BLAIR’S BRITAIN, 1997–2007
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Reform of labour migration did not, however, require primary legislation, enabling controls to be relaxed under the radar of media interest.
Growing recognition in the Treasury of the contribution migrants were
making to economic growth and productivity ensured pressure on IND
officials to cut red tape. ‘The Treasury was always pro migration’, Pearce
says. ‘You could always count on their support.’ New schemes were introduced for the highly skilled to enter without a job offer and the number of
work permits rose from 29,000 in 1997–8 to 68,000 in 2001–2, holding
steady above 59,000 each year since . 23
Labour shortages in hospitality and food processing led to an entry
scheme for low-wage jobs and to more seasonal agricultural workers.
Working holiday-makers, once restricted to part-time non-professional
work, were allowed greater mobility in the labour market, as were overseas students. Employers eager to access low-skilled migrants welcomed
the initiatives but, significantly, had applied little pressure for them, suggesting that they were experiencing little difficulty finding irregular
migrants, including asylum-seekers, who were willing to do the work.24
23 Report of the United Kingdom SOPEMI correspondent to the OECD, 2006, www.geog.
ucl.ac.uk/mru/docs/Sop06_final_200207.pdf.
24 See research findings in Bridget Anderson, Martin Ruhs, Ben Rogaly and Sarah Spencer,
Fair Enough? Central and Eastern European Migrants in Low Wage Employment in the UK
(York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2006), on employers willing to ‘bend the rules’ to
employ irregular migrants.
Independent research showed that the growth in migrant labour was
bringing benefits to the UK labour market and the Treasury, albeit
modest (except for the firms and public services otherwise unable to get
staff) and that fears about the impact on wages and unemployment were
proving unfounded.25
EU enlargement
It was in that context that the decision was taken to open up Britain’s
labour market to nationals of the new EU member states on 1 May 2004.
Anticipating that the net total who would take advantage of this opportunity could be in the region of 20,000 a year, the decision initially aroused
little political or public interest. Only in the weeks leading up to 1 May
did media anticipation that a significant number of Roma might come,
and that migrants might choose to live on benefits rather than work, lead
Blair to focus on the issue. Blunkett stood firm, insisting that the
migrants were needed for low-skilled jobs which would otherwise
be taken by illegal migrants. A compromise was reached: a Worker
Registration Scheme, recording the migrants’ employment and monitoring their highly restricted access to benefits – a scheme which had the
downside of recording those arriving but not those returning home, thus
inflating the figures.26 Nevertheless, the net figure was undoubtedly
greater that the government had anticipated, as was the impact on local
communities and local authorities in areas lacking experience of migration.27 Once again, research confirmed benefits for the UK economy
(with some evidence that these are recognised by a minority of the
public);28 if not always acceptable working conditions for the workers
25 Jeremy Kempton, Migrants in the UK: Their Characteristics, and Labour Market Outcomes
and Impacts, RDS Occasional Paper 82 (London: Home Office, 2002). The evidence on
the impact on source countries, meanwhile, is mixed: remittances from migrants can contribute to development goals but recruitment of professionals in some cases exacerbates
an unwelcome brain drain. Select Committee on Development, Migration and
Development: How to Make Migration Work for Poverty Reduction, Report of the Sixth
Session, HC 79-1 (London: House of Commons, 2004).
26 630,000 registered between May 2004 and March 2007. Accession Monitoring Report A8
Countries, May 2004–March 2007 (London: Border and Immigration Agency/DWP, 22
May 2007).
27 See Audit Commission, Crossing Borders, Responding to the Local Challenges of Migrant
Workers (London: Audit Commission, 2007).
28 Sunday Times poll, August 2006, found 14% strongly agree that immigration is generally
good for Britain and a further 29% tend to agree.
themselves.29 ‘The objective was always to meet the needs of the
economy’, Don Flynn, says. ‘It did not take into account the needs of the
migrants themselves.’
Free movement for EU nationals nevertheless had one effect on
migrants which passed almost unnoticed. For those who had been
working in the UK illegally before 1 May 2004, the decision to allow free
movement was in effect an amnesty, transforming them overnight into
EU citizens with a right to live and work in the UK.
Media reaction to the number of Eastern Europeans, coupled with the
pressures on local services, ensured that citizens of the two newest EU
member states, Bulgaria and Romania, were not allowed free access to the
UK labour market in 2007. The economics said yes, but the politics no.
With a Home Secretary, John Reid, now keen to impose restrictions, Blair
played little part in the decision.
