Ed Miliband has long regarded immigration as one of the issues that Labour mishandled in office. The last government was wrong, he has said, not to impose transitional controls on migration from eastern European and wrong to then casually dismiss people’s concerns.
After delivering two speeches on immigration since he became Labour leader, Miliband will tonight devote a party political broadcast to the subject (which you can watch below), with a speech by shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper to follow tomorrow. The interventions will inevitably be seen as a response to the party’s poor performance in the Eastleigh by-election, where, in the words of one Labour MP, immigration was “the single biggest issue on the doorstep”, and as a response to the Tories’ political manoeuvring. But I’m told by a Labour source that it has been on the grid for some time. That seems plausible. As will be clear to anyone who has studied Miliband’s leadership, he doesn’t do knee-jerk policy, he doesn’t “lurch”. And political parties do not plan and deliver PPBs in just six days.
To a string-laden soundtrack, Miliband begins the broadcast by again stating that Labour got it “wrong” on immigration, a sign that he believes the party needs to rebuild trust on the issue before it can hope to win a fair hearing. He says: “One of the things we didn’t get right was immigration and that’s why I’ve got a new approach. Millions of people in this country are concerned about immigration and if people are concerned about it, then the Labour Party I lead is going to be talking about it.”
He goes on to argue that “low-skill migration has been too high and we need to bring it down”, calling for “the maximum transitional controls for new countries coming in from eastern Europe”. But rather than promising a crackdown on allegedly benefit-hungry migrants, as the Tories have, he again promises to crackdown on rogue employers who use migrant labour to undercut domestic workers. Miliband refers only to the need for tougher enforcement of the minimum wage but Cooper will supply more detail tomorrow when she announces plans to make it illegal for bosses to house migrants in unsuitable accommodation, such as mobile homes, and to extend action against gangmasters employing illegal migrants in social care, hospitality and construction.
In the PPB, Miliband also cites the need to improve training for domestic workers, “so that they have a fighting chance of filling the vacancies that exist”, and to ban recruitment agencies who only seek to employ people from abroad.
Miliband’s class-based analysis of immigration is a significant improvement on the populist “British jobs for British workers” rhetoric of Gordon Brown. But perhaps inevitably, the broadcast raises more questions than it answers. Having argued that low-skilled migration (as opposed, presumably, to high-skilled immigration) is “too high”, how confident is he that the measures Labour is proposing will reduce it? Miliband has rightly rejected the government’s focus on “targets” but this decision will prompt some to question his commitment to reducing new arrivals.
We can also expect the Tories to challenge Miliband to say what action (if any) he would take to restrict migrants’ access to the welfare state. Asked earlier this year whether he was willing to consider restricting benefits for EU immigrants, Miliband said: “Of course that’s an issue that should be looked at, the length of entitlement to benefits and how quickly people can get them. All of these issues should be on the table.” More recently, however, he has accused the government of “windy rhetoric”, urging it to focus instead on tackling rogue employers. As the coalition prepares to announce specific proposals, where does Labour actually stand?
Miliband’s approach raises the possibility of a more progressive conversation about immigration. But with his declaration that immigration, or at least one form of it, is “too high”, some in Labour fear he has entered into a war that he cannot possibly win.
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