Britain’s senior-most Indian-origin MP Keith Vaz has said he will be at the airport to count the number of Romanians arrive in the UK to get work when European Union immigration curbs are lifted on New Year’s Day.
The debate around an expected influx of Romanians and Bulgarians has been intensifying in Britain as people fear the pressure on public services caused by poor immigrants coming in search of jobs.
While speaking in a parliamentary debate on immigration, Vaz said he and Conservative MP Mark Reckless will be at Luton Airport in the north of London in time for the 7.40 am flight from Bucharest on January 1.
The Home Office has refused to give numbers on how many Romanians and Bulgarians will come to the UK when all restrictions on what jobs they can do within EU member nations are lifted.
"Why is it that we still don’t have estimates of how many people are going to come here next year," asked Vaz, who chairs the Commons Home Affairs Committee.
Immigration minister Mark Harper said advice given to the Government was that it was not “sensible or helpful” to produce precise numerical estimates.
"If the only way to do it is to do it with our own eyes... then I am afraid we are going to have to do this," Vaz responded.
Vaz argued that the home secretary and immigration minister should have worked with Governments in Bucharest and Sofia to address some of the likely problems before now.
The debate was prompted by a group of backbench Conservative MPs who want the restrictions to be extended.
It came after Downing Street outlined tighter rules on claiming benefits from January 1, 2014.
Conservative John Baron argued that in fact higher pay rather than benefits was attracting migrants to the UK.
The debate around the impact of rising immigration took place as official figures revealed almost nine in 10 babies born in parts of Britain have at least one foreign-born parent.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) disclosed that in 2012 more than 80 per cent of babies born in three London boroughs had either one or both parents born outside the UK.
Last week it had revealed how the number of foreign-born people in England and Wales has quadrupled in 60 years, with immigration accounting for almost half the growth in the population.
The biggest migrant group is now those born in India, which accounts for 694,000 people in England and Wales. It is followed by Poland in second place with 579,000 migrants, Pakistan with 482,000, and then Ireland with 407,000, the ONS said.