John Reid, the Home Secretary, Is to Restrict the Rights of Citizens From Romania and Bulgaria... [Derived Headline]

Summary

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JOHN REID, the Home Secretary, is to restrict the rights of citizens from Romania and Bulgaria, which will join the EU next year, to live and work in Britain. A Cabinet committee will consider proposals to permit them to work in certain areas fruit-picking for instance - but Britain will not be granting them the same open access as the Poles and other Eastern Europeans when their countries joined the EU. It is not difficult to see why. The breezy assumption of the Home Office before the new member states joined in 2004 was that a mere 10,000 or so people would want to move here. The actual figure was in the region of 600,000.

It must be said that Britain, and London in particular, has benefited enormously from the advent of the Poles and the other East Europeans in the last couple of years. They work hard in every part of the economy, and although there are valid concerns that newcomers depress wage levels in some areas, it is hard to imagine how the London service sector, in particular, could cope without them. Nonetheless, it is probably right that the Government should exercise caution in admitting Bulgarians and Romanians on the same free-and-easy basis. There are physical and social limits to the numbers the capital can accommodate.

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John Reid, the Home Secretary, Is to Restrict the Rights of Citizens From Romania and Bulgaria... [Derived Headline]

But Mr Reid can only delay, not deny, Bulgarians and Romanians access to Britain. In seven years' time, they will have exactly the same rights to live her...

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