This is probably a bit of an obscure area on the immigration debate – particularly as it is the end of the current series, but this is very important for any area which has attracted a large part of the Eastern European immigration – such as Old Stoke and other areas such as Rectory Road and the upper end of Wherstead Road.  If this is the sort of area that will attract Polish immigrants now, it will attract Turkish immigrants if Turkey is allowed into the European Union.  The pressure on rents, house prices, unskilled and semi skilled wages, doctors’ waiting lists and school places will be felt in exactly the same places – although it is likely to spread wider to places like the Maidenhall Estate and the Hayes.

One rather worrying piece here is the assertion that there is balanced immigration within the EU.  Well to a point.  There is now, but there has not always been in healthier economic times.  There is also a difference between British pensioners going to Spain, or British computer programmers going to Amsterdam and Polish plumbers going to Ipswich.  There are different pressures from different types of immigrants.  While immigration can be a very healthy thing, there does need to be a constant watch to ensure that the right mix of immigrants is coming in. 

Here are Ben’s answers:

Questions on Turkish accession and immigration

18. There was no mention of Turkish accession to the EU in the Conservative Manifesto or Programme for Government, although there was a general expression of support for further enlargement. Do you accept that David Cameron was wrong to say that those who oppose Turkey’s accession were driven by “protectionism, narrow nationalism or prejudice”?

The Conservative Party and David Cameron in particular have for a long time stated their support for Turkey’s appropriate accession to the European Union. There has been no change of policy in this area.

I do agree with the Prime Minister that some of those who oppose Turkey’s accession do so for the wrong reasons although I am sure that he at no point sought to claim that everyone who opposed Turkey’s membership of the European Union did so on a selfish basis, as your question indicates. 

I believe that Turkey’s accession can only be achieved with VERY strict safeguards on its borders. I understand that it is an issue which causes people a lot of concern and I appreciate that some people are inclined to urge caution. I too agree that there should be extreme caution even though I am a firm supporter of Turkey’s accession.

19. Do you approve of Turkish accession? If so where was the most prominent place that you stated this before the election?

I support Turkey’s appropriate accession to the European Union and have done so for some time. Anyone asking me whether I supported Turkey’s accession previously would have received that answer, although I have to admit that this was not, as I recall, a matter of primary interest to the voters of Ipswich.

Turkey’s accession to the European Union is vital if we are fully to develop our economic ties with that country. By 2017, Turkey will be the second fastest growing economy in the world. The current value of our trade with Turkey is over £9 billion. The government therefore believes that Turkey is of crucial importance to our own economy and hopes to double this figure over the next five years. Furthermore, I am assured by the government that Turkey’s unique geographical position at the border between Europe and Asia means that good relations with that country are essential to preserving the security of the UK.

The Home office has confirmed that Turkey’s accession to the EU is still a long way off and it is not yet clear what form the accession process will take. Turkey’s application process has already taken far longer than any other: it first applied to join the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1959 and although formal accession negotiations began in 2005, these have now stalled. Eighteen out of thirty-five negotiating ‘chapters’ are either informally blocked or formally frozen, and talks on opening another chapter, scheduled for 22nd December, have now been cancelled.

20. The Conservative Manifesto or the Programme for Government talked about the use of transitional controls for new accessions. Do these transitional controls include immigration?

I am told by the government that it has always been very clear on the need for immigration controls for new members of the European Union to avoid any influx of immigrants from new member states. This was the case with Romania and Bulgaria and will also apply to Turkey.

21. Will permanent or indefinite controls on immigration from Turkey be considered as a condition for Turkey’s membership?

I have investigated this with the government and their policy is as follows.

There will almost certainly be long transitional restrictions on free movement of workers in the event of Turkey joining the EU, probably in the form of a permanent ‘safeguard clause’ allowing member states to introduce restrictions in certain circumstances. However, there is currently no agreement on permanent restrictions.

