Immigration under New Labour from 1997 - 2010
Immigration under New Labour from 1997 to 2010 was the immigration policy under the government of Tony Blair and then subsequently the continuation of large scale immigration under Gordon Brown.
Under New Labour net migration to the United Kingdom quadrupled[1] from around 50,000 every year before 1997 to around 200,000 averaging out over 1997 to 2010. It continued at this large scale pace for the remainder of the Tony Blair's and Gordon Brown's time as Prime Minister and large scale migration has subsequently been continued by governments after. Immigration from non-EU countries and the European Union itself substantially rose and has been described as one of the largest mass population movements to the country since the Second World War.[2]
During this period around 2.2 million immigrants entered the United Kingdom,[3] the salience of the issue of immigration rose to one of the most prominent political issues in the country,[4] and the impact of the net increase has changed the ethnic demography of the United Kingdom.
Background
Immigration to the United Kingdom from the mid to late 1970's onwards as a joint silent policy decision by both Labour and Conservative governments immigration had roughly rested at around a total of 50,000 net migration to the country,[1][5] Will Somerville describes the country, before 1997, as one of 'zero migration'; "Of all liberal democracies, Britain had succeeded in restricting immigration where other countries had failed."[1][6]
From the 1990s onwards under John Major asylum seeker requests had started to rise in prominence and backlash against the issue had prompted action by the government to stop the sudden influx brought about by events in Yugoslavia and elsewhere.[5] In 1993 the government enacted the Asylum and Immigration Appeal Act (which was one of the first of legislation to deal with the issue of Asylum) and then in 1996 enacted the Asylum and Immigration Act which cut benefits from asylum seekers and shifted funding for the issue onto local authorities.[5]
Increase in immigration
Immigration from 1997 to 2004
The Immigration Legacy of Tony Blair - Migration Policy Institute[7]
In 1997, Tony Blair was elected following the general election. One policy change was reforming the primary purpose rule in 1997,[8] which was used to stop foreign spouses of immigrant workers and potential abuse of the system, for example workers from abroad who once settled in the UK, married someone from their home countries, from coming to the country.
From 2000's onwards, major government focus was directed towards immigration as an issue and the Labour government introduced a number of measures to facilitate the entry of migrant workers. During this time a number of reports came out to elaborate on government strategy going forward and to test the feasibility of increased migration to the country.[1] One such report produced in 2000 by the Department for Trade and Industry, titled 'Our competitive future: building the knowledge driven economy'[1][9] outlined whether or not there was capability to lower the boundaries for skilled professionals which was influenced significantly by then Immigration and Asylum minister Barbara Roche and Minister for Competitiveness Alan Johnson.
This report's queries were essentially green-lit with the Innovators Scheme in the summer of that year, which was considered to be one of the first 'policy bridgeheads' for increased migration. This line, that the Labour Government was open to more migration for the need of economic reasons was also outlined in their first public speech by Immigration minister Barbara Roche in September 2000 to the British Bankers Association, Institute for Public Policy Research and Kingsley Napley, calling for termed 'managed migration'.[1][10][6][11]
From October onwards, criteria for gaining a work permit in the country were relaxed from needing a qualification in a field of work and two years of experience to just a qualification.[1] The expansion of the work permit system was enhanced further with multiple-entry work permits and an easier administrative system to work through applications and self-certification of workers by large businesses and corporations was piloted as well.[1] This scheme gave many preferences to employers looking to employ from abroad and an objective to help fill jobs of large businesses to senior government officials and prioritise a strong employer focus behind the agenda.[1] The success in terms of pure numbers using the program worked, in 1997 62,975 people were awarded the work permit's but by 2005 this number had doubled to 137,035 work permits granted.[1]
High skilled migration needs and policies were created to deal with the issue, two schemes were implemented, the Innovators Scheme, which was announced in September 2000 and the High Skilled Migrant Programme.[1]
Another report created in 2001 by a Labour think-tank called the Performance and Innovation Unit, titled 'Migration: an economic and social analysis'[12][13] created by members of the Home Office and the PIU lead by Jonathon Portes outlined several reasons as to why the government should take a more expansive approach to migration, claiming that "there was little evidence that British workers were harmed by [immigration]".[13]
Expansion of the EU, 2004-2007
