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Blair was urged to delay rights for brand spanking new EU employees, recordsdata reveal

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Getty Images A close up of Tony Blair and Jack Straw's faces in conversation. They are wearing suitsGetty Photographs

Tony Blair along with his overseas secretary on the time, Jack Straw

Senior ministers urged the then-Prime Minister Tony Blair to delay granting employment rights to jap and central European employees when the EU expanded in 2004, newly-released recordsdata have revealed.

In February that yr, Overseas Secretary Jack Straw identified that Britain was alone amongst the larger EU members in providing a “concession”.

The concession meant folks from Poland and different newly-joined EU international locations would have the ability to work in Britain after 1 Might.

Virtually all the opposite massive states wouldn’t enable this for 2 years: solely Italy was undecided. Smaller EU international locations, apart from Eire, had work allow schemes which might restrict numbers.

Papers from the Nationwide Archives – which have been launched now they’re 20 years outdated – present Straw proposed a six-month delay for the UK.

He stated: “I imagine we might be confronted with a really troublesome state of affairs in early Might”.

He warned the UK may “be pressured to revoke the concession within the least propitious of circumstances”.

His letter was copied to different senior ministers, and the then-deputy prime minister John Prescott supported Straw.

Prescott wrote that he was “extraordinarily involved” concerning the potential affect on social housing.

He was additionally fearful that many employees would come to London and the South East, and unable to search out respectable housing would “resort to sharing overcrowded housing in poor circumstances”.

Getty Images Tony Blair and Jack Straw sit at a table with large books in front of them and they are holding pens.Getty Photographs

Tony Blair and his Overseas Secretary Jack Straw signing the EU structure

However David Blunkett, the then-home secretary, argued the economic system wanted the “flexibility and productiveness” these new employees may present.

Eight jap and central European international locations joined the EU in 2004, together with Poland. In keeping with the federal government, the variety of Polish nationals dwelling within the UK elevated from round 69,000 to round 853,000 over the subsequent decade.

Blair requested whether or not the UK may have work permits, however as an alternative the Dwelling Workplace speedily drew up a “employees registration scheme”.

That scheme required A8 employees – these from the eight new member states – to pay a payment and register their employment in a particular job. Failing to take action would incur a major effective.

From Might 2004 onwards, No 10 monitored these registration numbers week by week.

The federal government was notably fearful as a result of it had publicly estimated that solely 13,000 new employees a yr would come to Britain after the EU expanded.

The recordsdata present that Kate Gross, one of many personal secretaries at No 10, wrote to the prime minister on 2 July 2004.

She enclosed a briefing observe for the press which might say “the inflow of latest arrivals predicted by the media merely hasn’t arrived”, regardless that that 13,000 had been exceeded.

She defined that whereas 24,000 folks had registered with the scheme, most had been dwelling within the UK earlier than 1 Might.

Kate Gross’s memo notes that the majority had been younger, aged 18-34 – and there was no proof of them “exploiting the advantages system”. Blair scrawled “that’s the key” by the aspect of that assertion.

National Archives Excerpt from National Archives that shows Tony Blair's handwriting saying: "That is the key".Nationwide Archives

Nevertheless Kate Gross famous “the important thing elephant lure is how these figures relate to earlier HO [Home Office] projections”.

If purposes continued to extend, she wrote, the variety of new arrivals would hit “50-60,000 by Might 2005”.

The following set of figures for the scheme confirmed a drop, and a briefing paper to No 10 stated: “It seems like we’re over the height in purposes.”

The Immigration and Nationality Directorate “ought to be congratulated on implementing the employees registration scheme briefly order”, it stated.

The issue was, the scheme wasn’t offering an correct report.

The self-employed didn’t need to register, for instance, which excluded many constructing employees like carpenters.

And there was little enforcement.

The shortcomings of the employees registration scheme had been uncovered in late 2005, when in accordance with the WRS there have been solely 95 Polish plumbers in the entire of the UK.

In 24 hours the Every day Mail discovered 95 Polish plumbers in London alone.

Over the subsequent few years a whole lot of hundreds of A8 nationals, largely Polish, moved to the UK.

Although many have now returned, the 2021 census reported 743,000 Polish-born folks resident in Britain.

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