 Rhaiddoch i chi, oeddaeth. Mae'r cymdeithas i chi'n meddwl i'w ymdau. Rhaiddoch i chi'n meddwl i'w Cymru. Rhaiddoch i'w gwneud y fanfio i'r proses ffordd yn ceisio ei hunain bwysig sydd wedi gael ei ffordd. Mae'n gweld yn fanfio'r Ysgrifennol yn yêl i'r ysgrifennol Ieol. Mae'r proses i chi. autumn the project is about communicating as much information as possible to a wider group of people as possible as well as in somehow fitting in the research which goes with the is project rates. bydd gael ei henau gynyddiadion hwnnw o ran o'r gwleidio ddeithasol. The letter came from the Daily Mail and I should say I've now become an avid reader of the Daily Mail because frankly it gives you a taste of what's going on in certain parts of the world perhaps you wouldn't actually find out about just living in Cambridge. What we want to know in essence is whether people are drawn to the UK because of the allegedly very generous benefits gyda'n ymweld. Mae ydych chi'n gweithio'r rai gweithio ymdweud yw'r ffordd yw'r ysgrifennu yn ymgyrchu'n ymdweud yr erbyn EO8 yn ymgyrchio'r rydym ni'n gweithio'r rhaglion i'r cyfnodol ac yn y dyfodol, yn y dyfodol, Amnistau'n cael ymdweud yn ymdweud ymg Guruion ac yn ymddir ymdweud gyda'r ysgrifennu i'n eu gael cael ei ddechrau Ie ddod i. Rwy'n credu i ddadr yw'u cael bod ymloedd. Rydw i, mae'n ddod i ziwaredd yr eventau fit yw ffilm i'r gain gyda'i cynllun o'r Unig Yn Llyfrgell a'r Gyllidol Llyfrgell yn eu gwahan. If there is any time that you would like the filming to stop because of something you want to say which you do not want filmed, please let us know and we will turn the cameras off. Without more ado, Amy is going to very briefly present what we've done so far on where we've got up to and then we will hand the floor over for the afternoon session. So, as Catherine mentioned, our interest in this field that predates this project stands most recently from a two-year piece of work that Catherine and I have been engaged in, looking at the extent to which migrant workers from EU8 countries, so 2004 accession states enforced their employment rights in employment tribunals in the UK. And this came out of Catherine's examination at employment appeal tribunal level and we thought that this would be a really easy question to answer, that the government would keep information about this sort of thing. We actually discovered that they don't, so we've had to manually search lots of employment tribunal decisions to work out whether we think that EU8 migrant workers might be bringing these claims or not. So these three killer points represent just very crudely our findings, so we looked through all employment tribunal cases for 2010-2012 and we found that at most we could identify 1,548 cases being brought by EU8 workers who we thought was probably going to be migrants. Most conservatively within that sample we said there were 46 EU8 migrant workers, more realistically about 200, but however we cut the figures it was very clear that this was a significant underrepresentation of EU8 workers using the employment tribunal system to vindicate their employment rights. And in terms of representation probably most interestingly we found that migrant workers who were making use of tribunals were excessively in person so appearing without the benefits of lawyer weren't having the benefits of support from the Citizens Advice Bureau or trade unions as much as we might have thought. And so that interesting enforcement or lack of use of tribunals among certainly the EU8 population to enforce labour rights led into the Honeypot-Britain project and you can see there are quotes from David Cameron with the Honeypot-Britain hypothesis reflected there. And so we are interested in the rules that give rise to this purported Honeypot-Britain problem as well as empirically investigating the nature and extent of that problem. So what we're doing at the moment is interviewing and conducting focus groups with EU nationals more broadly, so going beyond the EU8 community now to understand what it is that brings them to the UK, is it indeed as David Cameron suggests that its benefits are there other things, who are these migrants who are often described as one homogenous group, what are their very personal stories and moving beyond that then we're going to do a piece of work that replicates our enforcement methodology but looking at social security cases in the upper tier tribunal and we're hoping that we're going to communicate some of our research through producing a documentary. So we're just at the start of what's quite a difficult process to engage with some of the migrant communities directly face to face. We're spending a lot of time in lots of exotic locations in fields, in factories, in clubs down in London, in community grassroots advice organisations. I was this morning at an easel at once, so we're all over the shop. So I will now hand back over to Julie. Thank you very much, that gives you an idea of what our little bit of the UK and a changing Europe project is about and one of the things that we've actually grappled with at a very basic level is terminology. How we describe the people who are moving and I was very struck by the Daily Mail yesterday with their graphic headline about 1 million migrants coming on their way and there's the words Europe and Gove saying Britain has no control over who we let in. Now of course the migrants that the Daily Mail is in fact referring to are those coming from third countries and of course there's a political agenda going on that we're probably all very aware of. But what we are very much looking at today is the EU dimension of this, so those moving from one EU state to another who of course we term as migrants but it's very striking that when you look at the coverage of the Britons abroad which is only an issue that seems to have raised its head recently in the consciousness of certain parts of the press. They're all expats so expats are obviously good things and doing good things by going abroad whereas migrants are probably coming here to claim benefits. So on that note if I can hand the floor over to Julie who's coming and going to chair this session. Thank you. Do we need the microphones? Can you hear without the microphones? Do you need the microphones to fill me? There's one over there as well. Okay. Are you our fourth panelist? Please. I'll move to the middle. What Catherine hasn't said is that it is a very dangerous thing to have invited me because the ESRC has decided that I'm a very dangerous political animal and I wrote a blog for them for their UK and changing Europe website at their request and said well why hasn't it gone up? And they said ah the advisory board didn't like it. We liked your first one because you did that about national parliaments and as an academic on national parliaments you're seen as an expert and writing about David Cameron well we think you're too political so we couldn't put it up. Meanwhile Nigel Lawson who in case anybody wasn't aware lives in France. He stands up on a regular basis in the House of Lords and says I live in France. He's invited on a regular basis to speak to the UK and a changing Europe. So I'm not quite sure how he is less political than I am. But I'm delighted to be here today only wearing my academic hat. So hopefully the ESRC will not get into trouble for asking me to speak or at least to chair this session. And I should sit very quietly and allow the speakers to introduce themselves and I won't abuse the chair in any way because obviously I wouldn't like to overly politicise a subject which is clearly not going to be political in any way. The speakers have all been asked to speak originally it said for two minutes. In fact they're allowed to speak for up to 10 minutes. And since I haven't been given CVs I'm going to suggest they introduce themselves. We also have Heidi Allen the MP for South Cambridgeshire. So anyone that's not aware Cambridgeshire is the centre of a doughnut and South Cambridgeshire runs all the way around Cambridge City. Are you hoping to say a few words and are you happy to go? Well I'm your guest, you invited me. I have literally half an hour which is ridiculously short and that's the point of my life. But if anybody I suppose has any questions on the floor then I'll be very happy to kind of feel them. But it's predominantly your bedroom so I'm just a support act to present to anyone who's asking really. I think you asked Heidi to make a few remarks right at the beginning. And take a few questions right at the beginning. If she said something for about 10 minutes or whatever. Forgive me that's not why I'm here. Are you happy to take some questions? I'm certainly not here to make a speech, it's your event. I'm just here to add any kind of information from the Government really if anybody has any questions around that. But it's your event so I certainly don't want to help or make a speech of any kind. Are there any questions? Marcus is twitching. Marcus Gehring who is the Deputy Director of the Centre for European Legal Studies. Who may be exercising his rights of free movement. Absolutely, I'm exercising my rights to free movement. The first question that came to my mind was how should I explain to my 7 and 10 year old migrants that there are certain people in the government in positions of power who consistently get the law wrong and use very populist, very low level arguments in order to pursue a political point that is actually impacting people's lives very directly. I find that from a political point of view very, very difficult and I don't envy you as the MP sitting on the Conservative benches and sharing those benches with people who quite frankly are insulting me and my kids on a daily basis. Shall we start with hello? That's quite a statement. I'm not actually sure that I'm here to respond to something like that. Do you want to be specific? That's quite a general statement you've made. Specificly what is it that you're going to do? The Justice Minister says that nothing the Prime Minister negotiated was legally binding. Which I understand is absolutely not the case, it is legally binding. Are you saying the Justice Minister got the law wrong? We should just say friendly and polite. I'm not here to justify what the Justice Secretary has or hasn't done. I'm an invited guest of people who have specific questions about my views on Europe. I'm not here to defend the government