Andrew Green

A recent Coffee House blog quite rightly noted that many British people are concerned that high levels of immigration have hurt their jobs, wages and quality of life, and noted too that this anxiety is understandable as workers have had a rough ride in recent times. Yet the authors, self-styled data-crunchers from the LSE, say that 'the bottom line is that EU immigration has not significantly harmed the pay, jobs or public services enjoyed by Britons'. One might think that the lack of harm, let alone significant harm, is a poor argument for anything. On pay, real wages are little different from a decade ago.

The BBC’s enthusiasm for anything that might undermine the Government’s immigration policy was demonstrated yet again by the excitable tone of last night’s Newsnight report (above). The thrust of the item was that a key element of the government’s case for restricting immigration had been undermined by a report written by Home Office officials but allegedly supressed by Number 10. As usual, the context was entirely absent. The original report quoted by the Home Secretary was by the Migration Advisory Committee who have a very high reputation in these matters.

So there was no great rush of arrivals from Romania and Bulgaria on day one – nor was there ever likely to be. The numbers will build steadily as they did from Poland in 2004. How many is another question. The key difference with Poland is that other countries, notably Germany, France, The Netherlands and Austria will be opening their labour markets at the same time; other members have already done so. The other major difference is that about a million, mainly Romanians, have already gone to Spain and a similar number to Italy. In Spain unemployment is now about 25% and youth unemployment is just over 50%; the same figures for Italy are 12% and 33%.

The Spectator debate on Monday will no doubt pick up from Cameron’s statement to the House of Commons after the G8 meeting on Wednesday. It was wafer thin; so were his achievements. The spin generated by Number 10 in recent days has verged on the absurd. On Tuesday, according to The Times headline, Cameron was 'leading the West to ambush Putin on Syria'. Does anyone believe that this is the way to handle the Russians, let alone Putin? Nor, of course, did it happen. By Wednesday we were being told that 'The West tries to engineer a coup in Damascus'. No sign of that either. By the time the Prime Minister appeared in the House of Commons he had come down to earth.

Yesterday came the news that net migration has once again fallen, this time to its lowest level for ten years. In the year ending September 2012, net migration was 153,000. That is a fall of 89,000 on the previous year when it reached a dizzy 242,000. This is undeniably good news. The public have consistently shown their desire to see net migration reduced and we now have a government which is committed to lowering net migration and has so far had considerable success. Many on the left, who cannot bring themselves to admit that net migration of 200,000 per year is too much for a small island such as ours, continue to perpetuate the idea that, in the process of reducing net migration the government is harming the economy.

Syria is sliding rapidly into chaos.  The supply of weapons to the opposition could only make matters worse, yet the Prime Minister seems to be -contemplating it. We have misjudged the situation from the start. From the early days of the crisis, two years ago, we rode to the rescue with our rhetoric. We were all for the forces of democracy and for the downfall of a ruthless dictator. Syria was another green shoot of the Arab Spring. A Syrian National Council was to be formed, on the pattern of the Libyan version, to be the vehicle for our democratic ambitions. We were to be, in that agonising cliché, ‘on the right side of history’. The problem was that this was largely hot air.

The fall of one third in the net immigration statistics announced today is the most significant development since that number rose by 50 per cent in 2004 (unremarked, incidentally, by the BBC at the time). On this occasion the IPPR (and the Migration Observatory) seemed determined to play down the government’s achievement. Certainly there is still a distance to go from today’s 160,000 to the target of tens of thousands but there are another two years in which to reach it. Sarah Mulley argues that the government are laying a trap for themselves because a reduction in student arrivals will lead to a reduction in departures in a few years time.   That would only be true if the fall was in genuine students.

Whisper it but the government have a fighting chance of reaching their immigration target. The main risk now is an inflow from Romania and Bulgaria when our labour market is fully opened to them next January. That is why the issue of child benefit is important; if we continue to pay it to children left at home it could greatly encourage such migration. Opposition to the government's immigration policy is now starting to dissipate. Much of it has come from special interest groups who stand to gain from unlimited immigration. Unfortunately for them, their raucous campaigns are colliding with the facts.

The immigration lobby are getting desperately short of arguments to set against the huge costs of mass immigration. The first body blow was a House of Lords report which 'found no evidence…… that net migration generates significant economic benefits for the existing UK population' (see abstract here). This was followed by a report from the government’s own Migration Advisory Committee which pointed out that much of any benefit goes to the immigrants themselves. (see Paragraphs 3.6-3.13 here). Then a study by the NIESR found that the contribution of the much vaunted East European migrants to GDP per head was expected to be 'negligible' (see Exec Summary here), indeed negative in the long run.