Tony Blair opened UK borders to east European migrants despite misgivings – newly released files show
Tony Blair’s Labour government pushed on with plans to open the UK’s borders to Eastern Europe despite mounting concerns from senior ministers, according to newly released official files.
The former prime minister relaxed immigration controls in 2004 after eight mainly former Soviet states, including Poland, Lithuania and Hungary, joined the EU.
Papers given to the National Archives in London show then deputy PM John Prescott and foreign secretary Jack Straw both urged delay to the policy, warning of a surge in immigration unless some restrictions were put in place.
But others – including then home secretary David Blunkett – argued that the economy needed the “flexibility and productivity of migrant labour” if it was to continue to prosper.
The records emerged as part of a yearly release of Cabinet Office files once they are 20 years old.
The papers also show:
- Ministers in Blair’s government were advised to use post-it notes for sensitive messages to avoid having to release them under new Freedom of Information laws, which they had passed.
- A senior US official warned the British ambassador to the US that George W Bush believed he was on a “mission from God” to crush Iraqi insurgents and had to be given a “dose of reality”.
- Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi felt like a “jilted lover” after being shut out of talks between Blair and the leaders of France and Germany.
- Former prime minister Sir John Major privately wrote to Blair urging him to order England’s cricket team not to compete in a “morally repugnant” tour in Zimbabwe amid concerns about its human rights record under Robert Mugabe.
Then foreign secretary Jack Straw had reservations about the plan
Calls for open borders re-think
The Blair government’s open borders policy is seen as having helped fuel anti-EU sentiment by the time of the Brexit referendum in 2016.
There was a major increase in immigration in the years that followed, with net migration rising to more than 200,000 a year and cheaper foreign labour blamed for undercutting local workers.
In 2013, Mr Straw admitted that the failure to put in place any transitional controls – as nearly all other EU nations had done – had been a “spectacular mistake” which had far-reaching consequences.
According to the Cabinet papers, the Home Office had predicted the impact of allowing unrestricted access to the UK jobs market for the new countries would be relatively limited – but within weeks the numbers arriving were far outstripping previous estimates.
Three months before the policy was due to be implemented, Mr Straw wrote to Mr Blair calling for a re-think, warning that other countries “who we thought would be joining us have begun to peel away”.
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Sir Tony Blair on leadership
“France, Germany, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Finland, Greece and Luxembourg are all imposing transition periods of at least two years. Portugal is likely to follow suit,” he wrote.
“Italy is undecided. Sweden, Netherlands and Denmark – who were with us – have all announced the introduction of work and/or residence permits for those wishing to avail themselves of the concession.”
He was backed by Mr Prescott who said he was “extremely concerned” about the pressures on social housing from a sudden influx of new migrants.
However Mr Blunkett, backed by work and pensions secretary Andrew Smith and the Treasury, insisted they should stick with the plan on “economic grounds”.
Then Home Secretary David Blunkett backed the policy
He said that they would be tightening the regulations to stop migrants travelling to the UK simply to claim benefits but rejected calls for a work permit scheme as “not only expensive and bureaucratic but I believe ineffective”.
Mr Blair appeared to also express doubts, questioning whether tougher benefit rules on their own would be enough.
“Are we sure this does the trick? I don’t want to have to return to it,” he said in a handwritten note.
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“I am not sure we shouldn’t have a work permits approach also. Why not? It gives us an extra string to our bow.”
Mr Blair also stressed the need to send out a deterrent “message” about benefits, writing in a note: “We must do the toughest package on benefits possible & announce this plus power to revoke visa plan and message to Romas.”
Bush ‘on mission from God’ in Iraq
Elsewhere in the Cabinet files, there was a record of frank conversations between Richard Armitage, the US deputy Secretary of State, and Britain’s ambassador to the US at the time, Sir David Manning, about the Iraq War.
In one meeting, Mr Armitage dismissed claims by the US commander in Iraq that he could put down a major uprising in the city of Fallujah within days as “bulls**t” and “politically crass”, and appealed for Mr Blair to use his influence with Mr Bush to persuade him there needed to be a wider “political process” if order was to be restored.