or to give views on whether Michael Gove is legally knowledgeable or not. That's a bit of an understatwish I think to put you into the question. The broader question is don't you think the entire discussion leading up to the referendum has an impact on people's lives and there are lots of people in your constituency that are impacted by this discussion? What are you doing to maybe mitigate or alleviate their worries? My view on the referendum is very simple. Everybody has a vote. My vote is no more powerful than yours. My job... I don't have a vote so... I think maybe that's a good thing, I'm not sure. I will vote to say it. That is my view and that is what I will express to constituents. Will I railroad them? Will I lobby them hard? No I won't. What I will try and do is provide information. People educated in Cambridge and they can make up their own minds. What they don't have is a great deal of evidence and information about what life might be like afterwards if we come out. I see it as my job to do my very best to try and provide that for them. Will I lobby hard? Will I be banging on doors trying to convince people my point of view? No I won't. Because I think that's disrespectful and people need to make their own conclusions. It's my job to filter out some of that noise and take the politics almost out of it. This is a decision that should be based on facts and evidence. A little bit of passion. I visited the refugee camps in Lesbos recently. My goodness me, that made me feel that the world is an incredibly small place getting smaller every day. For me, I want to be part of a team to try and fix those humanitarian issues. For me, it's gone beyond pensions and parents. But I just want to provide people with information to make their own decisions. I have a question as well. You say that this decision should be based on evidence and which is informed and so on, which I totally agree with that. But there are parts of the country where Cambridge is perhaps not such a part. But there are parts in the country where people simply do not accept the evidence. For example, the question of benefits. There is evidence that migrants can only cover what they take out from the social system. They also contribute with a set of births. People are there who simply do not accept that that is the case. They are in Cambridge here as well. Two of them have been last night. Perhaps that is the only other part of the other country. So my question would be what does the government do in respect of those parts of the country? The message has to be consistent everywhere. I am new to politics. I am a business person. I find it staggering the speed with which propaganda and media and spin suddenly becomes what everybody is thinking. But it happens every single day. Then you mix a healthy dose of ego in there as well. It is just a powerful cocktail for people's opinions to be swayed based on anything other than evidence. I think what a good politician should do, you are the representative, you are the person that brings the information to people, is they should try and park as much of that as they can and deliver the consistent message of information. We do not really know what the world would be like outside of the EU. That is broadly speculation. But I think it is particularly difficult at the Unison Conservative Party at the moment because everything you are reading is absolutely right. The fractions, it is just people's front of Judea versus the Judeans' front of the moment. It is ridiculous. Whether Boris will bring some kind of cohesion to the out campaign, I do not know. But certainly the Prime Minister launched the in campaign this week and it is our job to be professional. I think, really, and make sure that that professional message using the media permeates the whole of the country. But it is not easy because some of those views are very heavily ingrained already. That is really a good point. How do you think people do not accept hard data and hard evidence? How do you reason with people like that? You are assuming that they have had the hard data? Of course. I often speak to people and I say there is research from UCL and other universities and so on and it clearly shows X, Y and Z because I know that is not the best. How do you reason with people like that? The overall populace won't be receiving hard data like that. I think perhaps you have some examples of people who both do, but I find in politics that you are overwhelmed by the number of people in view that is really difficult to connect. We can all only do what we can do, which is professionalism, information, data, to take the ego out of it, take the brave heart element out of it, let's stick to facts, let's stick to facts and we all have to do that and just push the message out. Can I just ask one question about that? Can I ask people to introduce themselves when you speak so that I don't know everybody and suddenly Heidi won't say. James Dick is now a barrister from number five chambers. I do practising EU law among other areas of law. Just on this issue of how the in-campaign will be presented because of course one of the things that Cameron is emphasising, understanding for certain reasons is that the concession wrought around benefits in the four years that you have been able to break and all of that. One thing I have been asking myself, is it possible to present that case but also picking up on what I have just said, also as it were informed people that actually EU migrants contribute more than they take out because on one level the two are almost contradictory or could be seen as almost contradictory, those two messages. So I'm just wondering how that can be dealt with. Is one council that the other one? Well, it's a more nuanced and subtle position to put across than the exit campaign. I think the other thing that we can do just following on to your question in addition to that, because you're right, it's how your brand is less consistent and how you twist people's perception of how you thought of it this way. My husband's worked in sales and marketing on his life so he understands customers and what makes them buy and that's what this is about at the end of the day, how do we get people to buy the decision to stay in? You have to be selling them the things that they're interested in. So actually if the thing about migration benefits is closed or they're just not going to hear you, then we need to start selling them different products and those different products could be security around our membership in this uncertain world, putum on everything, et cetera, et cetera. That's the message, that's the sales product they want to buy. So perhaps rather than flogging a dead horse that they're just never going to buy, we should be focusing on other messages of things that they are more receptive to hearing. I think security, Parliamentary sovereignty, those sorts of arguments have a house. That's more of an open door to push because some things are just too entrenched. I'm sorry, and also in their part of the world they won't necessarily see migrants contributing because they're not all, let's be honest, just across the country, really regionalised and how people feel about migrants actually the contributions that they've put forth currently. So no matter how you express it, that's not what they're seeing load from. Here and then the lady there and then the gentleman. Jeffrey O'Rourton, politics in the University. You answered the question partially and I assume you support the Prime Minister's package but how important do you think that package is both for referendum and for the European Union and the UK if we say it? Well, the package is the package, isn't it? I mean, we're not going to get a better one now. So that is, and it does tickle this slightly that Boris seems to be suggesting that you'll get a better package if he's allowed to be. Oh, Prime Minister maybe. First of all, I think, is it brilliant? No. Is it broadly acceptable? Yes. Does it ultimately, if it secures as a seat still within Europe, it's good enough for the electricity convince system? You know, it's like any organisation change. Europe is a tankership and they're a past that all of us would want to change by way of bureaucracy. But you've got to be in there to change it. And for me it would start the beginning of a new relationship that says, yes, okay, we've stayed, we're here, we had some compromise, thank you very much, but let's develop this relationship now that's ready for the next generation. But if we're not part of it, we can't do that. Do I think the package is brilliant? No. Is it good enough, just about? Is it all we're going to get? Yes. Thank you. My name is Christina, I'm an American historian. The government has said that it wants to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands, and I'm wondering if you think this treaty can come anywhere near achieving that, and if not, what do you think would actually do so? I think while our economy continues to outperform a lot of euro, all the treaties in the world are not going to recognise any big difference. And here's a slightly controversial thought, maybe, I don't know within this room. I feel a little bit unprepared, because I didn't hear the beginning of the meeting. I don't know what side of the fence people are on, so I've taken a bit of a punt here. There is part of me, and I see it certainly in places like Cambridge. Actually, I think I want those brains to come here. I'm actually not so hung up on the numbers, as a lot of the politicians are. I think if the economy is doing well, and of course we came into this huge death sentence, but actually, if financially we were in a better position, do you think we'd all be moaning so much about the migrant numbers? I'm not sure we would actually, but it's because the hospitals are struggling, infrastructure, all the same reasons we're here, that people are unable to cope with this concept of all these extra people coming here. Of course we'd have to get the numbers down, but I think we're pushing a watch up hill whilst our economy is sticking to the country ahead of the others. But for me, if I was PM, we'd just never get to have them. Would I have a target of that low level? I don't think I would actually. It is too broad. Taking university students out of the numbers would help a bit. Gentleman here. I was recently interviewed on Polish television