I am assured that the 2005 negotiating framework for Turkey provides for long transitional periods, specific arrangements and (for the first time) permanent ‘safeguard clauses’ on free of movement of persons and other areas. Furthermore, the government believes that the decision making process on the eventual establishment of freedom of movement of persons should allow individual member states as much scope as possible to determine their own arrangements taking into account the impact on competition or the functioning of internal markets.

It is vital to remember that net immigration from the European Economic Area has been almost balanced. There is no reason to suggest that this would change with Turkey’s accession. This of course was not the case with the 2004 enlargement of the EU. In this case, the last government were forced to admit they had got it very wrong. Labour ministers predicted an influx of around 13,000 immigrant workers from Eastern Europe, but by giving all the new EU citizens work rights, they opened the borders to over 600,000 immigrants. The government reassures me that, in the event of Turkey’s accession to the EU, it will implement strict measures to prevent this from happening again. These restrictions will be more severe and more permanent than those applied to the 2004 and 2007 enlargements of the EU.

22. Will any Treaty that prepares for accession of a new country automatically be subject to a referendum lock due to the diminution of British representation in EU institutions? Or will the coalition break their promise as they look to be doing with the scrutiny of national budgets (including those outside the Eurozone) that is proposed by Germany?

Following the successful passage of the EU Bill through the House on 11th January, the government has assured me that in future any significant treaties or changes to existing treaties relating to Europe will be subject to a referendum lock.

Another installment on the long, long letter from Ben Gummer on immigration and the coalition’s policies.  This time the focus is on the accountability of the intracompany and enrepreneur’s visas.  Part 1 is here. 

Although the entrepreneur visa is a good idea, there will need to be a close eye kept on whether it is really attracting job creators.  If this is not watched by Parliament the best that can be expected is that it will be exploited by the Daily Mail or the Daily Express, the worst is tha the BNP jump on this.

The Freedom of Information answer is deeply disappointing.  If a person wishes to join a community then this is a very public act and this information should be available to the community.  For example if you have lost a job that has been filled by someone with a suspiciously similar responsibilities, do you really have no right to find out if you have been treated fairly?  What abut if you lose a council house or a school place? 

The fact that most of these suspicions will be unfounded is a greater reason to allow the maximum transparency to the process.  Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Now to the more interesting part of the blog post:

Questions on the accountability of applications

5. Are there any estimates for how many people will use these two routes?

In 2008, 48,010 people successfully applied for an intra-company transfer to the UK. The government assures me that the restrictions it is imposing on the intra-company transfer route will reduce this number significantly.

The government has not published estimates of the number of future applications under the entrepreneur visa categories, but is keen to encourage more talented people to come to UK via this route.

6. Will the numbers applying for and being granted these visas be published on a monthly basis and in a timely manner?

Immigration statistics are published quarterly on the Home Office Research and Development Statistics website and in answer to Parliamentary Questions.

7. What measures are proposed if the number of migrants using these routes is significantly higher than the estimates?

The government tells me that it has no plans to limit the number of migrants using the entrepreneur’s visa, since it hopes to attract more of these workers. In her announcement on 23rd November the Home Secretary stated that fewer than 300 people entered the UK in the investor and entrepreneur categories last year, “and that is not enough”. Furthermore, I am assured that the intra-company visa route will be tightened up, ensuring that the number of intra-company migrants will fall.

8. Will individual visa applications under these two routes be covered by the Freedom of Information Act and the Information Commissioner?

The government does not intend to make provisions for individual visa applications to be covered the Freedom of Information Act.

As a bit of a background I wrote an email to Ben Gummer a bit before Christmas.  Despite responding months ago, I’ve not put his answers up on the blog as intended.  If you are concerned about immigration there are a number of interesting points about the coalition’s policies.  Unless Ben’s been asked for his opinion the answers are based on the coalition’s policies.

