The Prime Minister David Cameron has set out his thinking in a speech yesterday on how best to manage migration in the UK.
I’d like to underline several points from his speech.
Firstly, David Cameron reaffirmed that transitional controls on Romanian and Bulgarian workers will be lifted in 2014. He said “from the beginning of next year, the transitional controls on Bulgaria and Romania will be lifted. That means Romanians and Bulgarians will have the right to come here and work here, because they’ll have the same rights as other EU citizens.”
He also said that those Romanians and Bulgarians already working in the UK “generally work hard, pay their taxes and are valued by their employers.”
David Cameron set out the significant benefits that immigration brings to the UK economy, and repeated his commitment to the EU Single Market, and the principle of free movement. As Europe Minister David Lidington said in Bucharest this month “We recognise and value the contribution made by the tens of thousands of hard-working Romanians in the UK, whether in professional jobs, construction, healthcare or agriculture.”
The British government wants to ensure that those who come to the UK do so because they want to contribute to the country rather than because they are drawn by the attractiveness of the UK benefits system or the opportunity to use public services. The Prime Minister set out a number of measures to protect public services, the welfare system and migrant workers from any abuses. These are directed at all immigrants, whatever their country of origin. They are part of a wider overhaul of welfare which is designed to ensure that people in the UK are always better off taking work than relying on benefits. So David Cameron set out new ideas on how to ensure that job seekers allowances only go to those who are genuinely seeking a job. And that there are stronger residency tests applied before people qualify for social housing or income-related benefits. Fines on employers and landlords who exploit illegal immigrants will also be increased. The Prime Minister also plans to discuss changes with EU partners that would limit the amount we pay in child benefit for children who are living abroad, and to make the home country responsible for economically inactive migrants for the first year they spend in another EU Member State.
The measures that the Prime Minister outlined cover both EU and non-EU migrants. Where they concern citizens of EU and EEA countries they will apply equally to nationals of all EU and EEA countries: there will be no discrimination based on state of origin. So they are not specific to Romanians or Bulgarians. As of next year, when transitional controls are lifted, Romanian and Bulgarian nationals will be on the same footing as all other EU citizens in the UK labour market.