Question: The government has announced it’s dealing with the issue of immigration from new EU countries. So any problems are on their way to being solved and the government’s got things under control. Is that a fair assessment?

David Davis: I wish it were true. The first thing is the day after the prime minister’s response; Number 10 said they weren’t considering closing the borders to immigrants from the accession countries. The Department for Work and Pensions said they didn’t think it was very straightforward to limit the access to welfare. There are serious legal problems with that - it’s been tried before.

I’m afraid the prime minister’s been - as usual - making it up as he goes along.

We still face the situation where effectively the UK and Ireland will be only countries with open borders come the admission of the accession countries to the EU. It’s a very, very serious problem.

Question: Why do you think ministers have taken so long to address this issue?

David Davis: That’s a very good question. It’s been very difficult to get a straight answer. The nearest thing we’ve got to an answer is Jack Straw saying that he wanted to give a good signal to the accession countries that they were welcome to work. That’s fine, they are joining the European Union but why should Britain give a different signal to everybody else.

Everybody else is facing up to the same problem essentially by controlling immigration for the duration of seven years. With good reason. The purpose of that strategy is to allow the accession countries' economies to move faster to catch up with the rest of the European Union.

When that happens the wage differentials will be eroded. At the moment the average wage in accession countries is less than half of the minimum wage in Britain. If you erode the differential then when you open the borders you don’t have a flood of people rushing across the border.

It works perfectly well for Spain and Portugal, so why is Britain taking a completely different approach.

I think to be frank the government simply didn’t think it through.

Question: What would you do to solve the problem?

David Davis: The key thing is in the numbers. This is not an argument over the principle of whether people should be allowed in or not. It’s the timing itself.

Now the government is predicting that only a few thousand will come here. MigrationWatch - who have been pretty good with their analysis of immigration issues - think it’s more like 40,000 and have intimated that it could be much more.

The fact is there are 75 million people in these countries on a minimum wage significantly less than Britain’s.

What we could do, if we wanted to allow enough people in to help our economy grow, enough to give encouragement but keep things under control, is simply use the work permit system properly.

It allows over 180,000 net migrants to come to the UK as it stands. After all, the idea is for these people to come here and work. It’s very simple.

Interestingly, it’s what the Swedes have decided to do in the last week or two. Suddenly they have realised they have a problem.

There’s nothing wrong with the system, it’s not very onerous, it’s not very bureaucratic and it already works.

Question: What sort of time frame would this need?

David Davis: You could do it tomorrow. There’s no reason that the government could not say that on May 1 ‘we are going to control all incomers from the Eastern European countries with the work permit’. That would be perfectly feasible because the system already exists. There might be a bit of lag in starting this late to get it to the embassies but not very much. It could be done relatively quickly and cheaply.

The other side of the coin is that the difficulties with inward migration are social and public service problems. They are pressure being put on housing, pressure being put on social services and pressure being put on education in areas where they’ve already got difficulties.

Two thirds of immigrants into this country - if you take into account asylum seekers and others - go to London. That’s the area where they want to be. That’s the area of highest pressure on housing and other public services.

Many of the others go to Kent en route to Northern cities where you also have some of the political extremism we’ve seen growing up.

You can run a work permit system keeping a watchful eye on these things all the time.

If a person wants to work in a particular industry you can send them to a particular part of the country where there’s not a great deal of pressure. In another part of the country where there is pressure you have to be a bit more careful.

You could do it really, really quite sensitively and to everybody’s advantage. It could be done quickly, cheaply and effectively.

Question: The home affairs committee says the official decision-making is slow. Is there any way that could be speeded up?

David Davis: You’re referring to the report on asylum seekers. The problem we have with that system is many-fold. Firstly the quality of the initial system is poor. Nearly a quarter of them are reversed on appeal. That shows you the quality of the system and it’s not very fast.

Because of those failures, many more stages come in - appeal stages, judicial states - which stretches out the process ad nauseam. And when you come to the end of that process it’s often very difficult to send somebody home. They may have established family and contacts in this country or they may have simply disappeared.

The committee is right; the government needs to accelerate the system.

Question: The system as it stands is not a deterrent to people thinking of coming here illegally, which could happen if ministers put restrictions on the new EU countries. What’s your view?

David Davis: What is also the case is that they know that nine out of 10 people end up staying whatever the judgement. So you’re onto a reasonably good bet, as it were, whatever the strength of your case.

That, as you say, is an incentive to come here, and the home affairs committee pointed out that we are one of the most attractive locations in Europe.

Question: Do you think ministers have learnt from previous mistakes?

David Davis: Some of them. For example, the most obvious learning exercises were a reversal of policy. When they came in 1997 Labour set out two particular policies. One was the constraint on the welfare available to immigrants and the other was the so-called white list, which is a terrible name for a policy.

The idea was that if you came from a white list country it was always considered safe to be sent back there.

On both of these policies the government attacked the Conservative government for those policies but they have now put them back in place.

They’ve had a really big surge in incomers and the policy ideas are starting to come back again. Of course, they’re learning a bit about making the system work better. But once you’ve let a problem like this get out of control, getting it back under control is much more difficult.

The problems we have are two-fold. The home secretary is very fond of very tough-sounding headlines but doesn’t put enough effort into making sure the detail works afterwards.

He has under him a department that has a track record of not very high managerial competence.

Remember, as we’re on ePolitix, the Home Office was responsible for those wonderful computer projects at the Passport Office - remember the debacle of that - and the Immigration and Nationality Department. Two big computer system failures.

It’s not a very good department in terms of its average level of management. It’s partly because it’s so big, partly because of the difficulty of the jobs it does but that’s the truth of the matter.

