentleman wishes to pander to the arguments of some on the far right who attack immigration and immigrants. In his speech, he referred to the dangers of such views and dissociated himself from them. However, we in this country are sometimes in danger of forgetting our proud heritage of welcoming immigrants, sometimes as refugees, who go on to make huge and valid contributions to our economy. We need to face facts: this country has many skills shortages which enlargement may help us to tackle. It is entirely appropriate to welcome all citizens of such countries as soon as they have formally become part of the EU.
Safeguards are included in the accession treaty, and it is entirely appropriate that the Government monitor the situation, as I am sure they propose to do. I do not quite understand why the two-year and seven-year restrictions in the amendments have been chosen, or why they would achieve something that would not be achieved by ongoing monitoring.
Mr. Spring: The answer is simply that those are the derogations that have been secured by existing EU member countries.
Mr. Moore: I accept that other countries have achieved them. I was simply waiting to hear why the hon. Gentleman thought they were appropriate.
At the end of this debate, a judgment has to be made on the appropriate way forward. It appears to us that the Bill as drafted and the safeguards outlined will be sufficient to achieve the objectives. We believe that legal immigration and the associated economic benefits are preferable to illegal immigration and the associated costs. For those reasons, we cannot support the amendments.
Dr. Whitehead: I support the Government view on the arrangements for free movement of workers, and I suggest that the amendments are inappropriate. I draw the Committee's attention to some spectacularly poor pieces of empirical evidence brought to bear by the hon.
Member for West Suffolk (Mr. Spring) in moving the amendments. I intervened on him to discover whether he was aware of the number of people in the UK who respond to opinion polls by saying either that they would wish to move from whether they currently live, predominantly in cities, to the country, or that they might wish to move out of the country entirely.Regrettably, he was unable to provide me with the information contained in those polls. However, I recall that the figures set out in a number of them revealed that about 70 per cent. of those who responded to the polls suggested that they might like to move from the city to the country, and 25 per cent. said that they might like to move out of the country to live and work somewhere else.
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We all know that that does not happen. Seventy per cent. of people are not about to move to the country, and nor are 25 per cent. of the work force about to leave the UK to live and work somewhere else. Yet the hon. Member for West Suffolk appears to suggest, with authority, that similar polls conducted in applicant countries are likely to be absolutely right. The fact is that they are not. They are no more likely to be right than the polls that have been conducted in the UK, as we can see from the evidence.
Of course, some people will respond to polls in the new accession countries by saying that they might consider moving and working abroad.
Mr. Mark Simmonds (Boston and Skegness): Is the hon. Gentleman aware that in agricultural communities such as mine in Lincolnshire there are a significant number of migrant workers, some legal and some illegal, who have come from what will be the accession countries? That is causing a great deal of unrest in places such as Boston. The problem will be exacerbated after the proposed legislation is put in place.
Dr. Whitehead: I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has mentioned that. I shall come later to the question of so-called illegal migrant workers. I thought that he might ask me whether I was aware that many people in urban communities are moving into rural communities. That is the situation in some instances. I was making the point that the opinion polls that we are discussing cannot be relied upon in any country as accurate measures of likely future movements.
Mr. Bryant: There are about 500,000 Brits living in Spain who have effectively revivified large parts of the economy of southern Spain. Is it not true that sometimes immigration is downright positive, instead of the negative version that we hear sometimes from Opposition Members?
Dr. Whitehead: My hon. Friend makes a strong point. To assume that any movement will be bad news is to paint an unnecessarily negative picture of what happens in reality.
The other piece of empirical evidence that the hon. Member for West Suffolk brings as a centrepiece to his arguments is what has happened in Germany. That is curious. I attempted to remind him in an intervention
that after Germany was unified it became one state. Social movement, movement between families and movement to obtain work temporarily then applied as they apply internally in any other state. I made the point that over many years there have been instances within EU states where movement within those states has been detrimental to some parts of the economies of those countries and helpful to other parts of those economies. Indeed, the EU already has arrangements in place for regional assistance and aid within its structural funds.
Mr. Spring: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman is slightly missing the point of my remarks. I gave a range of opinions, including that of the Commission. I hope that he will agree with me, and say so, when I say that given that it was well known that the Bill would come up for consideration in Parliament, it is appalling that the Government's view, and their commitment to providing a view on these issues, was released only today. We would not need to have this discussion if the Government had provided the information in an appropriate way.
Dr. Whitehead: I agree that information should be before hon. Members in the best available form—and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to guide and enlighten the Committee on that point. As I was not, and am not, party to how the figures were released, I can shed no further light on the matter.
The hon. Member for West Suffolk is making a series of hypothetical points. That is important in terms of the evidence on which he relies. Entirely different circumstances apply in Germany, for example. The rather nebulous wishes that may be expressed by some people in applicant states have little bearing on the reality of what will happen or is likely to happen.
Ann Winterton: I find it difficult to follow the case that the hon. Gentleman is advancing. I have half-German cousins, and I suggest to him that following reunification it was found that people from the east, who were in low-wage jobs, tried to move to the west, where there were better wage rates. At the same time, investment in industry went from the west to the east. It seems to me that that is a pretty good example of what might happen if there is a wave of immigration to the higher wage earning countries from the poorer countries in the east, and investment will probably go in the opposite direction.
Dr. Whitehead: The hon. Lady claims that she has listened carefully to my train of argument, but she appears not to have listened at all. I was not talking about the movement of people from one state to another. To combine my two points, the circumstances in which people express the wish to move from their sovereign state to another state often do not come to pass in reality. People who respond to opinion polls in this country do not do what they say they will do when confronted by somebody with a clipboard in the street. As the hon. Lady says, matters may be different in terms of internal arrangements within sovereign states in some circumstances.
As the hon. Lady will know from her direct experience, the circumstances of the reunification of Germany, including the population movements and the economic movements, and the social and cultural problems, are—this is my view—specific to the German circumstances, and are fairly complex.
The hon. Member for West Suffolk is seeking to suggest that it is likely that millions of people will come from the applicant states to the UK to live and work after the EU has expanded. That case is made on extremely flimsy grounds—that is the argument that I was attempting to put forward.
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