In 2004, former eastern bloc countries such as Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and the three Baltic countries of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia which were a part of the Soviet Union itself and Malta and Cyprus joined the EU. These countries, nicknamed the 'A8' (accession eight) and their joining of the European Union opened up a large labour pool low skilled workers from Eastern Europe of which wanted to migrate to the more economically prosperous Western Europe. To counter this, policy decisions within Western European countries were permitted to allow termed 'transitional controls' to halt the flow of migrants but three countries within the EU did not decide to do this. These were the United Kingdom, Sweden and Ireland.[13] The Home Office and David Blunkett in 2003 did not predict that there would be a substational increase in migration from these new countries, in fact it estimated that around relatively small amount of 5,000 to 13,000 net immigrants per year averaged over a ten-year period would arrive to the country,[2] however this was not the case. Estimations by the Office of National Statistics in 2015 roughly put the number at 453,000 immigrants from the A8 arrived in the UK over a period from 2004 to 2012 (averaging at around 45,000 a year),[2] however these figures have been revised upwards in recent years.[13][14]
Brown elected Prime Minister, 2007-2010
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Following Tony Blair's resignation as Prime Minister in 2007, Gordon Brown was elected Leader of the Labour Party unanimously and assumed the role of Prime Minister, the rhetoric behind the Labour government's policy on immigration shifted and more attention in the public, however actual policy on the topic remained unchanged and net migration remained relatively the same as it was under Blair, with a slight decrease with the global financial crash in 2008 and transitional restrictions were used on Bulgarian and Romanian migrants, following their countries entry to the European Union in 2007.[13][15]
Reasons for increase
New Labour's reasons to increase migration to the country were three key defining reasons; according to Erica Consterdine the outline behind the three was; first the "party’s neo-liberal economic programme, hinging on measures to counter inflation and promote flexibility in the labour market", secondly Labour's commitment to the idea of a "cosmopolitan notion of citizenship and integration." and thirdly and lastly was "an uncompromising belief in the inevitability of globalisation."[16]
Globalisation and economic demand
Tony Blair - 2005 [1]
Globalisation as a factor (and premise for increased migration) influenced the New Labour government into adopting a more liberal policy of open borders. Will Somerville describes this as one of the 'macro forces' which influenced the government in this direction.[1] While Erica Consterdine stated that it was the government's "an uncompromising belief in the inevitability of globalisation"[16] which influenced them in this manner, and this belief 'trickled down into many public policies' such as immigration for example.[16]
Influence of the European Union
The European Union as a trans-national body also had influence over the government's policy decisions on immigration which Will Somerville also describes as one of the 'macro forces' which influenced New Labour into more open borders stance.
Cosmopolitanism as a part of immigration policy
Policies on the left of the social axis on the issues of race also factored into New Labour's approach to migration as an issue. New Labour developed close links to organisations such as Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, National Assembly against Racism and the 1990 Trust for example[5] which influenced its perspective on how to look at the immigration issue itself.
Personalities within the Labour Party
Many personalities in the Labour Party or affiliated which had sway over the government who supported immigration also had reasons for which were more suited to a cosmopolitan agenda for immigration support, on either issues such as racial justice or the advancement of a multicultural/multiracial nation. Will Somerville designates Barbara Roche and Alan Johnson as two examples of this, while Alan Johnson supported immigration as a way to further the interests of large businesses, Barbara Roche mostly saw immigration in the eyes of advancing a social agenda of cosmopolitanism,[17] and in large part was driven by ideology[6] and in general was a strong supporter of migration.[1] For example, she viewed and promoted migration to that of countries like the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand and saw the UK as a migration state in of itself.[11][18][19]
Impact and legacy
Salience of the issue
Salience of the issue of immigration became larger from the 2000s onwards as public conscience about the rise of immigration had begun to be noticed and the 2001 race riots in Bradford and Oldham put race at the centre of the debate. Using data from the Migration Observatory from the University of Oxford. Immigration as an issue in January 1997 only was the most important issue to 2% of the population, but by January 2014, it was the most important issue to 41% of the population.[4]
| Year | ||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 1997 | Jan 1998 | Jan 1999 | Jan 2000 | Jan 2001 | Jan 2002 | Jan 2003 | Jan 2004 | Jan 2005 | Jan 2006 | Jan 2007 | Jan 2008 | Jan 2009 | Jan 2010 | Jan 2011 | Jan 2012 | Jan 2013 | Jan 2014 | Jan 2015 |
| 2% | 4% | 4% | 7% | 11% | 16% | 34% | 29% | 26% | 28% | 25% | 40% | 21% | 31% | 26% | 20% | 22% | 41% | 34% |
| 1997 General election | 2001 General election | 2005 General election | Brown is elected leader of the Labour Party | 2010 General election | New Labour out of power | 2015 General Election | ||||||||||||
Political impact
Support for anti-immigration policies led to backlash against the Conservative Party during the 2005 general election. Staff and students at City and Islington College lodged complaints of racism against a nearby Conservative poster, which read "It's not racist to impose limits on immigration" and ""I mean, how hard is it to keep a hospital clean?"[20]
2009 BNP Question Time Episode
A large portion of the controversial Question Time episode in October 2009 which featured the British National Party's leader Nick Griffin was dedicated to the issue of immigration.