It is very important to establish a thoughtful middle ground on immigration where the immigration policy is centered around the interests of British citizens, so allowing in job creators and highly skilled service providers (such as doctors and university tutors) and not to hurt the working class through bringing in immigrants who crowd out jobs, housing and services. 

On this issue (there are plenty of other parts to this which will be coming on line) I must admit that I’ve changed my mind on the Entrepreneur’s visa although still worried that it will become a loophole.  The slight tightening on the intra-company visas is welcome, but I can still see them being blatantly abused by large employers.

Now to Ben’s responses:

General questions on the visas

1. Do you still accept the need to reduce economic immigration into this country?

Yes. I think that this is very important. In Ipswich and elsewhere I, along with many other people, have become very disillusioned at the lack of control of our borders. I have long been concerned that this failure in confidence not only damages our communities but erodes traditional British tolerance for those seeking genuine asylum.

We need to be clear, however, that in terms of the European Economic Area, net immigration is more or less balanced. In 2009, the net inflow of European workers into the UK was just 12,000. When it is considered that overall immigration runs into the hundreds of thousands, this is a very small number. Overwhelmingly, migrant workers come to the UK from outside of Europe. This is an important point to bear in mind and I will return to it later on. 

2. In the Conservative Manifesto and Programme for Government there was no mention of either the new entrepreneur visa route or the intra-company transfers. In both documents there were pledges “to introduce an annual limit on the number of non-EU economic migrants” and “to introduce new measures to minimize abuse of the immigration system, for example via student routes.” Do you agree that the two new routes are both a potentially large loophole in any limit on economic migration and a potential new route to abuse of the immigration system?

I appreciate why people are concerned about this. I should say that although I do not agree with this view myself, I have raised the issue with the government and their response is as follows.

It is crucial to establish, first of all, that the intra-company transfers are not a new immigration route. They form part of the existing tier two (skilled worker) entry route. Furthermore, the government assures me that, far from creating a new route, they are in fact working hard to tighten up an existing one. The government intends to increase the minimum salary for someone entering the UK by an intra-company transfer from £24,000 to £40,000, ensuring that only senior managers and essential specialists are able use this immigration route.

The government is also responding to the needs of industry and to the advice of the Migration Advisory Committee and limiting the number of tier one visas (meant for the brightest and the best, but widely abused in the past) to 1,000 exceptionally talented scientists, sportsmen and artists.

The coalition believes that entrepreneur’s visas are essential to the growth of the UK economy and that those who enter the UK by this route are some of the most important wealth creators in our country. The government therefore thinks that it is right to encourage more of such individuals to come to the UK.

3. What will be the time limit for these visas?

The government’s proposal, as I understand it, is this. Entrepreneur’s visas will apply for two years. Towards the end of this period, immigrants must apply for permission to extend their stay. If this application is approved, highly skilled migrants are allowed to remain in the UK for a further three years, after which they may apply for permanent citizenship.

The government has confirmed that under the existing system of intra-company visas, a worker is allowed to stay in the country for up to three years, after which an extension of two years can be granted. An application can be made for permanent citizenship after five years.

4. Will applicants for these visas be denied the ability to apply for UK citizenship, state benefits, employment outside the firm or follow on visas?

The government’s policy here is as follows. As far as benefits are concerned, most people with limited leave to remain are subject to the condition that they have ‘no recourse to public funds’ during their stay in the UK. If such an individual breaches the conditions of the leave they become liable to be removed from the country and to have all further leave refused. They may also be prosecuted. These public funds include child benefit, council tax benefit, housing benefit, income support, income-based jobseeker’s allowance, pension credit, working tax credit and many others.

At present, workers on both of these visas will be able to apply for permanent citizenship after five years. They will all be entitled to apply for follow on visas upon the expiry of their original visa. However, the Home Secretary has stated her commitment to ending the link between temporary and permanent migration and will be bringing forward more details on this in due course.

