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Migrant Workers (Regularisation)

The reason for that is that Italy’s immigration policy is completely different to ours. In Italy, 1.4 million people have been regularised in the past 15 or 20 years, but that is the way in which it provides a route to migration and everyone knows that. We have a different policy. One has to study the facts and take the evidence, as I have done, but the idea that such an approach might be a pull factor is an argument, and one that cannot be denied. However, the push factor is the real reason for migratory flows in most of south-east Europe. One has only to look at the crisis in the Balkans to understand that. There are still some 500,000 internally displaced persons in the Balkan countries despite all that we have done with our European partners to improve the situation. One could debate the issue ad nauseam, but there is not the time to do so and I want to put the other point of view. Some say that regularisation rewards illegality, and I understand that argument. I equally understand the concern that the longer we discuss whether or not there will be a regularisation programme, the more some people might think they should try to get into Britain so that they can become part of the amnesty. That leads me to my next point: we need to distinguish between a regularisation programme and an amnesty. None of the recent regularisation programmes has been an amnesty, which is when all irregular migrants are legalised. That is not what has happened. In Greece the regularisation programme introduced by the Conservative Government elected 18 months ago is a combination of regularising people who have earned their right to be there and have employment, many of whom came from Albania and the Balkans, and forcibly returning people who should not be there. There is a strong return policy in place. The arguments need to be balanced. The critical issue that we must face is that, as the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) said, on the Government’s own analysis there are several hundred thousand people in this country whom there is no prospect of returning. What on earth are we going to do with and about them?