The Cabinet has warned Blair against free movement of new EU citizens from Poland

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Senior UK cabinet members warned prime minister Tony Blair in 2004 that free movement from new EU member states, including Poland, could put significant pressure on the benefits and housing system, the documents said. out released shows.

The decision to allow migrants from 10 mainly eastern and central European countries, including Hungary and the Czech Republic, to work in the UK with limited restrictions has led to a sharp rise in immigration.

In 2005, the year after the decision, EU migration to the UK reached 96,000 people, according to the Office for National Statistics, a sharp rise from 15,000 in 2003.

By the time of the Brexit referendum in 2016, this process had helped to create to move a highly contested political issue.

Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, and John Prescott, deputy prime minister, raised significant concerns ahead of the decision, files released by the Cabinet Office show.

“We could face a very difficult situation if we get this wrong,” Straw warned Blair in a letter on February 10, 2004.

He asked the Prime Minister to consider postponing the introduction of the policy, saying this would allow Britain to “monitor the movement” of migrants to other countries before making a decision on implementation.

Although the UK, Ireland and Sweden allowed free movement as early as May 2004 with few restrictions, many others, including France and Germany, chose to delay full access to their labor markets, they talk about the fear of mass migration. States had the ability to impose restrictions until May 1, 2011.

The UK’s decision was based on the Home Office’s assessment that only 5,000-13,000 migrants would arrive each year from the new EU members. However, this proved to be a huge understatement.

Annual migration from EU member states had reached 142,000 in 2014, according to ONS estimates at the time, fueling the debate over Britain’s membership of the EU.

On February 16, 2004, Prescott wrote to Blair, urging him to delay. As the deputy prime minister he cited concerns about housing, with migrants expected to move to London and the South East in search of work, and “the likely result will be “overcrowding in areas poor” due to not being able to pay the rent.

Straw told the Financial Times: “As events would show, we were wrong.”

“If we had had good evidence about the impact of lifting restrictions on immigration to the UK, we obviously would not have agreed to lift them,” he added.

“Keeping the restrictions would have made some difference, in retrospect . . . on the 2016 referendum result; whether it is enough to twist it, it is impossible to say,” he said.

Previously unseen documents released by the National Archives show that Blair considered concerns, asking officials whether the original “permit to work” scheme was working. However, he ultimately decided against such a plan.

A July 2 briefing for Blair showed that 9,000 workers had signed up to work in the UK in the two months after May 1, with 50,000-60,000 workers likely to arrive in the first year.

Officials warned against the “elephant trap” of the media reporting the figures.

Countering claims that the arrivals would lead to an increase in benefits claims, Blair told officials to “put in our media” reports that police could choose to work legally in Germany, to pass legally in the UK.

He called on advisers to make sure they put together the “hardest package of benefits possible” to counter potential claims from new EU migrants.

Blair declined to comment.