Examination of Witnesses (20-39)
2 DECEMBER 2003
MR MASOOD
AHMED AND
MS SHARON
WHITE
Q20 Hugh Bayley: I think you are right
to make that final reservation. If the primary goal of your Department
is poverty alleviation, if one were boosting the incomes of the
middle income group rather than the poorest in the country in
question then one would not be fulfilling one's goal. Can you
say whether there are any measures that could be taken either
by developed country governments like our own or by other developing
country governments that would help to ensure that a greater proportion
of remittances went on increasing the incomes of the poorest in
developing countries? Are there any ways for incentivising remittances
in those cases rather than setting up family trusts for the wealthy?
Mr Ahmed: I cannot
off the top of my head think of a mechanism which could effectively
ensure this kind of fine grading in terms of which kinds of remittances
would be encouraged by it because you have to have a pretty fine
understanding of which flows are going from whom and to whom in
terms of their relative income levels. I cannot immediately see
a way in which that could be made to work easily without running
into all kinds of the same sorts of issues about loopholes and
effectiveness and whether it is feasible or not. We certainly
have not done any work on trying to establish that either.
Q21 Mr Colman: I think you said earlier
on that you felt that overall migration could have a positive
effect on development but you need to manage the risks and the
benefits. Could I push you as to whether you think the management
of increased migration from developing countries to developed
countries would be something which would have a major benefit
in developing countries, particularly of low skilled workers?
General Agreement on Trade of Services Mode 4 where the UK has
made an offer, do you feel this is appropriate? Do you believe
this to be a positive benefit for developing countries?
Mr Ahmed: I think
there are a number of studies that attempt to show that if you
increase the prospects for low skilled workers to migrate out
of developing countries into industrial countries this would result
in substantial gains for developing countries and intuitively
it makes sense. Labour is their largest asset, that asset would
earn larger amounts and not only would the workers be better off
but through the channels we have just been talking about, remittances
and the like, they would be able to send back resources. One of
the studies that has been done I think estimates that if you could
increase the supply—
Ms White: —by
about ten per cent you would expect poverty to reduce in the sending
countries by just over 1.5%.
Mr Ahmed: I think
there is also a recent study that does model-based simulations
and it says that a three per cent higher share of industrial countries'
labour force in the form of migrants would have an impact of $150
billion or so worldwide.
Q22 Mr Colman: Perhaps you could send
us those references.
Mr Ahmed: I think
it is a study by Alan Winters and it is a model-based simulation
and subject to certain caveats[4].
The chain of logic is intuitive and magnitudes obviously are large
and could be very large depending on how much you allow. In that
sense there is a lot of evidence that would support the point
that you make, which is would they have benefits for developing
countries in doing that. GATS Mode 4 is obviously the one mechanism
under which that is being done and a certain amount of negotiation
is under way about whether the commitments that are currently
on the table by industrial countries respond adequately to the
interests of developing countries in terms of low skilled workers
or whether they are focused on certain areas and if you do not
respond adequately to what happens to those what happens to the
worker demand for developing countries. It is probably also fair
to say—and you are a greater expert than I am so I am being
very cautious about what I say on this—that GATS Mode 4
is just one form in which you can have greater temporary movements
of people, although that is not necessarily the whole of the story.
Q23 Mr Colman: Is DFID talking to other
equivalent European international development ministries to see
how organised—we were discussing trafficking before and
potentially people into slavery—a GATS arrangement is where
you have protections? Are you talking to the equivalent to yourselves
in the other 24 countries within the European Union?
Mr Ahmed: In the
discussions that we have had on trade issues with our counterparts
in the development ministries across the European Union I think
it is fair to say that the primary focus has been on other concerns
developing countries have about how to make the Doha development
agenda more focused on their needs. The discussion on GATS Mode
4 has not featured heavily in that discussion.
Q24 Mr Colman: Can I press you further
in terms of whether you have discussed with our partners in developing
countries whether they should make an offer under GATS Mode 4?
