The familiar hole in Cameron’s migration plans: money
Jonathan Lindsell, 2 December 2014
On Friday the Prime Minister presented his EU renegotiation goals in detail. He could never please everyone – rebellious backbenchers, wavering Ukip voters, pro-Europeans and continental leaders – but made a concerted effort to construct a reform plan fair and palatable to most parties. His major compromise was explicit support for the ‘free movement of workers principle’, retreating from possible migration cap proposals.
David Cameron’s central proposal is to stop EU migrants claiming tax credits, child benefits or social housing until they’ve worked in Britain for four years, and to deport jobseekers who haven’t found work six months after arrival. Even assuming – and it’s far from a foregone conclusion – that Cameron can get Brussels’ approval and democratic mandate for these reforms, there remains the question of enforcement.
As commentators right and left point out, the Department for Work and Pensions under Iain Duncan Smith is in total chaos. Universal Credit is horribly overbudget, behind schedule, severed across two computer systems with no salvation in sight. It’s difficult to have confidence the reeling scheme could cope with the additional complications of deliberate delays for in-work benefits. Moreover, repatriating jobless EU migrants would be no easy feat. It requires registering and keeping track of all EU migrants when they arrive here, monitoring them closely enough to find them half a year later, and having the legal and physical structures required to deport them.
Moreover, Cameron promised ‘exit checks at all our major ports and airports…by April’. We know the border force is already hopelessly overstretched, and even its Director General Charles Montgomery doubts universal e-borders will be in place by the election. Again, the scheme needs substantial investment but No.10 gave no details, not even rivalling Labour’s modest plans to charge £10 for (non-EU) visas, raising money for 1,000 border staff.
An important commitment in the speech was a ‘new fund to help meet additional demands on local services [for] areas heavily reliant on migrant labour’. This should be a hefty fund, taking into account the UCL paper claiming EU migration yearly boosts the Treasury by several billion pounds. That boon should flow to ease local pressure on services from schools and hospitals to roads and waterworks. But most likely it will be a paltry PR effort, simply because calculating where such money should flow is highly complex and because Cameron failed to give any detail when pressed.
Cameron also emphasised tackling exploitation and outright modern slavery, both as a moral imperative and to stop coerced cheap labour undercutting British workers. These are worthy causes but again need money for enforcement. From 2007-2013 only nine employers were prosecuted for noncompliance with national minimum wage legislation so, according to the Migration Advisory Committee, ‘on average, an employer faces the possibility of prosecution under the NMW legislation once in a million years.’
As we anticipate the Autumn Statement, quibbling over infrastructural table scraps and optimistic garden cities, it’s worth asking whether the Conservatives’ big manifesto pledge is remotely affordable.