Tony Blair with George Bush
In another meeting, Mr Armitage spoke of President Bush being faced with a “dose of reality” about the conflict.
Sir David reported: “Rich summed it all up by saying that Bush still thought he was on some sort of a mission from God, but that recent events had made him ‘rather more sober’.”
Italian PM felt like ‘jilted lover’
Other papers described a fall-out with Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi after he was excluded from a trilateral summit of the UK, France and Germany.
He is said to have been “hurt” because unlike the other two nations he had backed Britain and the US over the invasion of Iraq, and threatened to challenge Britain’s EU rebate at every opportunity as a result.
In a report of a meeting between Britain’s ambassador to Rome, Sir Ivor Roberts, and Mr Berlusconi’s foreign affairs adviser, Giovanni Castellaneta, Sir Ivor wrote: “The gist of what he had to say was that Berlusconi was feeling badly let down by the prime minister.
Tony Blair with Silvio Berlusconi inside number 10 Downing Street.
“He actually used the image of a jilted lover (very Berlusconi) and added that there was something of the southern Italian about Berlusconi which made him quite vindictive when he thought his affections had been misplaced or betrayed.
“The word ‘tradito’ (betrayed) came up quite often.”
The row even came up during a video conference between Mr Blair and Mr Bush the following week, with the US president expressing “some concern in a jokey way, on Berlusconi’s behalf, over Italy’s exclusion”, according to a Downing Street note of the call.
In the face of such concerns, Mr Blair felt it necessary to travel to Rome to personally placate the unhappy premier and assure him of his continuing support.
John Major’s Zimbabwe intervention
The papers also revealed that former Conservative prime minister John Major – who preceded Mr Blair – privately wrote to his successor to urge him to “indemnify” English cricket for any financial losses if it was sanctioned for pulling out of a controversial tour of Zimbabwe.
Sir John, a noted cricket fan, said the tour was “morally repugnant” given Robert Mugabe’s human rights record, but pointed out that “draconian” rules by the world game’s governing body (ICC) imposed penalties on countries for cancelling – putting English cricket at risk of bankruptcy.
The letter came after Mr Blair had told MPs that in his “personal opinion” the tour should be abandoned, but it would “step over the proper line” for ministers to issue an instruction
Sir John Major
Mr Major said if the government “expresses a view” that the tour should not go ahead – or there was a vote in parliament to that effect – then it would be “very difficult” for the ICC to penalise England.
And in the “very unlikely circumstances” that it were to do so, he said the government should indemnify the ICC for any financial losses.
“I daresay the Treasury would hate this, but the blunt truth is that the government could not let English cricket go to the wall because of a refusal to intervene,” Mr Major wrote.
The tour ultimately went ahead.
Ministers urged to communicate in post-it notes
Meanwhile, other papers revealed that ministers in Blair’s government were advised to use post-it notes for sensitive messages to avoid having to release them under the new Freedom of Information (FoI) Act.
The Labour government had passed the bill in 2000, which requires public bodies to disclose information requested by the public, but as its full implementation date crept up in 2005 there was growing disquiet about its implications.
One No 10 adviser wrote to Mr Blair suggesting post-it notes – which could presumably then be thrown away once the message had been read – as a way of getting round the requirement to disclose official material in response to FoI requests.
UK
Heidi Alexander says ‘fairness’ will be government’s ‘guiding principle’ when it comes to taxes at next budget
Another hint that tax rises are coming in this autumn’s budget has been given by a senior minister.
Speaking to Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander was asked if Sir Keir Starmer and the rest of the cabinet had discussed hiking taxes in the wake of the government’s failed welfare reforms, which were shot down by their own MPs.
Trevor Phillips asked specifically if tax rises were discussed among the cabinet last week – including on an away day on Friday.
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Tax increases were not discussed “directly”, Ms Alexander said, but ministers were “cognisant” of the challenges facing them.
Asked what this means, Ms Alexander added: “I think your viewers would be surprised if we didn’t recognise that at the budget, the chancellor will need to look at the OBR forecast that is given to her and will make decisions in line with the fiscal rules that she has set out.
“We made a commitment in our manifesto not to be putting up taxes on people on modest incomes, working people. We have stuck to that.”