Migrants on intra-company transfer visas are, like other tier two migrants, allowed to undertake ‘extra work’ in the same profession for up to twenty hours per week without having to inform the UK Border Agency. If they wish to do a ‘second job’, however (more than twenty hours per week or work in a different profession) they must obtain a separate Certificate of Sponsorship in order to do so.

Highly skilled workers on entrepreneur’s visas are able to come to the UK without a specific job offer and to determine their own employment arrangements.

Labour is ahead of the Conservatives in the polls by 2% or so.  The coalition of  Conservatives AND Liberal Democrats  is seeing overall levels of dissatisfaction around 10% or so.  What’s going wrong?

My view was that Ed Miliband would tack to the left to win the Labour leadership and then veer sharply to the centre, with a dash of populism.  But that’s not proved to be the case.  On a whole range of issues the Labour party has backed the government if it can’t oppose it from the left.

Prison reform – backing the government

Civil liberties – jettisoning their own election rhetoric

Europe – refusing to deal with Tory rebels

Immigration – quiet backing of Vince Cable’s numerous handbrake turns

In each case they are losing massive vote winning policies  as well as turning down opportunities to make the coalition far more shaky than the tuition fees debate did.

There seems to be a view that Margaret Thatcher laid out her stall and the country came to her, and that Ed Miliband could do the same.  The only problem is that the Tories had laid their stall out, in the Selsdon Park Hotel meeting in the late 1960s and the country rejected it.  It was the national bankruptcy, and not the persuasive powers of Thatcher that turned the country right, just as the economic recovery of the 1990s turned the country slightly leftwards as they thought they could afford to spend a bit more on schools and hospitals.

Ed Miliband’s tries to appear like an Old Testament prophet while instead looking like King Canute.  At least Canute was having a laugh about it, and he got off the beach before it got too wet.

I can understand the Conservative case for letting Turkey into the European Union. It will destabilise the EU and will lock Turkey in with the West like it locked France in when De Gaulle, er, took France out of NATO. Is the European Union really less powerful than it was when we joined it and there were only twelve members? Maastricht, Lisbon and the Single European Act would argue that it hasn’t.

So letting Turkey in will fail in any geopolitical gambit.

And what about the practical effect on us here? Bridge ward, particularly the Old Stoke part, has been a magnet for Eastern European immigrants. This has clearly put wages down and rents up, and it also has had an effect on school rolls – although its not really affected the doctor’s surgeries.

Turkey will be more of the same. Much more. The rural heart of Turkey is both poorer and more populous than Eastern European countries. And did I mention illiteracy? There is also the issue of an increasingly more militant Islam. We’re assuming that Turkish kids will be immune from this, because the Turkish upper middle class used to be. That’s one massive assumption.

The Conservatives canvassed on the basis that they would listen to people’s concerns on immigration and take them seriously. If the Conservatives simply put a cap on skilled immigration and then drown this out through a far larger increase in the amount of people allowed in through EU accession they will not be forgiven or forgotten. David Cameron’s guff that Turkey was always improving and so there wouldn’t be anything to worry about on immigration sounds a bit like Tony Blair assuring us that there would only be a few thousand people coming in from the EU accession states. We could put Blair’s mistake down to ignorance, Cameron won’t have the same excuse.

The left has sacrificed the interests of the working class to trendy concerns in favour of windmills and against church going, the Conservatives promised to listen. Letting Turkey in to the EU is not listening.

Andrew Cann has another reminiscence of the Labour mask slipping:

One comment I would have made, if technically able, on the post you make about Mrs Duffy and the local labour candidates not condemning Brown is that I recall in 2004 when the Labour Party got stuffed in the local elections they blamed the electorate for not voting for them. For being ‘ungrateful’. Always stuck in my mind. It betrays that statist do ‘do as we say’ attitude of them.

Thank God we didn’t have Mark Battersea Dyson rather than Andrew Cann as the Ipswich candidate. The Lib Dem surge would have been very threatening with a candidate. There’s a film on the Guardian website which really shows the difference between the two.

