UK Borders Bill

Well, if I am, I will have to be careful because my wife is one of them. When people tell us that we should embrace our European partners, I can say that I do it most nights of the week when I am not in the House. My wife and the many Hungarians whom I know—I know most of them in my constituency because I am one of probably few Members of Parliament who have some grasp of the language—tell me that they, too, do not want unlimited, uncontrolled immigration because it affects their jobs and the way that people perceive them. That is why we need controls. I thought that it was probably okay to allow Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into the European Union because their standards of living, although below ours, are not so far below that huge numbers of people could have been expected to leave permanently. The standards of living in Bulgaria and Romania are so far below even those of that recent tranche of EU members that people will have a strong financial incentive to leave in very large numbers indeed. This is not a matter of faith or culture; very often it is a matter of differences in standards of living.