Ms Alexander said she wouldn’t comment directly on taxes and the budget at this point, adding: “So, the chancellor will set her budget. I’m not going to sit in a TV studio today and speculate on what the contents of that budget might be.
“When it comes to taxation, fairness is going to be our guiding principle.”
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Afterwards, shadow home secretary Chris Philp told Phillips: “That sounds to me like a barely disguised reference to tax rises coming in the autumn.”
He then went on to repeat the Conservative attack lines that Labour are “crashing the economy”.
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Chris Philp also criticsed the government’s migration deal with France
Mr Philp then attacked the prime minister as “weak” for being unable to get his welfare reforms through the Commons.
Discussions about potential tax rises have come to the fore after the government had to gut its welfare reforms.
Sir Keir had wanted to change Personal Independence Payments (PIP), but a large Labour rebellion forced him to axe the changes.
With the savings from these proposed changes – around £5bn – already worked into the government’s sums, they will now need to find the money somewhere else.
The general belief is that this will take the form of tax rises, rather than spending cuts, with more money needed for military spending commitments, as well as other areas of priority for the government, such as the NHS.
UK
Justice system ‘frustrating’, Met Police chief says – as he admits London’s ‘shameful’ racism challenge
It is “shameful” that black boys growing up in London are “far more likely” to die than white boys, Metropolitan Police chief Sir Mark Rowley has told Sky News.
In a wide-ranging interview with Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, the commissioner said that relations with minority communities are “difficult for us”, while also speaking about the state of the justice system and the size of the police force.
Sir Mark, who came out of retirement to become head of the UK’s largest police force in 2022, said: “We can’t pretend otherwise that we’ve got a history between policing and black communities where policing has got a lot wrong.
“And we get a lot more right today, but we do still make mistakes. That’s not in doubt. I’m being as relentless in that as it can be.”
He said the “vast majority” of the force are “good people”.
However, he added: “But that legacy, combined with the tragedy that some of this crime falls most heavily in black communities, that creates a real problem because the legacy creates concern.”
Sir Mark, who also leads the UK’s counter-terrorism policing, said black boys growing up in London “are far more likely to be dead by the time they’re 18” than white boys.
“That’s, I think, shameful for the city,” he admitted.
“The challenge for us is, as we reach in to tackle those issues, that confrontation that comes from that reaching in, whether it’s stop and search on the streets or the sort of operations you seek.
“The danger is that’s landing in an environment with less trust.
“And that makes it even harder. But the people who win out of that [are] all of the criminals.”
Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley
The commissioner added: “I’m so determined to find a way to get past this because if policing in black communities can find a way to confront these issues, together we can give black boys growing up in London equal life chances to white boys, which is not what we’re seeing at the moment.
“And it’s not simply about policing, is it?”
Sir Mark said: “I think black boys are several times more likely to be excluded from school, for example, than white boys.
“And there are multiple issues layered on top of each other that feed into disproportionality.”
‘We’re stretched, but there’s hope and determination’
Sir Mark said the Met is a “stretched service” but people who call 999 can expect an officer to attend.
“If you are in the middle of a crisis and something awful is happening and you dial 999, officers will get there really quickly,” Sir Mark said.
“I don’t pretend we’re not a stretched service.
“We are smaller than I think we ought to be, but I don’t want to give a sort of message of a lack of hope or a lack of determination.”
“I’ve seen the mayor and the home secretary fighting hard for police resourcing,” he added.
“It’s not what I’d want it to be, but it’s better than it might be without their efforts.”
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How police tracked and chased suspected phone thief
‘Close to broken’ justice system facing ‘awful’ delays
Sir Mark said the criminal justice system was “close to broken” and can be “frustrating” for police officers.
“The thing that is frustrating is that the system – and no system can be perfect – but when the system hasn’t managed to turn that person’s life around and get them on the straight and narrow, and it just becomes a revolving door,” he said.
“When that happens, of course that’s frustrating for officers.
“So the more successful prisons and probation can be in terms of getting people onto a law-abiding life from the path they’re on, the better.