With a home secretary that likes headlines but not a lot of detailed planning, that’s a formula for disaster.

Question: There have been a lot of claims that Britain is going to be "swamped".

David Davis: Well, Blunkett used that phrase.

Question: Is there a danger that with these accession countries, we are going to face major problems or is this being over-hyped.

David Davis: I try to avoid phrases like swamped because of themselves they create a kind of hysteria. I didn’t think it was very sensible of Blunkett to use those kinds of words.

What you have to focus on - and you have to be very clinical about this - is what the direct local effect will be. This is not something you can deal with in terms of aggregate numbers for the whole country.

The problem is felt at a very local level. If people feel they can’t their youngsters into the school they want or can’t access the hospital or they can’t get the house they want because of a large number of incomers to their community then that’s the sort of thing that breeds discontent and on which extremist parties flourish.

You have to be very careful about the way you use language and they way you approach the problem.

To put it in context, when the Ugandan Asians were expelled by Idi Amin and they were coming to this country, there was a big row about whether they should be allowed in or not.

Some of the people that were on the side of not letting them in were on the side of not upsetting race relations in this country. We had a very strong, good tradition of race relations and it was feared there would be this large number of incomers all at once. Actually it was, from memory, 28,000 people - a tiny fraction of the incomers that we have today. That puts it in context.

We are talking about big numbers. I’ve seen headlines taking about three million over the next 20 years or so. These numbers are very scary. What you have to focus on is what will this do to local communities.

You’ve got to protect local communities because otherwise people coming in are arriving to what they think is a land of milk and honey but they find resentment and irritation. You don’t want that; it’s not good for them, it’s not good for our tradition of tolerance, it’s not good for communities either.

Question: Do you think it’s time for a US-style system of green cards and quotas?

David Davis: Let me distinguish between the two. With green cards, we have a perfectly good permit system which works very well.

On quotas, our policy argument firstly on asylum seekers is to say ‘look, we have a limited capacity as a country’. We should set a number of what we think we can accept and then say to the UNHCR or whoever and say ‘we can accept say15,000 so indicate for us the areas where you think the biggest need - people who are under most oppression - and we’ll take our share of those’.

In general principle terms that’s a good idea. It manages the tradition of tolerance which this country has and should be proud of with a practical, commonsense approach which ensures the reception that people get when they come here is a good one. I do think quotas are a good idea.

With respect to the ones who are explicitly recognised as economic migrants under a work permit system, you can manage that really on a fine-tuning basis. You know on a quarterly or monthly basis if we’re short of doctors, accountants, engineers or whatever. You can make a judgement on what is in the country’s interest and allows a reasonable degree of freedom to individuals.

Question: We’re dealing with what is partly an EU problem, aren’t we?

David Davis: Well, yes it is and that’s why you’re seeing France and Germany in particular saying ‘we are not going to relax our controls for seven years’.

The way it’s set up is two, three and two. Everybody has derogation for two years, then if need be another three years after that and then if absolutely necessary another two years after that. That was the theory of it. France and Germany have said right up front they’re taking all seven years. That’s because they’ve had a tough time with immigration themselves.

What you have to do is to design a policy which is robust to the general requirements of the country which also takes onboard the EU dimension.

When we were in government, we struck a deal with the French government about the immediate return of what we thought were people who were not due a place in this country. Under the rules we said that the first safe country is where you should seek your asylum. We had that deal and then the government let that lapse and there hasn’t been a proper attempt to reinstate it. That’s the sort of approach you have to take.

Question: Would ID cards offer a solution to the issue of illegal working, given this is a major problem highlighted by last week’s tragic recent events?

David Davis: It’s a very hard call. The pressure for ID cards is more a function of concerns over terrorism and crime rather than immigration. After all, when you go for a job you’re supposed to have a National Insurance number. In theory you should be properly identified - it’s your employer’s responsibility.

There are two difficult issues to address. On the one hand, will they work for the purpose you’re seeking to pursue - like criminal activity.

If you are stopped by a policeman, they ask you for an ID card and you say ‘I haven’t got it on me’, they will ask you to present it at a police station within three days. If you’re a law-abiding citizen you will go to that inconvenience and you will turn up at the police station. If you’re not, you’re just going to vanish. The proposal is not that we’re required to carry them. So from that point of view, it’s not going to be an impediment for those who are trying to avoid the law in some way.

The other problem is the risk of ID cards. It’s less to do with the actual card than with the database that goes with it. If you’re going to have a card there will be a lot of pressure to have on it police record information, health information. There will be a tendency - particularly with smart cards - to gather together as much information in one place as possible. That could give you quite a serious civil liberties problem.

The question is can we control that civil liberties threat effectively and make ID cards effective.

We haven’t given the government an answer on this. I was pretty sceptical on this when they first raised it. We will look very hard at both of those dimensions. And while we’re at it, we’ll look at the practicalities.

The government is looking at a 10-year programme of introduction. I can understand why that is. The Home Office is not skilful with computer projects but if you give your criminal opponents a 10-year warning of a technological change you’re giving them a 10-year gap in which to prepare alternative approaches - whether it’s getting a virus into your database or mimic the biometrics.

I can see why the government is trying to do this but I am as yet unpersuaded that they have solved the practical question of will it work or solved the civil liberties issue.

Remember this is a government that does not have a very good track record of handling people’s information.

Remember Pam Warren - the rail crash victim - where questions about her politics were being flung around Whitehall. Or the treatment of Rose Addis when her medical records were being handed around. I really do think we’ve got to be very careful about how we allow data of that sort to be handled by ordinary civil servants and the political classes. You’ve got to protect people from the classic big brother scenario. It’s fine for police purposes, fine for the narrow purposes of a job but beyond that you’ve got to have some tough protection.