The spotlight had earlier focused on Bulgaria and Romania when a
junior IND official alleged that staff had been told to fast-track visas
from those countries. Home Office Minister Beverley Hughes unwittingly misled the House of Commons that she had been unaware of
claims that fraudulent applications were slipping through the net.
Costing the minister her job in April 2004, the incident also exposed the
complexity of the labour migration system: a plethora of different categories of entry and a weak enforcement regime, leaving the system vulnerable to abuse.
At the Labour Party conference that year Blair announced a ‘top-tobottom’ analysis of the immigration system. Charles Clarke, now Home
Secretary, went on to launch a five-year developmental plan, Controlling
our Borders, Making Migration Work for Britain, three months before the
2005 general election. With a dual focus on strengthening border controls
and a points system to streamline the more than eighty different channels
for entry to work, it launched migration policy into a third-term managerial phase, subsequent policy statements30 optimistic that biometric
technology and efficient administration could finally bring inherently
unpredictable migration flows under control.
29 N. Gilpin, M. Henty, S. Lemos, J. Portes and C. Bullen, The Impact of Free Movement of
Workers from Central and Eastern Europe on the UK Labour Market (London: Department
of Work and Pensions, 2006); Anderson et al., Fair Enough?
30 Immigration and Nationality Directorate, A Points-Based System: Making Migration Work
for Britain (London: TSO, 2006); Immigration and Nationality Directorate, Fair, Effective,
Transparent and Trusted: Rebuilding Confidence in Our Immigration System (London:
Immigration and Nationality Directorate, 2006).
International students
Labour migration had not been the first immigration chann
el overhauled
to meet the needs of the economy. Fees paid by international students
were of growing significance in higher education and in 1999 Blair
launched an ambitious scheme for the UK to attract 25% of the Englishspeaking student market, a 100% increase in students. Visa restrictions
were relaxed and students allowed access to the labour market while
studying. By 2004, the UK had achieved 24% of the global market, the
income from fees to higher education institutions growing from £622
million (1997–8) to £1,275 million (2003–4). The absurdity of forcing
graduates trained at British universities to return home before applying
to work in the UK was gradually ended, allowing them to switch into
skilled labour migration schemes, not least in Scotland where the Scottish
Executive’s ‘Fresh Talent’ initiative sought migrants to reverse Scotland’s
declining population. In 2006 Blair launched a successor scheme, concerned at growing competition for students from abroad.31
Benefit or threat?
Ministers and advisers insist that the events of 9/11, while having a
profound affect on the Home Office and the political climate, had not
radically shifted immigration or asylum policy because, Pearce says,
‘politicians and officials know, despite the press agenda, that terrorism
and migration are only very remotely connected’. It is indeed striking
that security considerations post-9/11 did not affect the opening up of
new labour market channels nor the expansion in student numbers.
Within months of 9/11, nevertheless, the Anti-terrorism, Crime and
Security Act had provided for the indefinite detention of foreigners suspected of involvement in terrorism, replaced, following a legal challenge,
by control orders in 2005. Blair’s personal response to the London bombings in July 2005 included the promise that any asylum-seeker involved in
terrorism would be denied refugee status, a measure enacted in 2006
along with substantial provisions for information-sharing among transport, immigration and police authorities. Further legislation in 2007 will
increase the policing powers of immigration officers, allow access to tax
31 See overview of UK policy and data on international students in Alan Findlay and
Alexandra Stam, ‘International Student Migration to the UK’, Georgetown University,
March 2006, www.12.georgetown.edu/sfs/isim/Event%20Documents/Sloan%20Global%
20Competition%20Meeting/Findlay-UK.pdf.
data to identify illegal immigrants and require foreign nationals to have
biometric identification cards, while enabling the automatic deportation
of some offenders.32 Finger-printing of all visa applicants will be introduced by 2008 and electronic checks on those leaving and entering by
2014. In his last speech as leader to the party conference, Blair said the
question is ‘how we reconcile openness to the rich possibilities of globalisation with security in the face of its threats’, arguing that biometric ID
cards ‘are not a breach of our basic rights, they are an essential part of
responding to the reality of modern migration’.
In Blair’s final years it was evident that the positive language on
the benefits of migration, albeit rarely projected to the public at large,
was being overtaken by the language of harm. This was perhaps
most evident in Reid’s enforcement strategy in 2007 which proposed
‘Immigration Crime Partnerships’ at the local level to target rogue
employers, now subject to criminal penalties, and migrants working
illegally.33 With asylum numbers under control, the focus had now
shifted to illegal immigrants, the number of whom the government had,
under pressure, estimated to be between 310,000 and 570,000.34 The
Conservatives had introduced civil penalties on firms which employed
people without permission to work but, failing to resource a system of
inspection, ensured that the enforcement would be little more than
symbolic. In Labour’s first term there were only thirty-four successful
prosecutions.