In November of that year Alan Johnson admitted that his party had 'got it wrong on immigration' and handled the issue poorly.[21]
After New Labour
Ed Miliband admitted in 2011 that his party had 'got it wrong on immigration'.[22] BBC Political Journalist Nick Robinson in 2014 in a documentary focusing on the effects of migration from the New Labour period claimed that there 'had not been a proper debate on immigration for many many years' in part because of Enoch Powell's River of Blood Speech in 1968.[23]
Claimed plot behind increase
In October 2009, in an article released by the Evening Standard, titled 'Don't listen to the whingers - London needs immigrants' by Andrew Neather, who had been an advisor to Home Secretary's Jack Straw and David Blunkett and Immigration Minister Barbara Roche, claimed that there was a deliberate policy to 'make the UK multicultural' and that quote;
It didn't just happen: the deliberate policy of ministers from late-2000 until at least February last year, when the Government introduced a points-based system, was to open up the UK to mass migration. (...)
So why is it that ministers have been so very bad at communicating this? I wonder because I wrote the landmark speech given by then immigration minister Barbara Roche in September 2000, calling for a loosening of controls. It marked a major shift from the policy of previous governments: from 1971 onwards, only foreigners joining relatives already in the UK had been permitted to settle here. (...)
But the earlier drafts I saw also included a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural.
I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended – even if this wasn't its main purpose – to rub the rights nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date. That seemed to me to be a manoeuvre too far.[24]
The claim of an inherent plot was quickly picked up by the media.[25][26][27][28][29][30][31] However a few days later Andrew Neather later claimed that his words had been taken out of context;
Somehow this has become distorted by excitable right-wing newspaper columnists into being a 'plot' to make Britain multicultural. There was no plot.[32][33]
Demographic impact
Demographically, the immigrant population increased from 2.9 million in 1995 to 5.4 million in 2008[34] and the overall population increasing from 58 million in 2001 to 63 million in 2011.
On the origin of migration as well has the complexion changed, in the 1980s and 1990s, a third of migrants came from either Ireland or India however these two countries by 2008 only accounted for 12% of migrants arriving,[34] increasingly more migrants from non-European countries started to arrive and became more prominent in the composition of immigrants arriving.[34] In 1999 the Labour Force Survey reported that the country's behind the five largest groups of migrant growth were India, Ireland, Pakistan, Germany and Bangladesh, in 2009, this had changed to India, Poland, Pakistan, Germany and South Africa.[34]
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 Somerville, Will (2007-09-26). Immigration Under New Labour. Policy Press. ISBN 978-1-86134-967-5. Search this book on
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 "How immigration came to haunt Labour: the inside story | Patrick Wintour and Nicholas Watt". the Guardian. 2015-03-24. Retrieved 2022-01-11.
- ↑ "Labour 'sent out search parties for immigrants', Lord Mandelson admits". www.telegraph.co.uk. 14 May 2013. Retrieved 2022-01-12.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 "UK Public Opinion toward Immigration: Overall Attitudes and Level of Concern". Migration Observatory. Retrieved 2022-01-11.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 SCHUSTER, LIZA; SOLOMOS, JOHN (2004). "Race, immigration and asylum: New Labour's agenda and its consequences". Ethnicities. 4 (2): 267–287. doi:10.1177/1468796804042606. ISSN 1468-7968. JSTOR 23890306. Unknown parameter
|s2cid=ignored (help) - ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Wright, Chris F. (2012-07-01). "Policy Legacies, Visa Reform and the Resilience of Immigration Politics". West European Politics. 35 (4): 726–755. doi:10.1080/01402382.2012.682343. ISSN 0140-2382. Unknown parameter
|s2cid=ignored (help) - ↑ Somerville, Will Somerville Will (2007-05-10). "The Immigration Legacy of Tony Blair". migrationpolicy.org. Retrieved 2023-02-08.
