Newly released documents reveal that John Prescott and Jack Straw, urged the then prime minister to delay opening the UK labour market to eastern European nationals shortly before they became EU citizens. Documents from the National Archives in Kew, west London, showed Prescott and Straw warned of a surge in immigration unless some controls were put in place.
On 1 May 2004, 10 countries officially became EU member states, the majority of them former eastern bloc states that, at the time, had lower income levels compared with the rest of Europe. Nationals from those countries could work and live in Britain thanks to freedom of movement as soon as they became EU citizens. As the 1 May date approached, Blair’s cabinet appeared publicly supportive, but the papers suggest more fraught discussions behind the scenes. Prescott and Straw, who were deputy prime minister and foreign secretary at the time, wrote to Blair in February 2004. They both urged him to consider pushing back the 1 May start date. The original 15 EU member states could impose restrictions, including annual limits and work permits, for up to seven years after the 10 new states joined the bloc. In a letter dated 10 February 2004, Straw called on Blair to hold a meeting with himself, David Blunkett and Andrew Smith, who served as work and pensions secretary at the time, to consider a delay until “a rather less feverish time (hopefully) in, say, November ”. He said: “if we do not think this through now”, the government could be forced to suspend the right to work for the new EU nationals “in the least propitious of circumstances”. The UK, Ireland and Sweden were the only pre-2004 EU member states to fully open their labour markets. Straw said that other EU member states that were assumed to be adopting a similar arrangement to the UK had “began to peel away”, including Germany and France, who ended up imposing restrictions. The UK cabinet meeting was subsequently scheduled for 17 February 2004. A day before the summit, Prescott wrote to Blair, saying he supported Straw’s positio