The introduction of ID cards was intended, inter alia, to enable
employers and service providers to establish each individual’s immigration status, extending immigration control from Heathrow to the hospital gate. Initially sceptical, Blair endorsed the proposal at the Labour
Party conference in 2003. Given Treasury opposition, it may now not
proceed. Meanwhile the 2006 Act extended the civil penalties on employers and enforcement units made periodic well-publicised raids. The
growing use of detention triggered a series of critical reports, including
from HM Inspector of Prisons, on poor conditions and failure to meet
welfare needs. In a rare move to protect migrant workers, following the
32 Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006; UK Borders Bill 2007.
33 Enforcing the Rules: A Strategy to Ensure and Enforce Compliance with our Immigration
Laws (London: Home Office, March 2007), www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk/6353/aboutus/
enforcementstrategy.pdf.
34 Described by Home Office Minister, Tony McNulty, as the government’s ‘best guess’. BBC
News Online, ‘Illegal Immigrant Figure Revealed’, 30 June 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/
hi/uk_politics/4637273.stm.
Morecombe Bay tragedy and a concerted campaign by trade unions, the
Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004 regulated migrant employment agencies in the agriculture and fisheries industries. A growing campaign for an
amnesty for those who had been working in the UK for four years later
won the support of trade union and church leaders.
EU cooperation
Blair’s government was acutely aware that many EU member states faced
similar challenges and that the measures those states took – or failed to
take – impacted on the UK. Significant energy was invested in securing
cooperation in strengthening external border controls and data-sharing.
Nevertheless, the government negotiated an opt-out from EU immigration and asylum measures, allowing it to cherry-pick those that suited its
objectives. While providing a forum for negotiation, the EU was thus less
a driver of UK policy than an occasional means to achieve it.
Integration and citizenship
Innovative race equality legislation to address systemic discrimination in
the public sector followed a public inquiry Straw instigated into the
failure of the police to apprehend the killers of Stephen Lawrence, the
victim of a racially motivated murder in South London. The focus of
Straw’s new equality strategy and of the social cohesion initiatives that
followed riots in northern towns in 2001, were, however, on second-and
third-generation ethnic minorities, not newcomers to the UK. While
nominally part of the same department, officials responsible for the ‘integration’ of migrants – to the limited extent that responsibility existed –
were not part of the cohesion team. Nor did ministers, until the establishment of the temporary Commission on Integration and Cohesion in
2006, hint that it might be time to bring migrants within cohesion strategies at the local level.
Back in 2000, the government had consulted on a limited integration
strategy for refugees, Full
and Equal Citizens, subsequently further developed in 2005. Providing somewhat limited support to refugees in finding
accommodation and employment, the new strategy had its critics. Yet the
recognition it accorded that refugees may need assistance in the integration process was not extended to other migrants: family members, labour
migrants or students. ‘The difference’, an official told the author in 2006,
‘is that we have obligations to refugees under international law and that
they could not plan their lives here. For other migrants, if it does not
work out, they know where to catch the bus home.’
The evidence suggests, nevertheless, that failure to consider the needs
of new arrivals and their impact on local services, or to provide a sceptical
public with an explanation for the demographic change they see around
them, has proved short-sighted.35 ‘My regret’, Blunkett says, ‘is that we
didn’t move fast enough in 2002 towards emphasising and supporting
much greater social integration programmes. We didn’t put enough time
and resources into positive measures at a local level.’
Only for those seeking citizenship did the government take a new
approach, introducing citizenship classes, tests and ceremonies for those
applying for naturalisation and latterly tests for those given indefinite
leave to stay, the intention being that this will ‘contribute to mutual
understanding and common values of tolerance and respect’.36 Significant
new resources were provided for English-language tuition, but competing
demands on the skills budget later led to cuts in free provision. Long
waiting lists remain for access to classes in many parts of the country.
Blair’s interest in the integration agenda grew after the 2005 London
bombings, focusing on Muslims and ethnic minorities rather than on
migrants per se. In a valedictory speech on ‘multiculturalism and integration’, however, he explicitly included migrants, whose ‘extraordinary
contribution’ he acknowledged, arguing that respect for diversity must be
tempered by acceptance of ‘common, unifying, British values’.37
Immigration and Nationality Directorate
The inability of the IND to follow through from legislation to delivery
was an enduring theme throughout the decade, to the deep frustration of