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European Union (Accessions) Bill

The Bill sets out the necessary legislation for the freedom of movement of workers from Romania and Bulgaria. Hand in hand with the Bill, we need to examine carefully what happens when migrant workers come to this country from new EU member states. Many of these workers are enticed here by promises of terms and conditions that sound better in theory than they do in reality. We need particularly to tighten up on the use of zero-hours contracts by agencies, which mean that workers who come here to take up full-time posts can find that sometimes they have so few hours of work in a week that they do not earn enough in that week to pay their rent. We need to improve agency regulation to eliminate sharp practices and ensure a level playing field between agencies that abide by the rules and those who ruthlessly exploit workers. We need to ensure that the increasing use of migrant labour does not undercut our workers and depress wage levels. We also need a better transfer of information between all EU member states about dangerous offenders to avoid a repeat of a dreadful incident in which a nasty sexual attack was carried out by a man who had come from eastern Europe to work in my locality. Only afterwards did it became clear that he was a known offender with a previous conviction for rape in his own country. I was horrified to discover from the local chief inspector of police that there is no transfer of information about sex offenders from original or from new EU countries. We must develop a proper unified system of notification of such offenders across the whole of the EU to reassure and protect local people. I welcome these new opportunities for migrant workers from Bulgaria and Romania, but we must ensure that we can be proud, not ashamed, of their working conditions.