in a 10-second slot, asking what my opinion is of the Polish Premier's decision to agree to support Cameron. Nice to listen. It's obvious that we have no lost situations for Poland. It's good because Poland is gaining benefit from the migrants that are here. My question is really something completely different. What do you consider, do you consider it logical that migrants are allowed to vote for European members of Parliament, for the local councillors, and yet they cannot participate in a referendum? A lot of them have been for five years, ten years. They're effectively residents in this country now. It seems a bit odd that the decisions that have been arrived at will affect them more than anybody else or their families, and yet they have no voice at all in the matter. I think it's a variable. There's no way round it. No, it won't change that. It seems very, very... My mum's German. So you know. I think probably this referendum will be the last bastion of British commonwealth nus of insular-looking nus, if that makes sense to you. And then we move on, hopefully. I understood you were up there. Final question, and then we'll go to the main panel. Just to reinforce your point about migration and the treaties and to the regional arrangements that might have more internal migration in the EU even though they don't allow for it, as in the NAFTA, where the levels are very high in both. We'll get as in the concentrated. My question was slightly different. I saw the coverage, and you spoke very movingly about what you'd seen in Lesbos. And whether we stay in the EU or not, how do you think you and the government will take forward possible issues of burden-sharing, be it either financially or in terms of taking refugees, given that the situation is likely to intensify, not get any better? My fear is if we are not in the EU, Britain will do a very British thing and just batten down the hatches and say it's your problem, actually. And I think from a humanitarian and moral point of view, that's wrong. What I saw was a desperate need for organisation. Greece has been dumped on royally. And it does make me smile, given that we were berating them financially not that long ago to get the house in order and only then might we let you stay in the gang. But actually now it's quite handy that you're here because you could just deal with this problem, thank you very much. I think the way that they've been left to deal with it is absolutely unacceptable. For me, if we are a team, we share that burden, we share that sense of strategy and we come up with a plan to deal with it at the moment. I think European leaders are like bunnies in headlights. They have no idea what to do. And they're not talking to each other and it's conveniently Greece's problem. And I feel Britain has a role to care for the underdog. That's what makes us British too. And I want us to be round that table with the ones leading it. And funny enough, I've got a meeting with the Prime Minister next week to talk to him about what I saw. And I'm hoping that he will lift our game and lead in that. You know, that's a strong reason to say in the EU we are better than this, we lead. And when people need our help, we're not the people that turn the other cheek. We've done rather too much of that. Thank you. I'm going to turn to the main panel, but I think we haven't really expressed any views before you arrived. In Cambridge and particularly in the university, broadly you're among friends in terms of... ..or desires to stay in the European Union and be constructive players. So anyway, thank you very much indeed. Sorry to put you in the spotlight. But unlike a bunny, you did survive. So thank you very much indeed. The proposal now would be that we go in the order that's on the programme with speakers introducing themselves for whatever period they would like to introduce themselves for and a few introductory remarks. A maximum of 10 minutes, but if it's fewer than 10 minutes, we won't object. So starting with Jonathan, going to Charles, Bernard, and then Malcolm Lauren. Sure. Okay, I'm Jonathan Portis. I am also a senior fellow in the ESRC UK in a Changing Europe programme for which finance is financial support. I am, of course, grateful. And as such, I am unlike... ..unlike Ms Allen and unlike probably a majority of you in this room, strictly neutral and objective on the question of how people actually should vote in the referendum, should be very clear about that. So what I will try and do is give a... ..as most of you probably know, and unlike most I think of the panelist, I'm not a lawyer or an expert on European law. So I won't be talking about that. I'm an economist. I'll talk very briefly about the sort of economic history of free movement in Europe and then a little bit about what we've seen over the last few years in the UK. So, as you all know, free movement, one of the four freedoms in the treaties back in the late 50s. So it's always been there. But the interesting thing from an economic history point of view is that free movement was not really that big a deal in the first 30 years or so of the EU's existence. There was very substantial immigration for work purposes to the major countries of the EU in that time to Germany, from Turkey, to France, from North Africa and to the UK from various former Commonwealth countries. But that was an immigration driven largely by historical and colonial ties not because of the what was already then the legal right of free movement. And I think from an economic point of view, free movement really became highlighted as an issue actually in the negotiations surrounding the Maastricht Treaty. Not many people, I suspect, know or remember this. I was part of the Treasury team that negotiated the Maastricht Treaty and a key question a very important question which it turned out we did not terribly good job of answering was what would be the adjustment mechanisms within a single currency area in the event of severe regionalised economic shocks and a lot of that debate was conducted in the context of the theory of optimum currency areas what makes an area suitable for a single currency by analogy to the United States and there were a couple of very influential papers, one by Olivier Blanchard, the well-known French macro-economist who recently retired as head of the chief economist of the IMF on comparing labour mobility in the European Union with labour mobility in the US and noting that labour mobility possibly even more than fiscal transfers was the key adjustment mechanism by which the member states of the United States adjusted to economic shocks and that this was not really at all the case in the European Union. Now the Monetary Union went ahead anyway but I think that was the beginning of a view among European policy makers that actually something needed to be done to facilitate labour mobility within the European Union so there were then a variety of legal changes and directives aimed at actually turning the principle, the legal principle of free movement into something that could be practically applied but of course the real impetus to much higher labour mobility came in 2004 with the accession of 10 new member states to the European Union in particular the A8 states of Central, Eastern Europe and the Baltics and the decision by a number of countries including the UK, Ireland and Sweden primarily to allow immediate free movement of workers to the UK and the other two countries completely resulted in levels of labour mobility within the EU which had not been seen before and that those flows were then given a very substantial further impetus by the the great recession, the great financial crisis and the ensuing recession in particular the very very severe recessions which hit certain countries in the Baltics and then in Southern Europe so we've seen a much higher level of infra-EU labour mobility over the past 10 years than we saw in the 40 years previous to that and so what has that experience been and I think in contrast to all the other adjustment mechanisms that we've had within Monetary Union labour mobility has actually worked pretty well, it's one of the few things that we could talk about as a success story as opposed to the coordination of fiscal monetary policy which has been an absolute disaster partly because of the design failures of the EU and partly because of short-sighted behaviour on the part of view of European polymakers, labour mobility seems to work quite well, it's done the job which it was supposed to do it's acted as an adjustment mechanism people have flowed from countries in areas where labour demand is weak and unemployment is high to places where labour demand has been at least in relative terms high such as Germany and the UK and that is what you would expect in a well-functioning economic union and moreover the effects appear in most cases to have been broadly benign as you probably know I've done there's been a huge surge in research on the labour market impacts of immigration everything from the sort of qualitative and legal focus studies you're doing through to the quantitative econometrics studies that people like I and some of my colleagues have done and these have broadly shown that the impacts on receiving countries and not just the UK but also Ireland, Germany and so on have been broadly benign at the same time we've also seen that the impact in sending countries has also been relatively positive there have been unemployment is probably lower and wages probably higher than they would otherwise have been in the sending countries as a consequence of immigration at a time of labour demand now I think that does come with a medium to long term caveat countries like Latvia which have seen a very, very large outflow of skill relatively young, relatively skilled workers that's probably a good thing in the short term when you're going through a very, very serious reception and just aren't any jobs from the medium to long term prospects of countries like Latvia that's not which faces was facing demographic challenges already that is not necessarily a good thing so I think the challenge for the EU then will be to this is something countries have to sort out for themselves Latvia and Poland the free movement genie is out of the bottle Latvia and Poland aren't going to retain skilled workers by finding some way of stopping them from emigrating what they're going to the only way