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Mr. Corbyn: So guns come first.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman's speech comes first.
Mr. Couchman: Even more alarming is the recent news of the two Islamic terrorists who are being allowed long-term asylum here, when there is ample evidence that they have planned terrorist attacks in other countries. During his five-year postgraduate course at Durham university, Ramadan Shallah, the new head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, was clearly actively involved with Islamic fundamentalist groups planning terror in the Middle East.
It is also clear that the Algerian Abdelkader Benouif, who was granted political asylum in the United Kingdom, and who French authorities believe is responsible for bomb outrages in Paris, is abusing our hospitality by his terrorist activities. However, owing to a weakness in the law, he cannot be prosecuted so long as he commits no crime here.
I am persuaded by those two examples--I do not doubt that there are others--that the Bill should include a clause requiring that foreigners resident in Britain, regardless of whether they are political refugees, should not take part in activity that is detrimental to this country's economic interests or its political and diplomatic relations with other countries. Asylum provides a priceless sanctuary from persecution, but abuse of that sanctuary can only make the host more sceptical of the claims of other supplicants.
The Bill consists of two quite distinct and disparate parts. I have mentioned the major section that deals with asylum--which, incidentally, I believe should be uncontroversial in all parts of the House. The second part of the Bill deals with illegal immigrants, and specifically the onus that my right hon. and learned Friend proposes to place on employers not to employ illegal immigrants.
During his recent statement to the House, I expressed a concern on behalf of small employers who may have difficulty conforming to my right hon. and learned Friend's new expectations. I asked then--and I repeat my request today--that my right hon. and learned Friend undertake to issue clear guidance to all employers directly, perhaps through the Inland Revenue or Department of Social Security mailing list, about the responsibilities that they are to assume in future.
I wish to probe my right hon. and learned Friend's intentions a little further. While I believe that there is a general recognition that some employers in particular employment sectors exploit illegal immigrants by employing them at low wages and under threat of exposure, many employers have little knowledge of their responsibilities now, let alone in the future.
In the catering and hotel trades, which I know well, staff are nomadic, moving frequently from job to job. Many are visitors to our shores. Whether they are Asian or Australian, Canadian or Caribbean, Filipino or French, they frequently arrive without a national insurance number. National insurance numbers are issued very slowly and often after the applicant has moved on. P45s are by no means the universal passport that they should be.
Therefore, in future, employers will have to become expert at reading birth certificates and passports which may not be written in English. I hope that, when my
right hon. and learned Friend's officials undertake an investigation of alleged illegal immigrants, they will seek to guide or counsel rather than automatically prosecute an employer who may have unwittingly taken on someone who should not be working.
Perhaps, as with a customs and excise value added tax default, there should be a warning to an employer the first time that he falls down in his new responsibility. I am also concerned that the arrival of a new brand of official, presumably with rights of entry and inspection of employment records, will not be welcomed by the long-suffering employer, a disproportionate amount of whose time is spent dealing with the bureaucracy of Government.
The fact that my right hon. and learned Friend's consultation document stresses that all new and potential employees should be asked to provide proof of their right to be employed lends credence to his claim that the new duty will not lead to discrimination against ethnic minorities. Therefore, I am prepared to accept that it is not racist in any way. That is important for our race relations, which, while not perfect, are tolerably good, and must not be allowed to deteriorate.
I believe that some of the comments that we have heard about the Bill from what is broadly called the race relations industry have been very wide of the mark. Notwithstanding what my right hon. and learned Friend said on 20 November, some spokesmen for immigrant organisations continue to peddle--as they did this very morning--the suggestion that Nigeria will be among the countries on the so-called "white list".
Undoubtedly the operation of good race relations involves rooting out fraudulent asylum applicants and detecting and deporting illegal immigrants. The indigenous population are concerned that employment and the allocation of housing and social security resources are prejudiced by discrimination in favour of ethnic minority immigrants. Nothing feeds that concern more than less than firm treatment of those who should not be here.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney, North and Stoke Newington):
I am glad to oppose this Bill, for three reasons. First, it is based on a wholly unquantified, exaggerated and apocalyptic notion of the threat that so-called bogus asylum seekers present to the British way of life. Secondly, the provisions of this Bill and of related legislation will inevitably affect tens of thousands of British nationals purely on the basis that they are a different colour. Finally, the effect of the Bill will be cruel and inhumane, and out of all proportion to the so-called problem with which it is designed to deal.
Conservative Members have risen to their feet one after another to talk about this so-called problem. But given Britain's size, our prosperity and our relations with many third-world countries, it is true to say that we have taken relatively few asylum seekers.
