Downing Street Says » PM’s Speech

The Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) briefed journalists on the Prime Minister’s major speech on immigration at a CBI organised conference tomorrow in London. He would set out the Government’s strategy to make controlled migration work for Britain, make clear that we would be firm on abuse, but underline the economic benefits which controlled migration brought.

His speech came the day after publication of the draft ID Card Bill and in the week that Europe would enlarge to twenty five. He believed this made it particularly timely to set out the facts about migration and challenge some of the myths. For example, he would highlight a recent MORI poll which found that people here estimated the proportion of ethnic minorities in Britain as 23%, when the real figure was just 8%. But he would also reassure the public that we would tighten the system where necessary. He believed that the debate was currently taking place in ‘an information vacuum’ and that that had to change.

The Prime Minister believed that the benefits which migration brought to the UK had never been greater, but he recognised that concern over immigration had risen in the UK as the world came closer together and more people were able to travel. He would acknowledge that it was the British people’s nature to be moderate, that they could accept migration that was controlled and selective, but they would not tolerate abuse and the Government could not simply dismiss concerns as racism.

He would say, “We will neither be Fortress Britain nor Open Door Britain. Instead, we will tighten the immigration system as necessary and deal with abuses so that public support for controlled and selective migration which benefits Britain is maintained”.

He would draw attention to what the Government had done to tighten the asylum system and the measures announced last week to deal with abuses in the immigration system in respect of marriages and students. He would say that this week, the ODPM would be introducing new regulations that would mean no economically inactive migrant from the European Economic Area would have access to social housing. He would point to the potential benefit of ID cards in tackling fraud and enabling people to test whether a potential worker or service user was legally in the UK and eligible, therefore, to work or access services. He would point to the ongoing programme of work at stocktakes, such as the one last week, looking at abuse of temporary employment routes into the UK, better enforcement and tightening rights of appeal.

Looking ahead to May 1, he would say that no one would be able to come to the UK simply to claim benefits and live off the state. Everyone must pay their way. To take account of the new shape of the EU, we would significantly reduce the quotas of non-EU low skilled migrants coming in to fill labour shortages in the agriculture, hospitality and catering industries. He would make clear that from May 1 people from the ten accession countries would be able to travel freely throughout the UK and take up self-employment opportunities. When Spain joined the EU there were scare stories about economic migrants. Now because of the way Spain had thrived in the EU, 300,000 UK citizens lived in Spain.

He would set out facts. We were not a particularly high migration country. We had a lower foreign-born population than Germany or France. Less that 5% of our workforce was born overseas compared to 8% in Germany and 15% in the US. Net migration in 2002 was down on the previous three years. He would say, “Those who say migration is out of control or that the UK is taking more people than other countries are simply wrong.”

Finally, he would highlight the economic and social benefits. Our economic growth rate would be almost 0.5% lower over the next two years if net migration ended (Prospects for Trend Growth HMT 2002). Over the past century, migrant workers had plugged skills gaps – the Poles, Irish and Italians who had helped rebuild Britain after the war. The IT and Business professionals from the US, EU, India and elsewhere who had helped drive London’s growth as the financial centre of the world from the late 80s. A quarter of all health service professionals were now born overseas. He would say that the movement of people into and out of the UK was, and always had been, absolutely essential to our economy, and that Britain as a whole was immeasurably richer for the contribution that migrants had made to our society.

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"the potential benefit of ID cards in tackling fraud and enabling people to test whether a potential worker or service user was legally in the UK and eligible, therefore, to work or access services"

This is hilarious. The draft Bill envisages that small businesses won’t have the magic biometric thingies which will be necessary to do that, so instead they’re going to be expected to go down to their local public library or Job Center to test the cards. So I can imagine that will work pretty well then.
Comment by Chris Lightfoot — 27 Apr 2004 on 12:36 pm | Link
To give credit where it is due, I must applaud any attempt to correct the lies and mis-information about immigration circulating in this country.

Unfortunately I don’t think these statistics will appear in The Daily Mail, The Express, The Sun or any of the other racist rags because it will interfere with their own anti-foreigner agenda.

Its about time all politicians stopped trying to win votes by lauding policies designed to keep ‘them’ out of this country.
Comment by Uncarved Block — 27 Apr 2004 on 1:07 pm | Link
Any argument which begins "It’s about time all politicians stopped trying to win votes by .." is obviously doomed by the nature of its phrasing. Politicians prosper by winning votes. The only way to stop a politician from doing something is to convince them it will not win votes.