they can for them to have a medium to long term future in this respect is by finding policies which ensure that skilled workers want to remain in Latvia and Poland because there are good jobs and good prospects for them so there's something of a challenge there finally on the UK in my 30 seconds or so I mean I think without being in any sense saying which way to go for me the one really positive thing about this referendum is that I've been working on immigration policy in this country in one form or another for the best part of the last two decades and there is not the one thing which really frustrates me most it's people who say whether it's on twitter or whatever it says oh all this immigration we never voted for that open borders arrested the European Union we were never asked we never voted for that and whatever you think of that argument from a constitutional or legal perspective it has a lot of resonance out there well this referendum gives a chance to sort that the government's white paper on the renegotiate state very clearly we support free movement we think it's a good thing it's been a good thing for the UK so if the people of Britain choose to vote to stay in it seems to me that settles that argument reportedly with great reluctance if we vote to stay in we will then be able to say even so this is a democracy we have a referendum and the question is clearly there on the ballot paper if your vote remain you are voting for free movement you may not like free movement but you're still voting for it and you can't come back and whine about it afterwards similarly if we may try that will not have the legitimacy or residence it does now similarly if we vote to leave then we will have to sort out what an immigration policy this country is prepared to live with looks like outside the European Union and if that doesn't worry you maybe Charles Clarke can give us something to be even more worried about I'm going to be more positive I've worked on migration quite a lot since I lost my seat in the 2010 general election I worked with UCL the cream unit at UCL we've done quite a lot of work on the impact here I'm a work of the migration policy which you place in Washington and Brussels which does a variety of different things but I came to it all very fresh when I was asked to be Home Secretary in December 2004 with a view to trying to get our policies on migration clear before due to general election in 2005 my own view was Andy's that it is not the case that the UK is full of racists of various kinds who can't stand migrants coming to the country my view is that there's a massive lack of confidence in the governance of migration to this country people feel very concerned about it they can't understand who's in the country and why they're in the country and what they're doing a thing which is exacerbated by some of the mass media and the distortions of the situation that happens but also exacerbated by real events I remember a police officer was killed by an illegal migrant during the time I was home secretary in this period and of course people think well it's bad enough that the police officer is being killed but by somebody you shouldn't even have been here so all the doubts about the governance come very high so it seemed to me as still seems to me that the core issue was to try and establish confidence in the governance of migration I'll come to the EU in a second where it seems to me that confidence in governance by the EU of migration or by the EU member states of migration is extremely low at the moment for all the reasons which are entirely obvious but my effort to try and deal with it was to publish a white paper on migration in January 2005 which firstly set out what were the criteria for the different forms of migration migration to work, migration to study migration to family reunite and then the fourth which isn't really migration I'm well aware asylum that often gets confused with migration in that context and my view was and is that you needed very clear and transparent rules in each of those categories that those rules needed to be well understood and broadly supported and by the way I think that is the case they are broadly supported at the moment but then well operated well enforced and carried through in an effective way that was a massive weakness that we had then and still exist now when I became home secretary there full of filing cabinets going back five years of asylum seekers where the files had never been opened and never happened the discussions had never been taken and the reason was that the system had not taken on enough people of enough quality to do it and at the same time a large number of the asylum decisions which the home office was taken were being overruled in the courts as not being competent in respect A respect B or respect C and it seemed then and seems to me that that was the core issue that we had to address the white paper was established for non-EU migrants a point system which I still think was the right approach to follow and then over a period of years from 2005 gradually that system was bedded in it has had strengths and weaknesses as it's gone through but I still think it's the right approach what it didn't address that migration white paper in January 2005 was migrants from the EU and it's clear that the free movement within the EU should be sustained there was no suggestion at any time when I was preparing that white paper from any part of government that we should somehow be changing the free movement rules within the EU and so we didn't seriously consider that as a possibility now the and by the way I should say I'll come to the A8 question in just a moment that was after the A8 decisions have been taken about the first group of migrants from those countries now I'm of the view myself apropo your honeypot Britain project that the reasons why people want to come and live in Britain are the nature of our society, the nature of our economy and I'd also add to that our language which is a big factor compared to many other countries those are overwhelming in my experience the reasons why people want to come and live and work here it's not about people seeking benefits and all there's other issues which are chats around I simply don't believe that is the case now I hope Catherine that your project here that you and Amy are doing that when it analyzes this will broadly say I'm writing what I'm saying but that doesn't always happen I'll say you can cut out all that academic work and money that was spending on your work just to accept my prejudice as basic people facts that you'd go for you can see joking aside that given the controversy that's been around these issues it is very important to try and analyse as far as one can what really are the motivations that lead people to do it but I don't want to change our society in a way that makes people not want to live here it's being that Johnston just talked about the common life migration of various points the fact is that many many of those people I've talked to many constituencies many parts of Britain wanted to come here because the society that we represented was a very positive thing compared with the societies which they've been brought up in people wanted to be here with our freedoms and so on that were attached to where we were and of course Johnston's an important component of it but by no means the only component of it you'll often find many migrants from the former Commonwealth country for example very very positive about the fundamental values I was a bit sceptical about the citizenship proposals that we've carried through if you go to any citizenship cairnary and see what people are talking about citizenship as they take it on it does a very powerful emotional expression about the values of the society which people have come to be here on the A8 question my broad analysis is that what happened then was political failure including by the Labour Party and phrases like British jobs for British workers and things of that kind just completely eroded what should have been a fairly confident position that we were able to take forward I don't agree with the proposition which has been widely described that we were wrong to admit the A8 countries in 2004 quickly and rapidly the three countries which Johnston described it wasn't actually my decision it happened before I was Home Secretary but I did very very strongly support it and I was a secretary of education of skills at that time because of the skills component we were an important part of the discussion that took place it is the case that there was an assumption that Germany probably would also be amongst that first group of countries and it decided not to be and that meant more than perhaps otherwise had been the case people were coming from the A8 countries to the UK rather than slightly more widely across the EU but the criticism that was made for example by the Labour opposition in the last Parliament that if only we would have a tighter transitional process we hadn't let people in at that time everything would have been a lot better I fundamentally think is incorrect the fact is that there was to be a seven year transition we had to choose between 0 and 7 our economy was in a relatively strong position we were in a better position at that time to deal with people who were going to migrate here the assessments made by academics which the government accepted about how many people would or wouldn't come for me that was not the key argument at that time a range of other and I watched this question then very carefully during the whole of the rest of my time in Parliament and I'm afraid I sound like an ostrich head in the sand politician but I myself have yet to really see the very strong negative effects which some allege to be the case as a result of the A8 migrants that came to this country I talked to lots of people I talked to people who believed there were problems my political friend John Denham the MP for Southampton motivated by UCAT a trade union issue about what was happening to jobs and wages in the building trade and construction trade in Southampton built a whole argument which has now got a centre of Englishness which is established as a result but I have to say I don't believe it was a general thing there were issues there were people obviously worried about migration the many people I talked to about this actually were more