By the way the comment on Comrade Ross and the other Labour twitterers (twits?) still stands. Every day you refuse to condemn that Scottish pension snatcher for his imperious attitude is another day you betray the voters that you presumably came into politics to advance and defend.

Labour activists have a strange attitude to the white working class. This was shown when Gordon Brown called an innocent Labour voting pensioner a “bigot” for daring to ask him questions about the effects of Eastern European immigration.

This will be placed as a question of the Prime Minister’s two-faced nature and his temper. Perhaps it will stretch to questions about Brown’s, ahem, mental stability or the judgement of Labour MPs like Chris Mole who know Brown one hundred times better than we do and who still wanted him as leader of their party. Those are all questions that should be asked, but frankly they are not the most worrying question.

The fact is that middle class Labour activists treat the white English working class with horror. They may think that they speak for them, they may depend on them for their votes and they may even pretend to be like them.

However they can not stand the views of the working class, and they genuinely do regard them as bigoted. This is especially so with immigration. What is in effect a narrow sectional interest – a desire for cheaper restaurants, gardeners and nannies – is transformed into a moral crusade and everyone else has to knuckle down.

When this hurts the loyal white working class, then there is no real sympathy. Obviously if you have been on the doorstep you know that the feeling is intense compared to ten years ago, and curiously non-racial. There is just a feeling that unchecked immigration has lowered wages, raised rents and put a strain on services.

When the white working class complain about immigration they are not calling for an all white Britain but some control over their circumstances. The problem is that from Corder Road or Severn Road this looks like bigotry. In most cases when the class interests of the representatives differ from the clearly expressed interest of those that they wish to represent, the representatives knuckle down and, well, represent.

This has been turned on its head. The people have to be “led”. God help them.

The BNP was never really an issue for me. They were racist and socialist and I was never either (being an hereditary lefty did not make me economically illiterate). Then I got married.

Suddenly I have a stake in the fight. Not a massive stake, after all if the BNP becomes really active in my area and wins a council seat or two I could probably ignore it and if I couldn’t then let’s be honest I could get a mortgage and move somewhere where the BNP were still coming fourth. But it is a stake.

The problem is that the BNP is not simply responding to a perceived failure in the system, they are responding to a real failure.

I’ve had a fairly senior Ipswich Conservative chiding me for saying that immigration was too high. It was something along the lines that people like me had to understand that employers really needed immigrants. I know that this person has since defected and become an immigration reformer, but that’s what the Digby Jones of this world still do say.

And that’s the root of the immigration argument. That’s who’s driving it. Employers, particularly employers who like cheap labour. After all who needs to pay the minimum wage when the reserve army of the unemployed is global?

The big employers also have a whole coterie of useful idiots on the left. I know Andrew Coates would bridle at the term useful, but he does fit the description. His latest post is a call to close down the debate on immigration. Anything that even hints at enforcing border controls must, per se, be “stirring up fear”. Well, no. It’s reflecting that fear, and perhaps hoping that this fear doesn’t go anywhere else. Like the real fascists.

The fear is already here, because getting more people in when jobs are declining will lead to greater unemployment, especially in the short term. Subsidising immigration through benefits, as we are, means that wage earners are subsidising their replacements. It also means that services are crowded out, unless you can afford to go private. And as for rents and mortgages, we all know what’s happened to them in the last ten years, much to the glee of the school teachers and local government middle managers in the Labour Party who had no idea what high rents and house prices did to their most loyal voters.

There is racism among much of the response to immigration, but that’s largely due to frustration. If the attempts to suppress debate by people such as Andrew Coates, or to dismiss it as “nasty” and ignorant by Ipswich Spy (or one head of the hydra), succeed then so will the BNP.

I don’t want that. Neither does my wife. That’s why she appeared on Ben Gummer’s leaflet. If we are to have a tolerant society then we shouldn’t be using uncontrolled immigration as a battering ram to force down wages, crowd out services and force up prices for the most vulnerable.