Ditto for newspaper editors and selling papers, etc. etc.
Comment by David Boothroyd — 27 Apr 2004 on 3:13 pm | Link
True; if a politician could achieve a majority of voters ONLY by appealing to the mentally handicapped, he’d do exactly that. Before we knew it, we’d all be eating compulsory asparagus for breakfast or some such. Unfortunately, although most government policy is treated with healthy skepticism by the (probably very small) minority who think in depth about politics, the vast majority of the sheeple get their "understanding" of politics from rags such as the Sun and Mail. It’s THESE people the government is trying to appeal to – they couldn’t care less about those of us who can see through their duplicity; they couldn’t care less if not one single person in the whole country actually understood anything about politics (I’m sure the’d prefer it that way). All they want is a majority, doesn’t matter who it is or how they have to persuade that majority, as long as they DO get a majority and their jobs are safe for another 5 years. I honestly believe there is not a single policitian in the country who cares more about righting wrongs than they do about their own position of power, as measly as that may be.

Once again, back to the subject of ID cards. And exactly the same as for GM crops; if there was not one single person in the country who agreed with the idea, if all his own party disagreed with it, Tony Blair will introduce them anyway. The man is a sociopath; his arrogance is so staggering that he truly believes he can do no wrong. When was the last time we had ANY kind of admission from Blair that he MIGHT have made the wrong decision? I certainly don’t remember one. Well, we did have the concession over tuition fees that the subject should have been debated more thoroughly first; seems, with the EU referendum thing that that no longer applies. If it ever did.

Apart from his continuous mismanagement of our own country, the man is a danger to world peace and stability, if for no other reason (there are plenty) than that he backs Bush up so readily. The sad thing in my eyes is that this murderer will probably get voted in again, purely because of the apathy of so many voters and the assumption that "there’s no-one else".
Comment by PapaLazzzaru — 27 Apr 2004 on 4:04 pm | Link
Well I had hoped for an intelligent response and not a rant but one does not always get what one hopes for.
Comment by David Boothroyd — 27 Apr 2004 on 4:36 pm | Link
Labour are relying on an old political mistress Tina – ‘There Is No Alternative’.

They can continue slavishly following George Bush, sucking up to big business and ruling by sound bite rather than reasoned argument because they know (and the electorate know) that the Tories would do exactly the same thing only more so. The LibDems and other smaller parties are ignored because the media don’t take them seriously and so neither will voters. So if you don’t agree with Government policy what do you do about it?

Anyone for revolution?
Comment by Uncarved Block — 27 Apr 2004 on 4:44 pm | Link
You’re right once again, David; one does not always get what one hopes for. I had hoped that the UK would not get involved in Iraq without a second resolution. I had also hoped that the government wouldn’t ignore public opinion and say yes to GM crops. I’ve lost count of amount of times I’ve HOPED the government would follow the path of common sense and logic, only to have almost every single one dashed. So, although reading back I don’t agree it was a "rant", if it was then it was fully justified! I rather suspect, however, given your known support of all things Labour, that it was my description of Tony Blair as a murderer which really got under your skin. And incidentally, I also don’t agree with your view that "the only way to stop a politician from doing something is to convince them it will not win votes" – Tony Blair has had it explained to him countless times that his direction on a number of issues is not a popular one; when has this ever caused him to change his mind?
Comment by PapaLazzzaru — 27 Apr 2004 on 5:03 pm | Link
I enjoyed the ‘rant’ it said most of what I was thinking.
There are other ways to influence government policy, but they are mostly long term.
Become a Civil Servant Policy maker
Become a Politician – that means being really nasty until you reach a position of influence, the problem being that by the time you reach that position you have forgotten how to be sensible.
Become a lobbyist
Become a freedom fighter – to ‘off’ a selection of nasty politicians – before spending 7 years in prison (allowing for time off for good conduct)
Become an American President
Give the Labour party loadsa dosh