worried about it from what they'd read in the newspapers from their personal experience and so I'm afraid I'm heading the sand tendency when it comes to the real alleged negative effects of that migration that took place I think there were some effects on wages in some of the some sectors of the economy I think the famous Polish plumbers did provide a more efficient, more effective competition to some of the people that had been here before and so people were damaged by that I would say that was better for the consumers in that process and actually moved it forward but I don't believe there were the very dramatic effects that there were I went to Bulgaria and Romania shortly before I was the secretary talked to people in those countries about their accession to the EU probably more criminal justice thank you Julie and I was of the view had I stayed home secretary I would have said that Bulgaria and Romania too we should have done what we did with the A8, the first A8 and allowed the transition immediately into the UK and I don't think waiting the seven years that we would have done that we in fact did do would have made the situation better as far as that overall situation is concerned the only change that I can see that might be beneficial when countries are exceeding into the EU is to make it a shorter transition period of seven years and hoping to be in a situation that more countries would agree to do it simultaneously rather than having a competition between the existing EU countries after five years after seven years etc etc etc so I can finally to where we are now in the EU context I wrote this pamphlet, the EU and migration a call for action after I left Parliament and I believe the EU absolutely faces that crisis of confidence in the governments of migration as a result of the enormous refugee crisis there has been I'm very strongly critical of the EU for failing to act over the last four or five years I've tried in various ways myself to press that to various people but not just the EU itself but the various EU member governments have not been ready in my view to face up to what needs to be done in my opinion the core thing that needs to be done the first order problem is to secure the external border of Schengen, in particular the southern border of the EU and that is done firstly by establishing strong bilateral relations with the countries on the border in North Africa and elsewhere and that hasn't been done and took place and weren't involved in trying to support those economies in any substantial way in my view and established then a fast track means of dealing with the various applications when they arise and then a proper system for terms of readmission and I would add to it a serious attack on people smugging at the moment 90% of the people who come through are being facilitated by people smuggers who have enormous profits and zero risk of getting caught and I think that could be stopped by police action in very significant ways I think the second order problems which the EU is in fact focused on the distribution of the 160,000 migrants which in my opinion is completely destined to fail and it will be a further disaster and damaged relationships are not the right way to approach it it should be the first order issue which is securing the external border I can go into which is not a question of Barbara by the way it's a question of a whole set of different relationships between EU and its neighbours I couldn't happily go into detail in that if anybody's interested and I've said out some of the detail even in my rather outdated pamphlet but I think Julia probably overrun my time and so I will draw it to a pause at this moment Thank you, we'll come back to you in questions Thank you, my name is Bernard Ryan I'm Professor of Immigration Law at the University of Leicester and I could probably speak to a variety of questions in the migration law and policy field I had intended to speak primarily about employment law I thought that it would be more prominent shall we say in the seminar but I will cut down play that in my remarks so I'm probably doing this off the cuff I have no hesitation about saying that I have the favour of remaining and I hope everyone will vote to remain in the European Union I'm from Ireland I'm from the west of Ireland and I have no hesitation but saying this is actually a fantastic country and the debate about migration and the phenomenon of migration here is very much linked to the strength seems to me of the United Kingdom as a place to live I can say that coming from a neighbouring country and I'm sure that is a common sense of people who come here who want to come here, who do come here I was glad to hear the way in which Charles Clarke phrased it it's not just about the economy it's also about the nature of society I would say the nature of the state as well in the United Kingdom particularly stable and in comparative terms not corrupt state and I think these are some of the things that people value about coming here and I do find it strange how many British people don't seem to grasp the strengths of their society that make it so attractive for people to come and work and stay many do of course, many do not and that is a particular frustration of mine in discussions around migration and of course migration contributes we only have to look at the incredible size incredible share that the foreign born and foreign nationals now have within the labour market, within the world of employment to understand that I looked it up before coming the latest figures are 16% of people in work are foreign born 10% are foreign nationals each of these is I'm sure a historical pie these figures have increased year on year for the last 20 probably longer 25 years if you go all the way back to post war over every decade the percentage of foreign born in employment has been increasing migrants contribute and they have contributed for decades to the British economy and British society I suppose more widely and I just find it very difficult to imagine what it would be like the day afterwards the day after it is apparent that Britain has left the European Union and is also walking away from the single market is walking away from a ready labour supply within the EU I find it very difficult to imagine what that would be and what British society would really look like if there was a serious attempt to reduce the level of foreign born or foreign nationals or new migration I don't think it's viable I think there would be enormous economic and social dislocation if that were to take place and I think this is some of the things I really ought to come out in the referendum campaign and I have been having conversations with people about wanting to present some fairly technical summaries of EU law around the referendum and I don't think that's not what this is about this is about the choice between where we are and what the alternative would be and the alternative that no one has described in terms of immigration what would a future immigration policy look like what would a future immigration policy look like I don't think we have even the beginning of an answer to that question I mean I find it think about the current arrangements where roughly 50% of net migration is from outside the EU and roughly 50% is from from inside and we have over 300,000 per annum that's a system to me it's not the case that you can just switch off the EU and imagine that somehow the non-EU policy is then going to apply to everybody it just couldn't work like that the other half of net migration and those that are already here from those countries those places in the society those places in the labour market will still be there and a future policy would have to respond to that it couldn't just be a generalisation a fairly restrictive policy towards non-EU migration that we have at present and no one seems to be talking about that so I think what where I'm going I suppose is to say that whatever the outcome and I guess there are three possible outcomes staying in leaving but staying in the single market somehow and leaving all together whatever the outcome it seems to me that there will continue to be significant a significant presence of foreign nationals and a significant continuing migration to the United Kingdom I wish we could have more detail about what people think the real alternatives but whatever they will be there will be large numbers involved now the way I turning a little bit to employment law where I think employment law fits into the discussion around migration it really has an alternative way not the only one by any means but one of several alternative ways of thinking of other ways out of the policy impasse the policy dilemma that the United Kingdom seems to have ended up with where generally speaking at least for much of the population and for many in the political class migrations too high the price of leaving the EU or the single market is also too high and there's something of a policy impasse about what to do and I think we will need certainly if we stay within the EU but also if we leave it seems other ideas about how migration can be and particularly labour migration can be better handled and made less painful for the society or made less painful in social terms in how people understand what's going on I actually agree with what Charles Clark said about this where the real example is concrete of things going badly wrong you might struggle to find them but there's a sense that they are and it's not just the actual phenomena that needs to be addressed it's also that sense that needs to be addressed and if it can't be addressed by leaving the EU we'll be doing it other ways and I think labour law has a part to play and of course the long history of employment law or labour market regulation is one of a tendency towards a more flexible labour market and I think there has been a price to be paid in political terms around migration for that flexible labour market I guess that's my general starting point we have ended up with a market where labour market intermediaries agencies and so on are central with great potential for abuse there we have a very weak enforcement regime across the board I was actually trying to help somebody get paid in someone I know in Leicester and it's extraordinary how difficult it is even to begin the process of finding someone who can help in bringing a claim to wages