Plan to eject migrants who have no job is ‘just a sham’
A LAW the Prime Minister relies on to claim he can control EU immigration is a sham, says the ex-Cabinet minister who was in charge of implementing it.
Government officials told Iain Duncan Smith the chances of removing an EU citizen from Britain if they do not get a job after six months are ‘close to zero’.
David Cameron has repeatedly cited the rule in referendum debates as a reason why the public should not feel worried about voting Remain.
But yesterday Mr Duncan Smith lifted the lid on how Whitehall knows the law – which has not removed a single jobless migrant so far – will never work.
He said officials told him that migrants can easily circumvent the regulations. And, in any event, the Home Office admitted it did not have the staff or the ‘capacity’ to enforce it. The former Work and Pensions Secretary said Downing Street knows this is the case – and is therefore guilty of peddling ‘nonsense’. He added that Mr Cameron was spouting a ‘falsehood’ intended to ‘con’ the public. Mr Duncan Smith also:
Accused No10 of cutting cosy deals with businesses prepared to back Remain;
Attacked the ‘sneering elite’ leading Remain for telling the British public they are ‘not good enough’ to go it alone;
Warned the Civil Service and Bank of England have been turned into proEU ‘propaganda’ machines by the Government;
Hit out at pro-Brussels luvvies who do not ‘like the country that is their home’;
Said No 10 is guilty of a cynical ‘deceit’ over its pledge to cut net migration to the tens of thousands.
In TV appearances this week, Mr Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne have trumpeted a rule which states that an EU migrant with no job in Britain after six months will be deported.
But, for the first time, Mr Duncan Smith – who was in charge of implementing the rule change as work and pensions secretary – reveals the official civil service advice is that it will not work.
The former Tory leader said: ‘It is nonsense. I can tell you two things. The first is that it was me who set this up originally – before the Prime Minister’s supposed reforms. It was me that actually changed the system.
‘I changed it so EU migrants could have three months waiting for benefits, three months receiving benefits and after that total of six months, if we thought and believed you weren’t seeking work or likely to obtain work, you should be removed.
‘So I took this to the Home Office and said, “OK, under the rules they have to be seeking work, they are not working – will you remove them?”
‘After a while came back the answer, “Can’t, really, because we just don’t have the capacity”.’
Asked if the public were being conned Mr Duncan Smith said: ‘Yes. It beggars belief, really.
‘I sat in the department over the business of six months and it is just not going to happen.’
He also delivered a withering verdict on the PM’s commitment to cut migration to the tens of thousands – which he has never achieved. It currently stands at around 330,000 annually.
Mr Duncan Smith said: ‘I’m old-fashioned. I believe if you stand on a manifesto you a) believe it and b) you try to deliver it. But it now turns out they have been rather cynical. It seems some in my party actually didn’t believe it.’
He also warned the referendum is a battle for the survival of Britain as the public knows it.
‘This has been a false debate…It is time the British public fully understood that if they vote to Remain they are signing up to a process … a process that takes them to a place where the UK will no longer be the independent nation that we believe it should be,’ he said.
‘It beggars belief really’