Cabinet warned Blair against free movement of new EU citizens from Poland

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Senior UK cabinet members warned prime minister Tony Blair in 2004 that free movement from new EU member states, including Poland, could place huge pressure on the benefits system and housing, newly released documents show. 

The decision to allow migrants from the 10 mostly eastern and central European countries, including Hungary and the Czech Republic, to work in the UK with few limits led to a sharp rise in immigration.

In 2005, a year after the decision, net EU migration to the UK reached 96,000 people, according to the Office for National Statistics, a sharp rise from 15,000 in 2003.

By the time of the Brexit referendum in 2016, this surge had helped make migration a highly contested political issue.

Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, and John Prescott, deputy prime minister, raised significant concerns ahead of the decision, files released by the Cabinet Office show.

“We could be faced with a very difficult situation if we get this wrong,” Straw warned Blair in a letter on February 10, 2004.

He asked the prime minister to consider deferring the introduction of the policy, stating that this would allow Britain to “monitor movements” of migrants to other countries before a decision was made on implementation.

While the UK, Ireland and Sweden allowed free movement immediately in May 2004 with minimal restrictions, many others, including France and Germany, opted to delay full access to their labour markets, citing fears over mass migration. Countries had the ability to impose restrictions until May 1, 2011.

The UK’s decision was, in part, based on a Home Office assessment that only 5,000-13,000 migrants would arrive each year from the new EU members. However, this proved to be a huge underestimate.

Annual net migration from EU member states had hit 142,000 by 2014, according to ONS estimates at the time, fuelling a debate over British membership of the EU.

On February 16, 2004, Prescott wrote to Blair, formally urging him to delay. As deputy prime minister he cited concern over housing, with migrants expected to gravitate to London and the South-East to look for work, with “the likely result” being “overcrowded accommodation in poor areas” because of the inability to afford rent.

Straw told the Financial Times: “As events were to show, we got it wrong.”

“If we had had good evidence about the effect of our lifting the restrictions on inward migration to the UK, I am clear that we would never have agreed to lift them,” he added.

“Keeping the restrictions would, in hindsight, have made some difference . . . to the 2016 referendum result; whether enough to swing it, is impossible to say,” he said.

Previously unseen documents released by the National Archives show that Blair had considered the concerns, questioning officials over whether an initial “work permit” scheme was practical. However, he ultimately decided against such a policy.

A July 2 briefing document for Blair showed that 9,000 workers had registered to work in the UK in the two months after May 1, with 50,000-60,000 workers potentially arriving in the first year.

The officials warned against the “elephant trap” of the media reporting the figures.

To counter accusations that the arrivals would lead to a surge in benefit claims, Blair told officials to “get in our media” reports that Poles would prefer to work illegally in Germany, than legally in the UK.

He asked advisers to ensure that they did “the toughest package on benefits possible” to counter potentially excessive claims from new EU migrants.

Blair declined to comment.