the official information through ACAS and so on is quite impenetrable and it's actually a step ultimately it's the revenue that one has to go to but there's no direct way of doing it you can't phone them up meanwhile tribunals are now fees and county courts are fees as well so there's no ready made system by which someone who in the labour market is not getting what they should even in a very common or garden way where they can go and do something about that and that's a serious aspect that seems to me of the labour market is the weakness of enforcement systems there are also mentions being made of the British jobs for British workers controversy a lot of that story was the weakness in the supports for collective agreements in British employment law the fact that it, although EU law got blamed because it posted workers and so on in truth there was a solution within the United Kingdom law that wasn't being used which was to extend in terms of collective agreements to non-prolities and that is something I would argue should be reconsidered as part of any re-examination shall we say of employment law in the light of migration and the migration debate there are quite a number of things that could be considered maybe one point I would make as well just thinking about the alternative the alternative universe post single market if that ever were to happen one thing I think there's not been picked up on is that there would presumably be a lot more work without immigration permission taking place in the UK than at present in other words it would increase significantly the presence of irregular employment and one of the legal issues around that is irregular migrant workers are excluded from all protection in employment law and that's not a big practical matter right now occasionally it's not a big practical matter but in a genuinely post post single market environment that is something that would undoubtedly need to be considered just maybe to wrap up in the employment law area what I think I'm arguing is there are a variety of changes that could be made that would go to the question of addressing exploitation of migrants addressing undercutting by migrants and even if they are not as anything like as extensive phenomena as is believed they would go to the perception that they are a more stable less flexible labour market with higher minimum standards more security of employment all of these would it seems to me better enable migration which will continue to be absorbed and I think I'll leave it there Thank you very much indeed and last but very much not least we turn to Marine Oil from New Europeans and I know that one of your big things is the point that Marcus was making earlier about getting votes for EU nationals so I'm really sorry that EU nationals don't have a vote in the referendum we did argue for it but over to you Well it is indeed a real shame because many of us would be affected by whatever the UK decides to do in June yes my name is Marie I'm the trustee of an organisation called EU Europeans and as you can probably tell by my accent I grew up in Germany I also have a French mother moved to the UK about nine years ago so I guess I'm somewhat a prototype of a European citizen really and I'm here to give the perspective of an immigrant and I'm very grateful to Amy and Catherine to have invited me to speak on this panel because it's very seldom that a debate about freedom of movement actually includes people who have exercised that right and so with Bernard and I you have too so that's fantastic Europeans is an organisation that represents mobile citizens and gives them a voice and we are perhaps more on the idealistic side of the debate on Europe but I'd like to think that doesn't make us wrong for us freedom of movement is not only about the right to cross borders but it is also about the right to settle somewhere and to be as free in the host country as you were in your home country and that comes with a range of rights and duties of course it means that you as an immigrant have to make an effort to integrate in your new society and I appreciate that not everybody does but it also means that you are able to build and that you pay taxes and yes it also means that you are able to claim benefits when you have to but let me be very very clear on this as an immigrant you do not leave your home country you do not leave your family you do not leave your support system you do not leave often much better weather and food just to claim benefits in another country that is simply not the case some of us come to start a new life to open new businesses some of us just have an adventure and you know some of us do come to work very very hard to provide support to their families back home and you know some of us can only for a few years for a few months freedom of movement has made all of that very possible personally I'm going to stay for only a few months it's been nine years now and you know I came because I stayed really because Britain is a wonderful country it's got a fantastic sense of humour which you know Germans don't really do it's very open it had a little bit to do with beef and stilt and pie I'm not going to buy but this referendum it makes me and I think it makes a lot of other humour about citizens incredibly nervous and incredibly uncomfortable and anxious about the future that we have in this country and that is partly because the narrative about free movement in parts of the media completely borders on the hysterical I mean you might remember the reports that there would be buses and planes with the permanents and Bulgarians that would arrive here once the transitional restriction had been removed you may have noticed that that didn't happen after the deal was announced we at New Europeans actually got a phone call from several Bulgarian journalists asking what in the world in what benefits actually were so the deal itself if it is approved and if the UK chooses to stay in the EU which I very much hope it does is it's not going to stop people from coming but the narrative and the changed attitudes over the last few years about how open Britain is and how welcoming it is to immigrants that actually might and it is a shame that the debate about the UK's membership of the EU is so often about the economic benefits and the trade and the single market and about what an awful bureaucracy it is and because to us at New Europeans the EU is so much more it's about being a region of shared values it's about having a common history it's about values such as equality and diversity and solidarity and yes of course it's incredibly bureaucratic but it's 28 member states decisions or trying to at least I mean bureaucracy that democracy is it's not going to be that easy it never is going to be but doesn't mean it's not worth it the positive narrative that this is being used rather seldomly and I think that is a real shame because I think if it was part of the UK would be more comfortable with being part of the union of the European Union and maybe you'd even feel a little bit flattered that so many of us to sylifio and that we ultimately want you to stay in the European Union so I realise that I didn't really answer the question of whether it's time to rethink free movement I would say it's not but it is perhaps time for the British to not only the British but we're in Britain here so it's time for the British to endorse the idea of free movement and to be more positive about it and that's not going to happen overnight it includes some long-term changes it will include things like putting more emphasis of teaching other languages at school because that will then actually enable more UK citizens to exercise their right of free movement and go and work abroad I mean just as an example in France I think they start teaching English now when kids are five so it's no wonder that it's no wonder for people to come here then for British citizens to come to come over there to go abroad and I realise it's not going to change overnight I realise it's not going to change in time for the referendum but I do hope it will at some point so I don't want to take up more of your time really I don't have much time of care but if I may let me just finish with a pitch for New Europeans because we are a small membership organisation campaigning for European citizens campaigning for human rights and if you want to be a part of that you can join us by going online you can join and become a member from 12 plans a year for students it's three plans and you can be part of making a change and hopefully making the UK more comfortable with being a new citizen Thank you very much indeed Thank you to all of the speakers First we might let me have an extra 5 minutes so about 20 minutes for questions and I will open it up ideally to people who didn't ask in the first round with Heidi Allen So Chris, are you over your pen? I am, thanks very much Professor Hill First of all it's such a relief to have the debate raised a bit of the discussion on migration raised a level or two from what we've been used to in the press in the last few weeks we have actually quite moved by what Bernard and Marie said about paying tribute to the nature of British society and it's true that we have had in the past a great tradition of giving asylum to refugees before 1939 and so on and also an openness to economic migration a great wave of acro-caribbean migration and the Scandinavians and so on not without problems of course but in some form or other of course there were some very rocky moments like rivers of blood and all the rest of it but those were broadly speaking overcome I'm not polyamnish about the nature of race relations even so on even now but those were overcome and that's partly I think because another part of the British tradition you have to accept new developments, you have to be open to the world but at the same time you have to not push it too hard and that brings me a bit to the point that Jonathan made about what he called I think the broadly benign effects for the receiving and the sending countries and perhaps you'll forgive me if I say that I think that's a sort of in a way a typical economist's perspective on it because clearly there have been upsides of both the material kind and other kinds actually of the movement for both countries but there are things which have been more difficult so if lots of young Spanish and Italians are coming