Tony Blair Opened UK Borders to Eastern Europe in 2004 Despite Concerns, Files Show

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is shown ahead of a meeting at the EU Charlemagne building in Brussels, on Nov. 6, 2019. Stephanie Lecocq/AP

Tony Blair’s Labour government proceeded with plans to grant employment rights to Eastern and Central European workers following the European Union’s 2004 expansion, despite concerns voiced by his ministers, newly released government files have revealed.

The former prime minister relaxed immigration controls in 2004, offering a “concession” to the nations joining the EU, including Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.

The decision followed the Labour Party’s announcement in 2002 that immigrants from the accession nations would be granted employment rights in the UK from the moment of EU accession on May 1, 2004.

While it had been expected that other bloc members would follow suit, Britain remained alone in offering such a concession, as pointed out at the time by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

Papers released to the National Archives in Kew, west London, show that with less than three months to the accession date, Straw called for a rethink of the policy.

“If we do not think this through now, I believe we could be faced with a very difficult situation in early May, and could then be forced to take urgent action to suspend the concessions, in the least propitious of circumstances,” he wrote to Blair. “In particular, whilst some EU member states were never going to give this concession, other EU member states who we thought would be joining us have begun to peel away.”

He told Blair that many EU members, including France, Germany, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Finland, Greece and Luxembourg, were imposing transition periods of at least two years.

“Portugal is likely to follow suit,” he said. “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.”

Then Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott backed Straw, warning he was “extremely concerned” about the pressures of growing immigration on social housing.

‘Are We Sure This Does the Trick?’

Despite his senior ministers’ concerns, Blair pushed for plans to open the UK borders. He was backed at the time by Home Secretary David Blunkett, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Andrew Smith and the Treasury.

The Home Office predicted that allowing unrestricted access to the UK jobs market would result in a relatively limited impact, while Blunkett said Britain needed the “flexibility and productivity of migrant labour.”

“On purely technical, economic grounds there can be no doubt that our present policy is the right one,” Blunkett wrote.

He said that they would be tightening the regulations to stop migrants from 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.”

“I fear we would only be storing up more deep-seated political difficulties in the very near future and closer to the general election. The ineffectiveness of any scheme would be quickly exposed,” Blunkett said.

The official papers also revealed that Blair questioned 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,” Blair wrote in a note. “I am not sure we shouldn’t have a work permits approach also. Why not? It gives us an extra string to our bow.”

Blair said there was a need to send a “message” over a possible influx of Roma people from Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia seeking to claim UK benefits.

“We must do the toughest package on benefits possible & announce this plus power to revoke visa plan and message to Romas,” he wrote.

Immigration Figures

In the years that followed the decision to open the UK jobs market to the eight accession nations, net migration rose to more than 200,000 people a year.

In July 2004, senior government adviser Kate Gross estimated that immigration figures would hit 50–60,000 new arrivals by May 2005.

According to the government, the number of Polish nationals living in the UK increased from around 69,000 to around 853,000 in the decade after the 2004 accession.

In 2013, Straw conceded that the failure to put in place any transitional controls, as most other EU nations had done, had been a “spectacular mistake” which had a far-reaching impact.

Three years later, Britain voted to leave the EU in a Brexit referendum. The vote significantly reshaped the landscape of immigration to the UK, ending the free movement of people when the UK officially left the bloc on Jan. 31, 2020.

Despite the Labour Party being largely staunchly pro-EU and backing Remain in the 2016 referendum, the party pledged in its 2024 manifesto that a Starmer administration would “stay outside of the EU” and there would be “no return to the single market, the customs union, or freedom of movement.”

The party said it would instead set out to improve the UK’s trade and investment relationship with the EU, “by tearing down unnecessary barriers to trade.”

PA Media contributed to this report.