Opinion - News Analysis   

The EU influx into U.K.

Alan Travis

A TOTAL of 447,000 young, single, eastern Europeans have officially come to Britain looking for work over the past two years, according to Home Office (Ministry of the Interior) figures published on Tuesday.

They are increasingly working outside London to fill gaps in the labour market, mainly in factories, hospitality and catering, and the food processing industry.

But it is not just agriculture and the building trades where they are filling the gaps. More than 143,000 are doing mostly temporary jobs in "administration, business and management services" or working in public services, with 6,500 bus and lorry drivers, 12,700 care workers, 310 dentists and more than 2,000 doctors and other medical staff. There also 15 circus performers.

The publication of the latest official workers' registration scheme figures show that 100,000 Eastern Europeans came to Britain to work in the first six months of this year — far below claims of between 600,000 and a million arriving each year.

And there are signs the number of new migrants from the new EU states may have peaked, with 50,000 arriving between April and June this year compared with 57,000 last year.

Home Office Minister Tony McNulty said the decision to allow them into Britain to work, but not claim benefits, had been vindicated: "These workers are filling skills and labour gaps that cannot be met by the U.K.-born population."

Danny Sriskandarajah of the Institute of Public Policy Research said: "These figures do not mean there are 447,000 newly arrived eastern Europeans here at the moment. Since half were in temporary employment, many will have left at the end of their contract."

Nevertheless the pressure within the Cabinet to block open access for Romanians and Bulgarians when they join the EU next year appears to be growing. Senior Ministers are arguing that they should be treated differently because they have higher rates of unemployment: "We are not simply going to rubber-stamp this," said one ministerial source. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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