living in London because they've got no jobs back at home it doesn't necessarily mean that their life then becomes possible that they can buy a house and make a family off of them many of them are significant difficult it doesn't necessarily either solve the problems of economics, stagnation in their home country so there's a degree of adjustment but what is not is necessarily the building of a community and that brings me back to my previous point that this gradual change is also about preserving the best things of a community and bringing new benefits to that community it's a bit like not that I'm great at this but baking a cake in the sense that if you get the mix of ingredients right it holds together and if you don't it's all apart and we have to I don't think the question is do we have no zero immigration, no complete borders the simple issue is about the management of inevitable migration pace and scale and so on and it's not just a question of whether or not economic benefits are in the plus column or in the minus column because it's a wider range of criteria for that the last thing I'd like to say is in relation to Charles I think he's absolutely right about the external border issue but of course the caravan has moved on we've now got such a major war not only in Syria but in Libya and the real mission agreements are simply not on the table really as a possible solution I think we've got to do absolutely everything that we can on that front and he outlined most of the options but unfortunately we are where we are and we now have to deal with the situation in which we have effectively or the German Chancellor has encouraged a million people actually to walk across Europe and is rewarded for her humanitarianism in doing that I think that there is a much bigger political strategic challenge before us to try and deal with that problem Thank you I'm not minded to take a few comments and questions but there don't seem to be a raft of Oh Geoffrey If I'm allowed to follow on from Chris in one sense just Charles as far as he was in Government White Paper envisaged peddling the borders with the enlargement of Central East Europe countries To what extent at that point were health ministries of the health minister housing minister and so on actually evolved in their decision simply because one of the great cries now is of course of the pressure on housing health services and so on and so forth Okay so one can argue that the financial crisis, the economic crisis from 2008 began to impact on any extra spending but to what extent was there anticipation at that point of the impact of increased migration and to Johnson I wonder if you could break something break the figures down for me a bit in terms of especially flattening wages and so on which industries and has there been work on which industries have been particularly adversely affected and which regions have been particularly adversely affected Catherine I have a question for Bernard if he owes it moved by your call for a return to a more stable less flexible labour market that seems to me to be off the agenda for at least another five years and possibly much longer depending on what happens in the next election and so the question is given the likelihood that happening seems somewhat slim what then can be done to help some of these groups of people Marcus and then I'll come back to Pam Yes I had a concrete the very legal questions we saw this negotiation by the Prime Minister also on the render scene kind of scenario where you exercise your free movement rights and then it's much harder for nuclear authorities to reject the residency of your spouse do you think the court might look this and have their doubts Marcus is looking to you Could you just clarify the question sorry there's more than one thing in the deal about spouses one is about the abuse issue and then there's a different thing about lawful residents Lawful residents Actually why don't I deal with them in reverse order thank you for asking that question because it enables me to say that I actually think the deal that was done was a very bad day for the EU and I realise it may have helped to save British membership but there is a trend away from the body of rights that was accumulated over the long post war period within Europe and within the EU around equal treatment and around funding reunion as critical to a level playing feel for movement everywhere in the European Union something like that it seems to me that it may be small but somehow a concession has been made on both of these things within work benefits nationality discrimination will be accepted and with the proposed regime around spouses they won't be treated the same in their first residence in every member state and that's fragmentation so something has been given up actually something profound even if it's only a small shift from that high point and I I mean the lawful residence idea that of course made people will know this but was put in place in a case called Akritch the lawful residence precondition in 2003 it always had lots of problems from a legal perspective not least of which that it wasn't mentioned in the secondary legislation then the court came along and said we've got that wrong we've got to go back, that was metoc so in a sense now that the states through the council want to put it back in the secondary legislation I suspect it would be difficult to challenge certainly there may be cases where sorry if I could be technical a Zambrano type argument could be used citizenship based argument could be used to get a certain spouse residence but I don't think the whole rule will fall, I think the whole rule if it's put in secondary legislation will be immune to challenge I mean the other thing it's actually a bad thing I mean that is I mean that's just about an interpretation of a principle that's there it's maybe an encouragement to the court of justice to accept the idea of abuse and take it more seriously but the idea of abuse isn't in the case though already so I don't see that that's actually a profound change relative to a change really relative to where we are so okay employment law what can be done I mean I suppose I partly put it on the table because I think it frustrates me I suppose that that there's people prepared to accept migration and argue for migration without thinking about the employment law that dimension to it it frustrates me that we can have a debate about migration without thinking about the flexibility labour market that is part of the story there has been an interesting convergence over the past well since 2010 since labour went out of office convergence of the debates and you're finding labour migration or labour market issues within the immigration debates labour did that first and eventually the coalition stroke conservatives responded so we have this strange director of labour market enforcement in the current immigration bill so something is shifting I think in recognising somehow or putting something in place but it's just not it's just not very extensive but either in terms of the content of the norms or in terms of the changes to the enforcement regime that are likely to follow but I don't think it depends on there being a labour government or a labour government or a particular strike I mean I think a range of political parties can see that there is something that needs to be done in the labour market then in an era of migration Johnson three things I think first of all differential impacts on different bits of the labour market best evidence we have is in the recent Bank of England paper by Nicol and Salahabin which looks at impacts by sector so the biggest impact on wages is found in what they describe as the low and medium skilled service sector so this is basically people working in supermarkets or in Preda Marge or Starbucks or whatever which indeed from a sort of anecdotal visible area is indeed where lots of recent European migrants are concentrated so they find an impact of an elasticity of about 0.2 what does that translate to in real money well the answer is that given the magnitude of immigration in that sector it means that over the last decade roughly since the 2004 wages in that sector have been pushed down by according to these estimates by about 1% now that is not I don't want to minimize the impact of 1% 350 pounds a year say for somebody on the minimum wage that's not a trivial amount of money but it's not a lot of money either it translates to about one penny an hour off your annual wage increase or 8 or 10p over an hour off your wages over the whole decade and so that's not totally insignificant statistically significantly analysis but equally it's pretty small compared to say the impact of national minimum wage going up by 50p in April or the impact of a bunch of other things which we know from the literature also impact wages, that the ecological change, the climate trade unions the other sort of general labour market law type issues that Bernadie will be so you know not entirely trivial but pretty small otherwise impact on jobs nobody's found any we've got a bunch of econometrics studies none of them come up with the impact on employment prospects so yes there are impacts but in the data it's pretty small second of all this point about planning, housing, health I'm pretty frankly we messed up housing policy for a long time we did it before it's rapid increase and immigration flow did it after when you look at specific areas where there have been problems it's clearly a failure of planning not an immigration policy we knew that there was going to be a huge boulds in the number of primary school kids in London five years before it happened because it wasn't them who immigrated it was their parents who immigrated yes it's a problem resulted from immigration mostly kids of immigrants but it wasn't that we didn't know about it three, four, five years ahead we just failed to do something about it it's just bad planning and I think that's true of most of the areas where immigration has led to local service pressures finally the mixing of cake point I'm not a big fan of this metaphor I could speak for hours on the literature on immigration, ethnicity diversity and social cohesion, social pressure but you know and I won't but very because there's coffee outside but very briefly immigrant flows in say Bradford and Oldham were steady relatively slow and manageable