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.

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”.

“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”.

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.

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.

“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

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.