In 1994, we took in about 42,000 refugees and asylum seekers; that compares with Germany, which took in 127,000. So how can Conservative Members jump up and claim that Britain is in danger of being flooded with refugees and asylum seekers?
Conservative Members insist on talking as if these people leave their homes thousands of miles away on a whim, perhaps in search of benefits and a damp council flat in Hackney. On the contrary, they leave because they believe that they have no option in the face of prevailing political and--yes--economic circumstances. In the past, refugees and immigrants have come to this country not just for political reasons that fall within the terms of the law but also for reasons of serious economic instability, from places such as east Africa, Turkey and Sri Lanka.
Conservative Members speak sneeringly of bogus asylum seekers who want to better themselves. Is it so wrong of people to want to better themselves? Many Members of this House would not be here today if their parents and grandparents had not wanted to better themselves.
I do not seek to extend the terms of the law governing refugees, but I think it cruel of Conservative Members to sneer at people as if they came here merely for benefits, and were not genuinely running away from economic instability and from the growing economic gap between the first and third worlds. It is the growing gap between north and south that has led to surges of economic refugees across the world. I would respect Conservative Members more if they dealt with the underlying economic issues: debt, the prices of raw materials, GATT and trade.
People come here because they are driven by poverty and economic instability of a sort which, fortunately, no one in this country has to face. So let us take the issues seriously and not sneer at people for short-term political advantage.
If there is indeed a problem of people seeking refugee or asylum status to which they know they are not entitled, much of it is caused by the interminable delays. If the Government took administrative action to clear the 50,000 backlog and made sure that applications were dealt with quickly and efficiently, much of the incentive for unfounded claims would be removed. It is therefore wrong to pursue this legislation when there are administrative remedies to hand which the Government have not explored.
The facts do not bear out the apocalyptic notion that the country is in danger of being swamped by millions of these people. This Bill, and the debates centering on it, which will inevitably drag on into next year, can only poison the atmosphere around race relations.
We all know that politicians speak in code. If we say "wet" in this House, people know we are referring to the left of the Conservative party. If we say "new Labour", people know that we are referring to the right of the
Labour party. People in the United States who talk about civil rights or confederacy or "the south will rise again" are clearly talking about race.
In Britain in 1995, if the issue of immigration is raised, people know that race is what is really being talked about. It is dishonest of Conservative Members to pretend, when supporting this legislation, that their only motivation is to clear up a few administrative processes. They know full well, just I have known all my life, that, whenever politicians raise the issue of immigration in public debate, it is always entangled with issues of race. So Conservative Members know that they are raising race as an electoral issue.
We have heard a great deal of unpleasant rhetoric from Conservative Members. They speak of dragging the country down, of taking jobs away from honest British citizens, of taking benefits and public resources that would otherwise go to honest British citizens, and so on. Such rhetoric can only poison people's attitudes to refugees and immigrants.
Some Conservative Members try to establish a wholly tendentious distinction between legals and illegals. The rhetoric, the sneering, and the assumption that people come here only to drain this country of benefits, will stick even to the genuine refugees and asylum seekers who are fully entitled to be here. They will be frightened to go and claim the benefits and enjoy the rights to which they are entitled.
This legislation will promote an atmosphere of fear, and will affect not just refugees and asylum seekers but anyone who is coloured. I am not alone in thinking that; the Secretary of State for Education and Employment wrote to the Home Secretary earlier this year as follows:
If employers have to check, if benefits staff have to check, if those who run schools and colleges have to check, the legal status of applicants, what will be the first check they will make? As people walk through the door, they will look to see what colour they are. That will not affect most Conservative Members, but it will affect my friends and their children, and my constituents. The legislation will inevitably have consequences for how British citizens of colour are treated from now on. That is why I am proud to oppose it.
I turn finally to the related aspects--to the benefit cuts and the cuts in income support and child benefit due to take place in January. Conservative Members may smile, but my constituency has traditionally been a haven for refugees--first the Huguenots, then people from eastern Europe, and latterly people from Africa and the Caribbean. From January onwards, thousands of my constituents will have no means of support. Why? Is illegal immigration some terrible threat to this country? No, it is because this 16-year-old Administration, having run out of friends and alibis, are willing to scrape the gutter for votes.
"There is a danger that employers will concentrate checks on prospective employees whom they see as a risk, if not simply exclude them from consideration for the job. Either way there shall be racial discrimination".
If that Secretary of State realises that racial discrimination is implicit in the legislation, why has that fact eluded other Conservative Members?
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