RECORD NUMBER OF JOBLESS EU MIGRANTS IN BRITAIN

Hammer blow for PM as 270,000 EU nationals came here last year

A RECORD number of jobless EU migrants moving to Britain to look for work has pushed immigration from the European Union to an all-time high. In a hammer blow to David Cameron, official figures showed the total number of EU nationals coming here under freedom-of-movement rules hit 270,000 last year.

This included a record 77,000 who came without the offer of a job. It also included a record number of arrivals from Romania and Bulgaria, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Net EU migration – taking into account the number of European Union citizens who left the UK – was 184,000, equivalent to a town the size of Colchester.

Overall net migration, including those from outside the EU, was 333,000 in the year to December, the second highest annual level on record.

The figures, the last to be released before the EU referendum on June 23, leave Mr Cameron’s pledge to cut net migration to the ‘tens of thousands’ in tatters. Leave campaigners said they demonstrated that the only way for Britain to

regain control over its borders was to quit the EU. In a stinging attack, Boris Johnson described the figures as ‘scandalous’ and accused the Prime Minister of undermining democracy by promising to cut migration then failing miserably.

As immigration and the migration crisis again dominated the referendum campaign yesterday:

Senior Eurocrats made a series of co- ordinated and vicious personal attacks on Mr Johnson, saying the prospect of him running Britain was a ‘horror scenario’.

More than 4,000 migrants were plucked from the Mediterranean attempting to get to Italy in what rescuers said was the busiest day they have ever faced.

Ministers risked fresh accusations of burying bad news as they released 26 separate Government statements.

The Prime Minister had promised to stop EU nationals coming here looking for work, but backed down in the face of opposition from Brussels.

Critics pointed out that his renegotiation deal will only restrict EU migrants from claiming in-work benefits and said it would do nothing to do deter more jobless workers from coming here.

When the EU was founded, citizens of other member states could move to the UK only if they had secured a job in advance. Now anyone from within the EU can come here to hunt for work.

Mr Johnson said the Prime Minister had been ‘cynical’ to promise to bring net migration down to below 100,000 while the UK was part of the EU.

He added: ‘I think (the figures) show the scandal of the promise made by politicians repeatedly that they could cut immigration to the tens of thousands and then to throw their hands up in the air and say there’s nothing we can do because Brussels has taken away our control of our borders.’

He added on Sky News: ‘EU net immigration alone represents a city the size of Colchester, 77,000 EU immigrants have come here without any kind of job at all, despite the promises we heard from the Prime Minister and others that they would get changes in the EU treaty insisting people would have to have a job before they came here.

‘At the moment what is happening is not with the consent of the British people and the only way to achieve that is to take back control on June 23 and vote to leave the EU.’

The figures could hardly have been worse for Mr Cameron, with the number of people coming in from the EU now being almost equal to the number of migrants from the rest of the world. Traditionally, non-EU migration has always been higher. The fact that EU immigration has rocketed – fuelled by the rise in incomers from Romania and Bulgaria – led to claims that Britain can no longer control who enters and leaves while it is in the European Union.

Critics have suggested that the ONS figures could even underestimate the true number of migrants coming into the country because they are based on a controversial passenger survey.

On Wednesday morning Mr Cameron told journalists on the plane to the G7 summit in Japan that he would not revise his ‘tens of thousands’ target. ‘No, I think the ambitions that I have set out are the right ones,’ he said.

But yesterday Downing Street spokesmen repeatedly refused to say when – or if – the target would be hit. A spokesman said the Prime Minister ‘knows there is more to do. We have taken a lot of steps. We have got further steps coming into force so long as we vote to remain in the EU’.

Leave campaigners said that, if Britain votes Out in the referendum, net migration ‘could be cut to somewhere between nought and 100,000’.

The ONS report covered immigration and emigration in the 2015 calendar year. Net migration, at 333,000, was up by 10,000. The total was just 3,000 below the record levels set the year before. There were 630,000 people who came to live in Britain and 297,000 emigrants. Immigration from Europe was the central reason for the high net migration total.

It comes only a day after the ONS said population growth – much of it fuelled by immigration – would push the population of England up by more than four million over the next eight years. Yesterday’s numbers suggest even this might be an underestimate. Net migration from the EU was 184,000, a figure that com- pares with net migration from the rest of the world of 188,000.

There were 65,000 immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria, the poorest EU countries, whose citizens were given the right to work freely in Britain from January 2014. Net migration from the two countries was 58,000 – by far the highest recorded, and above the 50,000 prediction made by the Migrationwatch think-tank.

There was a decline in immigration from the rest of the world. The number of visas issued to students went down, and so did the number of work visas issued to people from countries who do not enjoy the automatic freedom of movement provisions applied in the EU.

While 130,000 people from outside the EU came to work here, there were 178,000 EU migrants who arrived looking for work. Of these, 77,000 had no offer of employment and came to look for jobs.

‘We have taken a lot of steps’

THE tragic scenes of boats laden with migrants capsizing in the Mediterranean, and new figures showing net arrivals in Britain from the EU running at record levels, demonstrate the appalling, indeed almost overwhelming, dimensions of the crisis which is now unfolding.

Brussels officials have warned that about 800,000 more people have gathered in Libya and are hoping to make the perilous journey to Europe.

Meanwhile, according to the Office for National Statistics, 178,000 EU migrants took advantage of free-movement rules to come to Britain to work last year, including 77,000 who had no job offer.

How do the paltry restrictions on inwork benefits obtained by David Cameron as part of his EU renegotiation even begin to deal with this problem?

Yet he still refuses to abandon his pledge to cut net migration to the ‘tens of thousands’ – a target which yesterday’s figures confirm is a ridiculous fantasy.

The overall figure for net migration to Britain last year was 330,000, or over three times Mr Cameron’s target. As Boris Johnson and others point out, the only way to take back control of our borders and put power back in the hands of the British people is to vote on June 23 to leave the EU.