enough…
Comment by Roger Huffadine — 27 Apr 2004 on 5:22 pm | Link
I’m glad you accept that Tony Blair is a courageous politician who acts as a leader of public opinion rather than a follower, and one who is not prepared to let ignorant opposition to entirely safe GM varieties dictate his policy.
Comment by David Boothroyd — 27 Apr 2004 on 5:25 pm | Link
See, once again David, you talk like a politician. How do YOU know that opposition to GM was purely ignorant opposition? How do YOU know that the GM varieties in question were entirely safe? The answer is, you don’t. And I certainly DON’T accept that TB is a courageous leader; if you want some adjectives to describe him, I’d go for egocentric, self-righteous, mendacious, donwright dishonest, etc etc. Courageous? Not a chance! If he was as courageous as you suggest, he’d be telling George Bush to back off or risk losing the support of the UK government. He’d also be telling Rupert Murdoch to wind his neck in…
Comment by PapaLazzzaru — 27 Apr 2004 on 5:30 pm | Link
"Entirely safe" is entirely beside the point. Let’s face it: It’s not a huge money savings, it’s not a huge environment savings. It’s a nice to have that comes at a price – instead of taking your seed from your own fields, you have to pay for it from Monsanto, because the plants you just grew can’t breed.

I’m sure we haven’t seen the end of the GM debate; but I’m not going to lose sleep over whether or not UK farmers get permission to make Monsanto rich. If you *honestly* think it matters that much, you need to step back and take a bit of perspective: the farmers are already up to their necks in subsidies, and all GM does is funnel that cash into a multinational biotech company instead of a local grain supplier.

The world has bigger problems than whether or not your corn is a mutant; one of those bigger problems is "should we be growing it at all", when the only way the industry survives is through handouts, at the cost of cutting out developing markets.

The GM issue is one of those great button-pushing debates: in the end, it’s all a lot of hot air on both sides, and isn’t going to do anything useful for us today. Maybe someday, someday, it’ll live up to its promises – but that’s no reason to throw money at it now.
Comment by Gregory Block — 27 Apr 2004 on 5:51 pm | Link
Just on a facetious note, I’m surprised Blair is bothering to address the question of ID cards at all. Why it was just a few days ago he was telling us opoosition to ID cards was based on technological issues, not concerns over privacy!

"a recent MORI poll which found that people here estimated the proportion of ethnic minorities in Britain as 23%, when the real figure was just 8%" This is as much meaningless chaff unless the definition of "ethnic minority" is also published. Ethnic minority is such a wooly all encompassing term that you could easily prove 8%, 80% or 180% of the country was "ethnic minority". Blair is not helping.

Re: politician rant. I can think of only one minister who briefly showed some real integrity and that was Michael Meacher. Seems to be awfully quiet nowadays.

Wasn’t Boothroyd Cherie’s surname before marriage to Tony? Any relation, David?

I’m afraid I don’t agree with your opinion on GM crops, Mr Block. I’ve looked into it quite closely. I think current GM crop research is being rushed ahead without enough thought. Slow and steady wins the race, and no matter what hoops you have to jump through, it is important to understand the probability of gene transfer to other weeds/crops before large scale trials. Prediction: Genetic pollution will be the buzzword of the next 50 years. It’s more than a simple issue of subsidy or new technology, there are some real dangers that should be measured carefully.
Comment by Stuart Brown — 27 Apr 2004 on 7:42 pm | Link
There are admittedly many different definitions of an ethnic minority but I think the one they are referring to here is whether people class themselves as ‘white’ – 92.1%. An alternative measure discussed is place of birth where the percentage born outside of the UK is 8.3%. (figures from 2001 census http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001/profiles/uk.asp )

Whatever way you cut it the point is still valid that the public perception is wrong and there aren’t as many immigrants in this country as they think there are
Comment by Uncarved Block — 27 Apr 2004 on 8:06 pm | Link
Cherie’s maiden name was Booth, not Boothroyd. Her father is very well known to be Tony Booth the actor (Til Death etc).

As regards Michael Meacher’s integrity you have obviously overlooked the accusations over his ownership of many flats in London from which he had a substantial rental income, and the time he sued a journalist who had ridiculed his claim to humble origins (Meacher said his father was a poor farm labourer; it turned out he had been a stockbroker advised to retire to the country for the sake of his health, who occasionally helped out on a farm).

Having said that one of my friends is just about to start working for Meacher.
Comment by David Boothroyd — 27 Apr 2004 on 9:33 pm | Link
Reverting to the PM’s speech on immigration: this must surely be the start of the next General Election campaign?

When will that election take place?

I predict (and you read it here first) that the General Election, the European Election and the Mayor of London Election will be held on the same day: Thursday, 10 June 2004.

Over to you, Tony!
Comment by Patrick Haseldine — 27 Apr 2004 on 10:33 pm | Link

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PM’s Speech

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