“But that is a real challenge. I mean, we’re talking just after Sir Brian Leveson put his report out about the close-to-broken criminal justice system.
“And it’s absolutely vital that those repairs and reforms that he’s talking about happen really quickly, because the system is now so stressed.”
Giving an example, the police commissioner went on: “We’ve got Snaresbrook [Crown Court] in London – it’s now got more than 100 cases listed for 2029.”
Sir Mark asked Trevor Phillips to imagine he had been the victim of a crime, saying: “We’ve caught the person, we’ve charged him, ‘great news, Mr Phillips, we’ve got him charged, they’re going to court’.
“And then a few weeks later, I see the trial’s listed for 2029. That doesn’t feel great, does it?”
Asked about the fact that suspects could still be on the streets for years before going to trial, Sir Mark conceded it’s “pretty awful”.
He added: “If it’s someone on bail, who might have stolen your phone or whatever, and they’re going in for a criminal court trial, that could be four years away. And that’s pretty unacceptable, isn’t it?”
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Challenge to reform the Met
The Met chief’s comments come two years after an official report found the force is institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic.
Baroness Casey was commissioned in 2021 to look into the Met Police after serving police officer Wayne Couzens abducted, raped and murdered Sarah Everard.
She pinned the primary blame for the Met’s culture on its past leadership and found stop and search and the use of force against black people was excessive.
At the time, Sir Mark, who had been commissioner for six months when the report was published, said he would not use the labels of institutionally racist, institutionally misogynistic and institutionally homophobic, which Baroness Casey insisted the Met deserved.
However, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who helped hire Sir Mark – and could fire him – made it clear the commissioner agreed with Baroness Casey’s verdict.
A few months after the report, Sir Mark launched a two-year £366m plan to overhaul the Met, including increased emphasis on neighbourhood policing to rebuild public trust and plans to recruit 500 more community support officers and an extra 565 people to work with teams investigating domestic violence, sexual offences and child sexual abuse and exploitation.
A leading NHS hospital has warned measles is on the rise among children in the UK, after treating 17 cases since June.
Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool said it is “concerned” about the increasing number of children and young people who are contracting the highly contagious virus.
It said the cases it has treated since June were for effects and complications of the disease, which, in rare cases, can be fatal if left untreated.
“We are concerned about the increasing number of children and young people who are contracting measles. Measles is a highly contagious viral illness which can cause children to be seriously unwell, requiring hospital treatment, and in rare cases, death,” the hospital said in a statement to Sky News.
In a separate open letter to parents and carers in Merseyside earlier this month, Alder Hey, along with the UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) and directors of Public Health for Liverpool, Sefton and Knowsley, warned the increase in measles in the region could be down to fewer people getting vaccinated.
The letter read: “We are seeing more cases of measles in our children and young people because fewer people are having the MMR vaccine, which protects against measles and two other viruses called mumps and rubella.
“Children in hospital, who are very poorly for another reason, are at higher risk of catching the virus.”
The skin of a patient after three days of measles infection
It comes after a Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) report released earlier this month determined that uptake of vaccines in the UK has stalled over the last decade and is, in many cases, declining.
It said none of the routine childhood vaccinations have met the 95% coverage target since 2021, putting youngsters at risk of measles, meningitis and whooping cough.
The MMR vaccine has been available through the NHS for years. Two doses gives lifelong protection against measles, mumps and rubella.
Two doses of the MMR vaccine give lifelong protection against measles, mumps and rubella. Pic: iStock
According to the latest NHS data, Liverpool was one of the cities outside London with the lowest uptake of the MMR vaccination in 2023-2024.
By the time children were five years old, 86.5% had been give one dose, decreasing to 73.4% for a second dose.
The RCPCH report put the nationwide decline down to fears over vaccinations, as well as families having trouble booking appointments and a lack of continuous care in the NHS, with many seeing a different GP on each visit.
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In the US, measles cases are at their highest in more than three decades.
Cases reached 1,288 on Wednesday this week, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, with 14 states battling active outbreaks.
The largest outbreak started five months ago in communities in West Texas, where vaccination uptake is low. Since then, three people have died – including two children in Texas and an adult in New Mexico – with dozens more in hospital.
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