perfectly in a physical sense but have been dreadfully managed in an integration cohesion sense whereas immigration flows to Newham say have been huge chaotic in the sense that nobody's managed them at all they just happened pure totally without any attempt from the federal government at controlling managing or planning the council just left to cope, yeah on the whole they'd actually done a pretty good job of it and if you go to Newham schools you know it's all sort of fine so you know the basic point is of course correct you know that that change has to be that societies have to accommodate change and it happens better in some places than I've ever but it's not simply a question of well if you just get the cake the ingredients of the cake are precisely right of course anybody can make a perfect sponge if they follow the instructions that's not how it works I wish I'd ever said that the rise of populism in the UK but all the rest of it is a fact which has to be built into your mould along with the great European Bake-Off Charles I can't talk about the great European Bake-Off I'm afraid number of points, firstly people should underestimate their peril in this discussion the actual attitudes of the people of this country so for example if you poll attitudes to asylum the majority of people are in favour of offering asylum to people who are in difficulty to what many people think and you go through the various categories of migration but actually that view of the people of the country which varies of course from time to time is misrepresented by the general media as a whole and therefore the policy climate in which this is looked at is infected in the wrong way but it's important not to believe that the dirty populist out there doesn't want all people in the soul in this particular case secondly on the community point last night in the UAE in Norwich I chaired a conversation between Sayed Avasi the cabinet, former cabinet minister and Akil Ahmed who runs the religious broadcasting for the BBC who came respectively from Dewsbury and Bolton as Muslims and gone up through this life and went right through in a quite extraordinary way demonstrating their capacity to play a big role in society in lots of kind of ways I think the point about the populism Chris is completely right but I think it's quite important to try and disentangle the populism debate what is driving UKIP and alienation and probably up to 25-30% of people in this country from the migration question I don't think they have the same question but they have tangled to some extent when one's thinking them through The external borders I of course agree with you the fundamental issue about migration into the EU is the reason why people are fleeing various parts of the world Syria's example proposes many others too and those are circumstances where the argument's different it's about could the EU do better to try and solve some of those problems in the way that it operates in a different order which one could deal with in a different way I think if the EU had operated in a different way literally thousands of less people would have been killed over the last four or five years thousands of less people would have been killed on the Mediterranean by what's happened and by the people smugglers operating in the way that they did that doesn't take away from your fundamental rightness that is actually about fundamental inequalities in the world fundamental dangers in the world question can the EU do better on the management issues the answer is yes everybody was fully involved in the discussions very much so and I don't just think it's planning you take the primary school example Jonathan just gives my children went to London primary schools as all London primary schools just about this was in all London and Hackney there are hundreds of languages sorry not hundreds dozens of languages spoken over a hundred in the school that my children meant to do I believe they got a worse education as a result well actually I don't and when we moved to Norwich the standard of education went down significantly than what had been the case of the very diverse community that we lived in in Hackney and I'm very unconvinced even on the planning issue I don't dispute that but I don't think in terms of the different character of schools as a result of the migration that's taken place that there has been a serious problem in the quality of education of the quote's indigenous population health I'm again pretty skeptical at the end of the day what really are the health problems healthcare problems which have arisen from migration I think it's quite difficult to identify in a very serious and direct way because of course you have to remember that as people migrating to the country they also contribute to the economic public sector in the ability to pay for the services that are needed in different ways housing is a different case where I think there's been a total failure of public policy in housing over a long period of time and a lot of the issues aren't there there are serious issues about how you deal with rented housing as opposed to owned housing and so on and so forth about those issues adults but again just below the UCL trumpet again a very good document was produced about that long ago going through all these arguments about pressure on public services wages and so on which really rubbish quite a lot of the arguments that are made by many of the anti migrant forces my only worry about what Catherine said is the idea of a more stable labour market when she was responding to Bernard's comments which I agree with is that a camera is it really the case that we can somehow back in the bottle the idea of the kind of labour market that we had some time ago I think it's quite difficult to see I think simply the nature of the globalised world the nature of the labour market makes it quite difficult to see how that operates now that's not against what Bernard said about improving the role of the state agencies in control of abuse in labour conditions I think there's a lot of issues to be said there I don't doubt for whether that adds up to getting back to stability in some sense I'm not sure whether that really is achievable I think the final point is about politics after the referendum I think I'm much more optimistic than this before the EU referendum the position within the Conservative government in terms of attitudes for example to students coming to work here was changing very significantly you had David Cameron and Theresa May holding in line in terms of the position on students and whether they should be classified large numbers of other parts of the government including very senior level including sexual state for business wanting to change the rules in this area I thought Heidi's remarks were quite significant in this in the way she's looking but David Cameron has not felt able to relax any of those points prior to the existential question of his whole premiership vis the EU referendum and so he's not going to do anything before June 23 which gives any ammunition to anybody about being quote soft on migration however on the assumption that he wins his position which I both hope and believe he will I think there is a lanced boil it will represent a massive defeat if he wins of a force within Conservative politics which has been nasty poisonous and would look in dangerous and has dominated British politics for as long as 20 years in different ways and I'm personally more optimistic after that point even with David Cameron that it will be possible to and will actually happen that there will be a more relaxed approach to thinking about the nature of the country that we are in this situation I certainly don't think we should put people who think as has been said in the audience should just be putting all the Conservatives on the table until the day when the Conservatives are swept from office in my expectation about 2055 Oh we are on the record and as yet Labour hasn't yet convinced me that we can win before 2055 and I have to say really the Liberal Democrats aren't doing much better at this particular time but the well I'm not joking about the length of time I do think it's important that people think that even with a Conservative Government post-referenda there might be a different climate and it's worth putting forward argument suggestions for the kind of society that we ought to be trying to create without saying wait for a new government and turn it around in those circumstances Thank you Mehdi, you have the last word and you've already said that the UK is a good place to come to It's a fantastic place to come to but I do like the idea of a European beg-off I have to say on what Charles said that the EU could definitely do better on the refugee crisis that's absolutely true that you could do an awful lot better on an awful lot of things but what's happening at the moment one of the reasons why the debate about a EU referendum is just the timing of this debate is just so horrific and it has met with so much resistance from other European member states because of the timing because of the state in which the EU is at the moment I think one European diplomat put it quite fittingly I thought that the UK is basically asking for the furniture to be rearranged where the house is burning down so my hope is that once the question about whether the UK would be in or out will be answered on 23rd of June and I'm quite optimistic at Charles's but I hope he's right that we can then focus as Europeans again about making Europe what it was meant to be about dealing so it should be effectively and through solidarity with the refugee crisis and I don't know, clean up the house I suppose on populism yes, Chris you're right it's an awful problem I think and I appreciate that this is an academic audience I'm from a campaigning background so I guess my plea to you all is to speak up and raise the level of debate on Europe in the meet the populism, meet it with facts meet it with engagement let's stop talking about evil immigrants and straight bananas or whatever it was that was one of those favourite things let's talk about what Europe can be and what the UK in Europe can do Thank you very much indeed I think that's been a fantastic opening to the afternoon there are four more speakers after coffee 10 minutes so we'll be back in about 10 minutes but thank you all to the panellists