I am a member of the Council of the Voluntary Service Overseas
(VSO) and I state that particular point for the record. I know
they find it quite difficult having had an appeal for teachers
or for nurses or doctors and there is a response from this country
for people who would wish to work one, two, three years in a developing
country, but it is extremely difficult to get a work permit from
the developing country. Is DFID discussing with our partners whether
in fact it would be appropriate to be making a Mode 4 offer from
a developing country, say from South Africa?
Mr Ahmed: This
particular issue is not something that we have been discussing
actively with developing countries.
Q25 Mr Colman: Could I ask you to consider
this one very strongly?
Mr Ahmed: So far
we have not done so.
Q26 Mr Colman: One of the advantages
of Mode 4 is, in fact, that it requires the migrants who have
come here under whatever level to return to the country from which
they have come within a one-year, two-year or three-year period
depending on the agreement. This is one way to ensure that the
skilled migrants do return to their home countries. Perhaps you
could examine whether this is one of the ways to ensure that skilled
migrants do return to developing countries? Have you any other
ways of encouraging this return of the diaspora who have come
here and got skills in addition to giving us skills and who are
able to go back to their countries but perhaps are not encouraged
to do so?
Mr Ahmed: There
are a number of programmes, some of which address skilled migrants
in an attempt to make them return and other programmes that allow
for the temporary immigration or temporary entry of low skilled
workers to come in and do specific things. In the latter category
there are some good examples of things that have worked. The Mexican
authorities, for example, have an arrangement where they have
been recruiting people for Canadian enterprises to work for temporary
periods in Canada. It has been running for 28 years and I understand
some of the evidence is it has been pretty successful, most of
the people involved come back. Similarly, Switzerland runs a programme
of temporary migration for up to nine months a year for the hotel
industry and service industry. It has been running for nine years
and it appears to be successful. There is now a possibility in
the UK to bring in people to work in the agricultural sector.
A number of countries are trying to find ways of providing temporary
but legal channels for low skilled workers to come in and meet
needs which may be temporary or more seasonal, they will not necessarily
be the same. I think there is a growing body of evidence that
we need to look at more. As I said at the beginning and as Sharon
said, migration is a relatively new area for DFID and so we are
beginning to get our arms around just what schemes are there.
Q27 Mr Colman: Ms White and Mr Ahmed,
I have a feeling in this research that we are doing in this investigation
we are learning together which is very important. You were concentrating
on the low skilled people returning back to developing countries.
How can we encourage those doctors and nurses from Ghana because
we are paying them very high wages in this country, higher than
they could ever get in Ghana? Have there been any attempts in
the equivalent of Ghana to get those high skilled people to return?
Mr Ahmed: One thing
that appears to be quite helpful in encouraging people to return
is the possibility that it will be relatively easy for them to
come back if they need to. If they feel that once they return
they will have huge difficulty in coming back into an industrial
country labour market they are likely to put off that return for
as long as possible because it then becomes a much bigger decision
for them. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence which suggests
that a lot of people in the US return as soon as they get their
Green Card because in a sense as soon as you have your Green Card
you know you can come back when you need to or want to and so
you can go back when you wish. One thing that industrial countries
have to think about is offering migrants easier re-entry which
is a very good incentive to encourage them to be more circular
in their patterns. Another simple developing country example is
between Indonesia and Malaysia where because there is quite strict
patrolling of the borders migrants tend to move permanently with
their families, whereas where there are less strict controls between
Indonesia and some other countries the same community of people
tends to have more of a circular pattern, so intuitively it would
make sense. The second thing is that the evidence seems to be
that people go back primarily when they have something to go back
to. Offering programmes to support the return of people to Ghana
or Sierra Leone or Bangladesh is not going to be very effective
unless there is something in Ghana, Sierra Leone or Bangladesh
that is attractive for those people to go back to and, in a very
narrow sense, that means a working environment within which they
feel they can contribute in their profession. Frequently you do
have a problem in that if you go back to work in the Civil Service
or in the Health Service the structures and rigidities are such
that you are actually not going to be able to contribute at the
level of skills that you have acquired because you have not served
your time in the structure in which you are now trying to insert
yourself. Secondly, it is simple things like living conditions
in terms of personal security, the schooling of children and the
like, it is things that any of us would think about if we were
making a decision to move and in some ways this brings us back
to the core business of DFID. A contribution that DFID can make
is by helping to support governments in creating improved living
standards and opportunities for work which will ultimately be
both a draw for the return migrants and will also help to keep
some part of the people who would want to migrate out to stay
back, although there will always be some people who migrate back
and forth. The US, for example, has a quarter of a million people
who migrate out every year, so at any level of development outward
migration is a natural phenomenon. I do not think we will ever
get to a level where just because income levels rise you have
no transfer, that is just a natural feature of populations.