I can’t believe the amount of discussion that Nick Griffin coming on the BBC has generated.  What has been disapointing is that he’s come across as a victim.  I can’t see how the people who want to ban him from the airways can’t don’t recognise that.

Jack Straw came across as a robust but essentially complacent member of the ruling class, Labour’s Michael Howard.  Why couldn’t they have put someone like Jon Cruddas who would at least put up a fight?  Chris Huhne was unbelievably weak except, ironically, when he attacked the weakness of the Tories and Labour on immigration.  Bonnie Greer is irritating enough on Newsnight, and she came across as irrelevant with her talk about Churchill being, perhaps, just a little bit Mohawk – although her parting comment about the British . 

There were some clever people from the audience, but Baroness Warsi was a surprise.  She (along with Dimbleby) made Griffin appear evasive and boldly stole his clothes on immigration – by admitting that the political classes had got it wrong. 

This was no reverse for the BNP.  However the BNP did suffer a reverse when they attacked the “Tory generals” who complained about the BNP appropriating British millitary symbols, comparing the war leaders to Nazi war criminals who were hanged. 

The BNP can’t be defeated by shouting “racist”.  It can’t be ignored.  In Bridge they got more than 200 votes without even trying.  I’m in a mixed race marriage.  I live here.  I can’t escape to a plush house on the other side of the river. I’m invested in the BNP getting no further in Bridge. 

The BNP have to be confronted as a serious party.  I’ve praised a couple of Tory moves earlier in this post but when I stood for council for Bridge I got a letter from the party chairman Eric Pickles (well it wasn’t to me in particular but to every candidate who faced the BNP).  It told me not to debate the BNP, not to address “their” issues and to ignore the whole thing.  It was this attitude, shared across the political class, that helped them get a million votes.

It’s not just that.  It’s also the silly moves over time by various members of the media and political classes to play down any mention of our Christian heritage, to stop the British flag from being flown and – until recently - to only address immigration from the viewpoint of employers.  The East European mass migration may get marginally cheaper cleaners and builders for the residents of Corder Road, but in Rectory Road its driving up rents, driving down wages and crowding out public services such as schools and hospitals.

The reason why the fruitcakes of the BNP do well is because the political class spent a lot of time talking to itself rather than listening to the voters.

If that doesn’t change things will get a lot worse.  And Bridge will be the victim of a complacent absentee political class that has forgotten how to speak up for it’s voters, if it ever knew how.

It’s easy to say that politics has changed in the last two years, but the reason why we have truisms is that they are true.  One of these areas where there has been a dramatic change has been immigration.

Immigration has always been an issue in Bridge, but it has now shot to the top of the agenda. When I was canvassing in the Hayes a couple of weeks ago immigration had gone to the top in a place where I can’t remember it being mentioned once in the last General Election.  Part of this may have been due to the BNP raising the issue by standing in the last council election, but there seems to have been something else going on.

Even when I’m delivering leaflets I usually have at least one conversation with a voter about immigration and how it affects their area.  This is not the case when I’m on the other side of the river (although it’s still an issue).

Why is Bridge talking about immigration in particular?

The high level of buy to let activity in the Old Stoke area may be one reason why immigration’s so talked about which will probably explain why there are so many more European Union immigrants live around here.  I’ve heard very few complaints about crime and immigration (although anti-social behaviour certainly is an issue). Job insecurity may also be increasing people’s perception of immigration – but it wouldn’t explain why Bridge is so worried about immigration.

However the main parties in Bridge, both Labour and Conservative are going to have to find out why people are worried about immigration here and actually address those concerns.  Sadly this may be a bit too much to hope for when a Labour agent (who is not paid for by the taxpayer, honest) goes around a count accusing a Tory councillor of being friends with fascists due to the fact that he beat a Labour candidate.

This needs to stop.  We need to up the maturity on this debate and address the voter’s legitimate concerns on this issue, because if we don’t then there is a darker force waiting in the wings who will.