- ↑ "Immigration Rules Relaxed". www.bbc.co.uk. 1997. Retrieved 2022-01-11.
- ↑ "Our competitive future: building the knowledge driven economy" (PDF).
- ↑ "BBC News | UK POLITICS | Call for immigration rethink". news.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2022-01-12.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 "Draft Speech by Barbara Roche MP, Immigration Minister". webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk. Archived from the original on 2002-08-23. Retrieved 2022-01-12.CS1 maint: Unfit url (link)
- ↑ "Migration: An economic and social analysis" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2003-03-07.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 Quetteville, Harry de (2021-06-24). "EU immigration to the UK underestimated by 1.6 million". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 2022-01-12.
- ↑ "EU migration to UK 'underestimated' by ONS". BBC News. 2019-08-21. Retrieved 2022-01-12.
- ↑ "Number of Romanian and Bulgarian workers in Britain hits new high". www.telegraph.co.uk. 13 August 2014. Retrieved 2022-01-12.
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 Consterdine, Erica (December 2017). "How New Labour made Britain into a migration state". The Conversation. Retrieved 2022-01-12.
- ↑ "The New Statesman Interview - Barbara Roche". 2017-05-13. Archived from the original on 2017-05-13. Retrieved 2022-01-12.
- ↑ "Barbara Roche: The vital history of immigration - and our failure to". The Independent. 2003-11-19. Retrieved 2022-01-12.
- ↑ "Roche urges Labour to promote the benefits of legal migration". The Independent. 2003-06-23. Retrieved 2022-01-12.
- ↑ "Tory election poster sparks complaints of racism from students and". The Independent. 2005-02-07. Retrieved 2022-01-11.
- ↑ "We got it wrong on immigration, says Johnson". The Independent. 2009-11-03. Retrieved 2022-01-12.
- ↑ Ferguson, Mark (19 April 2011). "Ed Miliband: We got it wrong on immigration". LabourList. Retrieved 2022-01-12.
- ↑ "'No proper immigration debate for years'". BBC News. Retrieved 2022-01-12.
- ↑ "Don't listen to the whingers - London needs immigrants". www.standard.co.uk. 2012-04-12. Retrieved 2022-01-11.
- ↑ "Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser". www.telegraph.co.uk. 23 October 2009. Retrieved 2022-01-11.
- ↑ "Labour 'Encouraged Mass Immigration To UK'". 2012-10-07. Archived from the original on 2012-10-07. Retrieved 2022-01-11.
- ↑ "Labour's secret scheme to build multicultural Britain | Minette Marrin - Times Online". 2010-06-01. Archived from the original on 2010-06-01. Retrieved 2022-01-12.
- ↑ "Call for probe into Labour's 'partisan' immigration plan - News - London Evening Standard". 2012-10-23. Archived from the original on 2012-10-23. Retrieved 2022-01-12.
- ↑ "Trying to stuff the cat back into the bag - The Spectator". 2009-10-27. Archived from the original on 2009-10-28. Retrieved 2022-01-12. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ "Jack Straw denies 'secret plot' on mass immigration - Telegraph". 2009-10-30. Archived from the original on 2009-10-30. Retrieved 2022-01-12.
- ↑ "Mass immigration "for political gain", says adviser". HeraldScotland. 23 October 2009. Retrieved 2022-01-12.
- ↑ "Former Labour adviser denies immigration plot to undermine right". the Guardian. 2009-10-26. Retrieved 2022-01-12.
- ↑ "How I became the story and why the Right is wrong | News". 2009-10-29. Archived from the original on 2009-10-29. Retrieved 2022-01-12.
- ↑ 34.0 34.1 34.2 34.3 Wadsworth, Jonathan (2010). "The UK Labour Market and Immigration". National Institute Economic Review. 213 (213): R35–R42. doi:10.1177/0027950110380324. ISSN 0027-9501. JSTOR 23881469. Unknown parameter
|s2cid=ignored (help)
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