Q28 Tony Worthington: I want to stick
with diaspora but not remittances and not individuals. We had
a session with the smaller BOND members before the summer and
I asked them in what areas their membership was expanding and
they said it was the country group membership of, say, people
in this country seeking to have organised links with people at
home and joining the developed world. It is very striking that
some diasporas are famous for supporting a homeland, I think of
Ireland or I think of Jews in America supporting Israel. Sometimes
we have very big meetings in DFID here where an African President
comes in, but I am not conscious of any organisation from DFID
or anywhere else saying how can all these people who suddenly
come into the House of Commons be assisting with the development
back home. Do we have any outreach of that kind or are we growing
that kind of work?
Ms White: I would
say we are growing it. We have taken some early steps. As I mentioned,
with the India country assistance plan we had quite a series of
discussions with British Indians in the UK. Similarly with Nepal,
we are beginning to establish quite close links with the Nepali
diaspora base in the UK and I hope as we begin to learn some lessons
from that engagement we can spread this more effectively. Africa
is the region where we are at the most early stage in our analysis
of migration. Over the last couple of years we have done quite
a lot in Asia and we are just beginning, partly because so much
of the migration has been internal, displaced people, to think
about the diaspora and outward migration.
Q29 Tony Worthington: Have you any good
examples you can think of?
Ms White: I think
the Indian case has been very good. Our Asia region had a series
of consultations not just based in London but across the UK and
that has helped to feed into what is going to be a three- to five-year
strategy for DFID, but it is still a very small example.
Q30 Tony Worthington: Any examples of
groups going to the Challenge Fund or anything like that?
Ms White: Not that
I am aware of, but we can check and let you know[5].
Q31 Tony Worthington: It would seem a
good way forward to build up very useful links. How does the status
of migrants and the rights that they are granted in this country
affect their ability to contribute to our development?
Ms White: If you
look at economic migrants in a sense who come through legally
and who have the same rights as UK citizens, the evidence suggests
that their labour market participation, particularly amongst white
migrants, tends to be as good as for the rest of the population.
If you look particularly at asylum seekers who do not have the
same rights of work as the rest of the population until their
claims have been decided favourably, by definition, the employment
rates tend to be lower in the formal sector. One also tends to
find that participation rates particularly amongst Asian spouses
again will be intuitive and tend to be much lower. So it is key
that the legal status is decided early and that is obviously a
clear spur or lever for migrants to enjoy the same labour market
participation as the rest of the UK.
Q32 Tony Worthington: Otherwise we lose
and they lose.
Ms White: Absolutely.
The evidence is pretty positive in terms of net flows to the Exchequer,
it is something like £2.5 billion, although the figures need
to be taken with a pinch of salt, but if you look at GDP growth,
it is something like another quarter point is added on by migration
into the UK.
Q33 Tony Worthington: Can I switch to
policy making both at UK level and EU level. I think we both feel
we are at a very early stage in looking at migration and development.
What is happening at both levels, both in terms of the European
Union and within DFID?
Ms White: One of
the new things for DFID has been that there has been much more
joined-up policy making across Whitehall on migration and development.
