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Managed Migration

On the hon. Gentleman’s first point, we made it clear in the Command Paper on the points-based system what stage schemes such as the sector-based schemes, the seasonal agricultural workers scheme and those covering food processing had reached and how they would continue. The hon. Gentleman is right to suggest, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), that much of the purpose of the points-based system is to reduce to the five tiers the 80-odd routes that have developed higgledy-piggledy for education, work and study. He is equally right—this is very important—that if the document is written on the assumption that some 350,000 workers from the A8 countries are filling many of the low-skilled positions in the UK economy, and that there will be a collective governmental ““Oops!”” in 2011 when all the barriers in all the European countries are down and nationals of the A8 countries have access to all the labour markets, the entire pool of labour filling the gaps from the A8 countries will suddenly dry up because it has gone elsewhere in Europe. The system must be and is flexible enough to take account of that. I do not know and, if I may be flippant for a moment, the Home Office, given its previous record on futurology in these matters, does not know what will happen by the time we get to the transition from 2009 to 2011 and the barriers coming down across all European labour markets. I suspect that a residual element will still come to the UK for assorted cultural and other reasons because we have allowed them to come earlier rather than later. The number will probably not be 350,000, but the points-based system must be flexible enough so that if those gaps are not filled by A8 nationals once they are able to work throughout the European Union, the next step beyond EU preference will be to look in the wider international labour market.