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European Union (Accessions) Bill

I follow with some enthusiasm the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Swansea, who implied that Amendments Nos. 1 and 2 are not really necessary and that a different approach should be taken. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, is entitled to ask legitimate questions about these matters but I hope that the amendments will not be pressed. If I recall correctly, they are the same—literally word for word—as those proposed by the noble Lord’s colleague, the honourable Member for Altrincham and Sale West, Mr Graham Brady, in the Commons and they are none the worse for that. After a very thorough debate in the Commons, the amendments were not pressed, and I think the conclusion should be the same today, unless I am incorrect in anticipating the outcome of this debate. It was bizarre that the Minister who wound up the Second Reading debate was the Minister for the Middle East, Dr Kim Howells. I suppose that was a sharing out of the labour tasks. He said:"““A decision on whether Romanian and Bulgarian nationals will be given complete access to the labour market will be taken closer to their countries’ accession.""It would certainly be premature to make any decision now without sufficient information and planning. A final decision will be made after full consideration of the state of the domestic labour market””.—[Official Report, Commons, 1/11/05; col. 792.]" With that in mind, I specifically ask the Minister to repeat that reassurance and explain in a little more detail, without taking too much of the time of the House, the way in which the supervision and surveillance of the influx of additional workers in the transitional period will be handled, depending on the overview of the numbers. The amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Howell, along the lines of the original amendments in the Commons, concern the free movement of workers from the accession countries. We on these Benches feel strongly that the amendments are unnecessary. I would be very reluctant to support the idea of a cumbersome procedure of additional reports for four months in the initial stage and then every six months in the total seven-year transitional period. That would introduce the kind of cumbersome, bureaucratic built-in structure which all good Tories, according to the noble Lord’s previous utterances on these matters, should resist with great passion. Accepting that proposal would lead to the danger of encouraging people in our society who hold extremist views about immigration and giving them scope to complain in the wrong way about the number of people coming here. Although the number was nearly 300,000—way above the initial estimates, as mentioned by previous speakers—generally the reaction of British society—the host society—has been that they are very welcome, they have made a great contribution to our economy and are doing very well working in Britain so far. The amendments, therefore, should be set aside, except that they give us proper scope to make sure—as was requested by the noble Lord, Lord Howell—that the transitional arrangements will be properly constructed, even without his specific suggestions in the amendments. I assume that that will be the conclusion of this debate. The Minister has already given a part assurance in the debate on Clause 1 that a lot of the modalities of the transitional period for the EU eight would be built into the system, but with the extra vigilance and supervision made necessary by the intrinsic state of the economic systems of Romania and Bulgaria, suffering as they are with the disutilities that we have referred to, including organised crime. With that in mind and with the explanations that we have already received from the Government about how the system for the EU eight—which has run for two years now—was established, with Malta and Cyprus being excluded for obvious reasons, we can be reassured. I hope that that will be how the Minister will deal with this, because even if we are very enthusiastic about the accession of these two countries—if the remaining problems can be solved in the final year or within the initial year if that is necessary—we need to be reassured. We need to reassure the public that these matters will be properly looked after, controlled, invigilated, supervised, scrutinised and observed very closely by efficient government officials and their political representatives, so that society can move forward when the two new countries eventually come in.