Blunkett: No regrets on open door policy
FORMER Home Secretary David Blunkett said yesterday that he has no regrets about throwing Britain’s borders open to migrants from Eastern Europe, as he gave his backing to staying in the EU.
The Labour heavyweight said migrants from ‘accession eight’ countries including Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania would have gone into the ‘sub-economy’ had Britain not allowed them to work lawfully.
Lord Blunkett – a former Eurosceptic – said the UK should remain in the EU to ensure it could keep its border controls with France and continue co-operation on security.
And the peer claimed there would have been no point stopping East Europeans working in Britain when they joined the EU in 2004 because 40 per cent of those who signed up to work ‘were already here’.
He asked how Brexit supporters would have felt about ‘people disappearing into the sub- economy and undermining the minimum wages and conditions of workers’, adding: ‘That’s why I think what we did in 2004 was right.’
Speaking at a Labour In Europe event, Lord Blunkett revealed that the former German interior minis- ter, Otto Schily, had told him he ‘admired’ Britain’s policy of allowing the new EU members to take jobs. But Lord Blunkett added that had he been faced with the same dilemma in 2008 of throwing open the UK’s borders in the aftermath of the financial crisis, he would ‘possibly’ have reconsidered.
He insisted Brexit campaigners should not ‘scare’ people about immigration – before invoking the aftermath of 9/11 as proof the EU was necessary for security coopera- tion. But he also said no one should ‘underestimate the fear… of wider immigration, the fear of change, of what globalisation is doing to their jobs and their way of life’.
And he later admitted that Labour was unprepared for the how many people came from Poland, telling the BBC: ‘ There’s no question in my mind that we did not anticipate back in 2004 the numbers who would come.’
Lord Blunkett voted against Britain’s membership of the Common Market in the 1975 referendum, but yesterday became one of the most senior Labour figures to argue for staying in the EU. He explained: ‘I voted no to staying in the European Union. So what has changed? The simple answer is “the world”.’
Lord Blunkett said it would be a ‘calamity’ if Britain was forced to abandon its border controls in Calais as a result of a vote for Brexit, adding: ‘This would lead to the disappearance of tens of thousands of people into the illegal economy.’ He added: ‘This is not about the Conservative Party, who is going to be Prime Minister or internal politics, this is about the future of Britain.’