We all know immigration was a major issue during the 2016 Referendum. And, we know that some of numbers looked a bit scary at times, particularly when the likes of Nigel Farage filled our TV screens with the ‘threat’ of 80 million Turks, Syrians and Iraqis who would come pouring in!
Farage’s lot in Leave.EU and Michael Gove and Gisela Stuart in the rival Vote Leave, pumped up the issue unmercifully. A series of posters, and some fake news digital ads posted onto Facebook accounts played up the ‘Turkish factor’, offering the electors the choice between 76 million Turks or providing cash for the NHS.
Farage in particular used the numbers game, but never once did he mention one of the key Articles in the EU Directive on Freedom of Movement within the EU. Article 7 could not be clearer, when it states that the ‘Right of residence for more than three months’ shall apply to those wishing to stay: ‘are workers or self-employed persons in the host Member State; have sufficient resources for themselves and their family members not to become a burden on the social assistance system of the host Member State during their period of residence; and have comprehensive sickness insurance cover in the host Member State’.
So, the first ‘myth’ was created – the idea that millions of penniless Romanians and Bulgarians would turn up at Dover looking for work, and immediately start claiming benefits! Farage and others played that card, and Vote Leave in particular targeted their Facebook digital ads – 1½ billion of them – at those constituencies where UKIP had come second in the 2015 General Election. Some of those constituencies had experienced a large influx of migrants, but most had not. Nevertheless the fear of such an invasion was promulgated and expanded, over and over.
Part of the problem arose because the UK Government, and the then Home Secretary in particular, did not use or apply Article 7, and did not require any EU Citizen to return to their Member State if they were found not to have sufficient resources or health insurance to protect their families. We may never know why Theresa May did not apply her policies of the ‘Hostile Environment’ to EU Citizens in the same way as she allowed the Home Office to force that policy on the Windrush Generation.
And, here lay the seeds of the second ‘myth’! That the UK was powerless to stop EU migrants from moving to the UK to find work, and to ‘suck’ benefits ‘out of the system’ away from deserving UK Citizens. The fact is that the UK Government could have removed anyone they found did not meet the requirements of the Directive. Furthermore recently published figures from both the DWP and the HMRC prove that workers in the UK from EU/EEA countries contributed in PAYE and NICs more than 6 times the value of the benefits any of them received legitimately though the existing systems in the financial year 2016/2017.
This puts paid to the third ‘myth’ that free movement allowed EU workers to ‘rob’ UK workers of much-needed benefits.
There is no evidence which suggests that Theresa May ever attempted to ‘put the record straight’! It is therefore all the more surprising that she has probably used the phrase ‘ending free movement’ more than any other in her speeches, her statements in the House of Commons and the hundreds of questions she answered there! But, she really showed her true colours when she referred to ‘queue jumpers’!
Citizens’ Rights are Indivisible 