These are issues which were flagged up in both White Papers for
us, but we did not begin to join up with some of the asylum discussions
that the Home Office had been having until probably in the last
year or so. So what we are trying to do is to inject the developing
country perspective into some of the discussions on asylum. One
of the things we are doing is we now have a new pilot project
planned with the Home Office, with the Foreign Office, with the
EU and the Netherlands and Italy, which is looking at how we can
strengthen the diaspora linkages between Sierra Leone and Ghana
and that is just one example. So I think increasingly we are finding
there is less of a separation between development as done by DFID
and asylum and migration policy as done by the Home Office.
Q34 Tony Worthington: I think in Europe
there is an extra dimension in that it is not just a north-south
relationship, it is with the neighbours and I do not get the sense
that that has really been thought out in the development perspective
across the European Union.
Ms White: It is
beginning to happen. There has been a very good initiative with
the EU High Level Working Group on Migration and Asylum which
was trying to join up for the first time not just development
agencies like ourselves but also interior ministries, other Home
Offices and that is beginning. Interestingly, DFID is one of the
few development agencies that regularly attends the meetings and
so on. The discussion veered slightly into discussions around
border controls and so on, but you have got, in principle at least,
absolutely the right forum which brings together all the key players
to try to strike a balance between development and domestic asylum
concerns.
Q35 Tony Worthington: Previously it has
all been about control, has it not?
Ms White: Previously
you have had the development people talking to other development
people and you have had Home Offices speaking together and this
is the first time you have had both sides together within the
same room having that discussion.
Q36 Tony Worthington: I think the other
development issue which I have not been too conscious of has been
in terms of poverty reduction strategy papers. I have not heard
people drawing it to my attention that migration is a very important
factor in terms of lessening poverty. Do you think that is now
going to be put right?
Ms White: I think
what you say is absolutely right. Albania is a very good example
for obvious reasons, having had one-third of its population migrate
out, where migration does feature very heavily as part of the
poverty reduction plan or strategy, but that is not true across
the board and one of the reasons why we have begun the discussion
with Asian ministers has been to raise that awareness. One of
the issues we confront is that the strategy has been national
or country based whilst migration has an international cross-border
focus. It is the sort of issue that can easily be missed with
a purely country based perspective. So we are trying with the
Asian forum, and we hope to do this in Africa, to raise the awareness
of the ministries concerned about both the positive and negative
impacts of migration in their countries. Mr Ahmed:
Could I just add one footnote to that because I think what has
also been interesting to see is that in the countries where migration
issues have been raised, focusing mainly on the internal migration
from the rural to urban areas, this is frequently seen as a bad
idea because it is seen as contributing to urban sprawl, urban
poverty and the like rather than thinking about it as part of
a livelihood strategy for rural populations and thinking through
the pros and cons of it. I think the way in which many governments
approach internal migration has been to treat it as a negative
thing because they see rural and urban development as two separate
things that need to be kept apart rather than recognising the
links inside. Following on from what Sharon was saying, I think
if you look at where the debate on migration and development is
today in terms of the involvement of different development agencies
in the joining up effort that you are talking about, it is actually
quite similar to the point at which the trade and development
debate was at about ten years ago, where people were beginning
to say that there was actually a development dimension to trade
which went beyond thinking about it as a separate box to add on
at the end, you needed to have trade integrated into your strategy
and vice versa. Initially there was the same lack of joining up
in national and international discussions on trade and development
and resistance to connect them. I think what we are now seeing
on trade is that, even though the implementation may not be perfect
and people may argue about how far you have got in it, there is
no dispute about the fact that trade and development are interlinked.
On migration, in many countries we are still in the early phase
in the development discussions of seeing this link-up.
Q37 Tony Worthington: I do not know whether
anyone else will hold you to this but I will. I feel so uneasy
about South Africa and AIDS, that is the situation of how difficult
it is going to be for countries like South Africa and the rest
of the Sub-Sahara and Africa to train up adequate numbers of professionals
in health and education and at the same time respect the individual
liberty of people to migrate in order to use this. We are using
a South African country for one of these "quick" clinics
that is going to help our waiting lists and so on. I feel very
uneasy about that because I say to myself we are supposed to be
helping with development. Now, that is individual development,
but what is our general impact upon the development of that part
of South Africa or Malawi and so on? Where do you think that argument
is going?
