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To: maceng2 who wrote (601)	4/4/2004 9:32:53 AM
From: maceng2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1417

U.K.'s Hewitt Denies Pact With Romania to Drop Visas (Update1) quote.bloomberg.com [what a joke. The official denial, which only means it's true of course.] The telegraph story.. Message 19986412 April 4 (Bloomberg) -- U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair didn't agree to lift visa requirements on Romanians who want to enter the country, one of his ministers said amid government attempts to damp controversy about its immigration policy. ``No deal was done to lift the visa regime because we need the visa regime to control potential illegal migration,'' Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt told Sky News in an interview. Abuses of the immigration system ``are damaging confidence and we know we have got do more about that,'' she said. The denial follows an article in the Sunday Telegraph that said Blair agreed with Prime Minister Adrian Nastase at the European Union summit in Rome in October to lift visa requirements as an incentive for Romania to decrease the number of its citizens attempting to gain asylum in the U.K. Blair has called a meeting with his ministers for Tuesday to address immigration policy, a spokesman said, as opinion polls suggest public confidence in his handling of the issue is ebbing. Immigration Minister Beverley Hughes quit last week over allegations by officials that ministers ordered them to bypass checks on would-be immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria. ``The prime minister believes there's been a decline of public confidence'' on the issue, a government spokesman said. Tuesday's meeting will ``identify the key immigration abuses to be addressed.'' Political Agenda The opposition Conservatives and Liberal Democrats today renewed calls on the government to start an independent investigation into its handling of immigration following Hughes' resignation. A YouGov opinion poll for the Mail on Sunday suggested 80 percent of the public doesn't believe the government is being tough enough on immigration. The survey was taken on Friday and Saturday and 1,574 people were questioned. A separate survey by ICM for the News of the World paper showed 38 percent of people believe the Conservatives would effectively control immigration, compared with 17 percent who said the same about the Labour Party. Immigration has been moving up the British political agenda as the EU prepares to admit 10 members from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean in May. Britain, unlike some EU members including France and Germany, isn't planning to restrict the entry of the new EU citizens, sparking protests from the opposition Conservative Party. Blair ``doesn't accept that the immigration system is in crisis,'' the government spokesman said today. Hughes's office ordered government investigators to shelve a planned raid on a company suspected of employing illegal immigrants in August because officials were worried workers who were arrested would apply for asylum, the Sunday Times said. Amnesty A civil servant wrote in an e-mail to colleagues that the raid should be postponed until after September 2003, the deadline by which Blair had promised to halve the number of asylum applications, the Sunday Times reported. ``We need an independent investigation'' into claims about government mishandling of immigration, said Conservative home affairs spokesman David Davis in an interview on Sky News. There should also be an automatic amnesty for civil servants who bring government misconduct to light, he added. ``We need to make sure the civil servants don't have their careers destroyed.'' Davis said he'd received further e-mails about immigration abuses from government whistleblowers and that an independent inquiry would be the best way for the complaints they contained to be followed up. ``David Blunkett and Tony Blair have got to realize that public confidence is not going to be satisfied unless there is an independent public inquiry,'' said Charles Kennedy, leader of the opposition Liberal Democrats, on Sky News.