Immigration: EU rules
Foreign squatters who broke into and occupied a house in London have been given hundreds of pounds of taxpayers’ money in legal aid to fight eviction because they are EU citizens and unemployed.
The number of eastern Europeans coming to work here has risen for the first time in four years, mainly due to an increase in arrivals from Latvia and Lithuania, which are suffering deep slumps.
The number of nurses from other EU states working in the NHS has almost doubled since strict checks on their competence, including language skills, were scrapped five months ago because the checks breached EU rules.
EU hand-outs
The family of Conservative Environment & Fisheries Minister Richard Benyon received £2 million in EU farm subsidies between 2000 and 2009. His ministry recently blocked public access to all information about how much farmers had got in subsidies, in order to comply with a European Court of Justice ruling on data privacy.
Ireland’s deficit funding
Fine Gael’s Enda Kenny and Labour’s Eamon Gilmore have bowed to EU diktat to cut Ireland’s deficit through public spending cuts and tax rises. The Irish Independent called it “the most barefaced breach of election promises ever perpetrated by an incoming Government … while an attempt will be made to dress up the programme as a new plan by a new Government, when it is analysed it will be seen for what it is – the continuation of the economic policies of Fianna Fail and the Greens, as laid down by the EU-IMF.”
Referendum poll
The cross-party People’s Pledge initiative aims to name and shame MPs who are not prepared to back a referendum on whether Britain should quit the EU. Voters are asked to sign a pledge on the website www.peoplespledge.org to promise they will only support MPs at the next election who back an ‘in or out’ referendum on Britain’s EU membership.
A YouGov poll carried out for the campaign found that 61 per cent would support a referendum.