The New Labour EU Immigration Scandal – The Migration Policy that Drove Britons Out of Britain

It is always important to understand in a fair manner the national concern over immigration policy, but this is precisely what the Labour Government ministers have denied to the British electorate and those who work across public services and local councils. The Labour Government has played down the seriousness of the national EU-enforced immigration crisis – even creating misrepresentations of data to divert from major intra-European immigration activity – in order to persevere with a European policy that has trashed economic opportunity, left many young aspiring British workers without the possibility of home ownership or job prospects, overburdened the national health and education sectors and most serious of all, driven Britons from their own country. Since the most recent influx hit a supposed 574,000, Britain now has an approximate 385,000 individuals (including 196,000 British citizens) leaving the UK between 2005 and 2006, the highest figure since the current indicator was first introduced in 1991.

Labour Ministers must concede that a substantial number of jobs created since Labour came to power have gone to EU migrant workers and not British workers. It is simply not an option for it to now walk away from a debate after reporting that the number of foreign workers who had taken up jobs in Britain since 1997 was 1.1 million rather than 800,000. Neither does it make any sense for the Conservative Party to avoid the issue, by debating solely the impact of non-EU immigration on the country, since that is not a long-term solution to the actual national crisis endured by the British people and its public services.

The report today that local authorities have called for a renewed approach by the UK Government in calculating the number of migrant workers in Britain, is further proof that the official statistics are not only underestimations but completely untrustworthy data. As a result, the local authorities have simply not budgeted for the provision of public services for extra workers, particularly from Eastern Europe. The hypocrisy and misrepresentation by the New Labour Government is scandalous and its current EU immigration policy must be debated and reassessed, along with its overarching position of complacency on the EU.

James McConalogue of the European Foundation says:
“This is Gordon Brown’s Britain – it is failing miserably and it is very much out of touch with the needs and lives of the British people and their responsible authorities. Brown had sought to restore faith in a British Parliament but has achieved the opposite – the British are walking out in their droves, in face of being governed and managed by a new European government and being pushed into a European society that has no borders. Such a policy has taken us several centuries back in time and the future of Britain remains no more British than Joseph Stalin.”


The Crisis of Numbers on Europe – Why There is No Real Picture

In 1997: The beginning of the New Labour “immigration programme” marks a serious failure on immigration policy. The Labour Party came to power in 1997, when the net inflow of migrants into the UK had actually fallen from 77,000 in 1994 to 47,000 in 1997 (Office for National Statistics, 15 December 2005).

In 1998: During the six years from 1998 to 2003, which defined Labour’s policy towards migration, the approximate net inflow varied between 139,000 and 172,000 (Office for National Statistics, 15 December 2005).

In 2000: Between 2000 and 2004, the net arrival of migrants has “played a much bigger role in population change than natural change … accounting for around 85 per cent of the total growth in the EU25 population” during this time, said the Government’s ‘independent’ Office for National Statistics (Office for National Statistics, 15 December 2005).

In 2002: The UK is reported as one of the top four EU 25 nations, which jointly receive 71 per cent of the net inflow into the EU25 (Office for National Statistics, 15 December 2005).

In 2004: It was claimed that the net inflow of non-British EU citizens to the UK increased from just 14,000 in 2003 to 74,000 in 2004 and 80 per cent of this increase between 2003 and 2004 was accounted for by citizens of the ten EU accession countries. (Office for National Statistics, 15 December 2005). These figures have been widely debated and now, widely rejected.

In 2005: In 2005, 565,000 migrants arrived to live in the UK for at least one year (Office for National Statistics, 19 April 2007). This data – as with most ONS data – is widely debated, with the Home Office Minister himself saying that it is actually greater than 600,000. Again, even the figure of 600,000 is widely believed to be incorrect. In this year, it is said that approximately 80,000 citizens from the eight central and eastern European countries acceded to the EU in mid-2004 (the A8) arrived into the UK for a year or more – a figure which was 54 per cent higher than the estimate provided for in 2004 (Office for National Statistics, 19 April 2007). It is reported that 380,000 people then emigrated from the UK, over half of which were British citizens (Office for National Statistics, 19 April 2007).

In 2006: It is reported that 385,000 individuals (including 196,000 British citizens) left the UK between 2005 to mid-2006, the highest figure since the current indicator was first introduced in 1991. From 2001 to mid-2006, the UK population increased by an average 0.5 per cent every year – the population was 60,587,000 in mid-2006, which is an increase of 349,000 (0.6 per cent) on the mid-2005 population (Office for National Statistics, 22 August 2007). The increase in migration into the UK between 2005 and 2006 occurring among non-British EU citizens was 149,000, compared with 146,000 between 2004-2005 and 82,000 between 2003-2004.