Ms White: We share
a concern that South Africa is one of the countries where we have
a Memorandum of Understanding which is trying to balance both
our desire for skilled workers with a clear concern to protect
the skills base within South Africa. So it is one of the countries
where we aim to limit the outward migration of skills.
Mr Ahmed: If I
could just take that one level beyond that, that is to say I think
there is a very big issue which we have to grapple with, which
is how will we ensure that the health workers and teachers that
are needed to deliver on the achievement of the Millennium Development
Goals can be trained and can be productively employed, not just
trained but there being jobs for them and decent working conditions
for them. Part of the solution may be the kinds of things which
the WHO are supporting in terms of devolving the function that
more skilled health workers and doctors had done to people with
a small number of years of qualifications, things like the Barefoot
Doctors Programme, in terms of supporting the delivery of AIDS
treatment that may be part of the solution. There may be other
parts of the solution. I suspect that the magnitude of changes
that we need to think through, which actually are probably a more
complex set of problems than simply thinking about the financing
of them, which is not only about how you raise the money and spend
it but how do you actually get the real sector to deliver on it,
will be quite large in comparison with the magnitude of the effects
caused by the outflows of the nurses and doctors that you are
talking about. I think that will be part of the problem we will
have to resolve, but if we were to say let us stop recruiting
all nurses from South Africa, I am not sure that would be anywhere
near an adequate response to how do you provide for the right
kinds of healthcare skills that are needed. It is quite a radical
set of solutions we will have to think through.
Mr Colman: I have got
nearly 25,000 South Africans in Putney and the surrounding constituencies
and they have chosen to leave South Africa, they keep telling
me, for a temporary period of time and I would love to see them
return, but the other side of it, having talked to very senior
representatives of the Home Affairs ministry in South Africa,
is that they are totally opposed to giving work permits to nurses
or doctors coming from developed countries to work in South Africa.
There needs to be more exploration of this flow of people. As
to how can I encourage so many of my now constituents to go back
to South Africa, it is a complex issue, but part of it is to enable
UK citizens who are nurses and doctors who wish to work in South
Africa to be able to do so where the receiving hospital has actually
made a bid for a work permit, to be able to get those people here
to be able to work there. I only mention it. It is a very complex
issue.
Q38 Chairman: To what extent is DFID
looking at the policy of other countries? For example, it strikes
me that Canada has been very astute in recognising that developed
countries are going to have a need for skills replacement and
that aging populations are not replicating that, there is a difficulty.
Canada went out actively on a points system to try and select
those who might be of the best benefit to Canada, to recruit them
actively as migrants into Canada. Here it seems to me we have
got ourselves into glorious confusion over asylum policy on the
one hand and the need for a policy to be recruiting skilled migrants
on the other. To what extent is DFID comparing other countries?
Secondly, what work has been done across Whitehall? I am not quite
sure one could admit nowadays to Cabinet sub-committees existing
or working parties or whatever. Is there work being done across
Whitehall that involves DFID and the Department for Work and Pensions
and the Department for Education and Skills and the Home Office,
because otherwise the whole debate here has to become about asylum
and in other countries there is a debate about how you recruit
sufficient skilled workers. I think Japan is the only country
which thinks it can survive without recruiting anyone from outside
at all.
Ms White: It is
really a Home Office lead, but it is an area where the DFID is
beginning to contribute much more to the discussion. The highly
skilled migrant programme that was introduced in the last two
to three years is an area where the DFID has been engaged in helping
to feed through the implications and design. We have also been
looking at countries like Germany, which is operating a Green
Card system and France is introducing something similar. So it
is an area that the Home Office, in discussion with DWP and others,
is really leading on and we are contributing to the design of
it.
Q39 Mr Davies: I want to elucidate one
or two of the points that have already come out, Mr Ahmed. You
appeared to be giving slightly contradictory opinions to my colleague
Mr Colman. You were saying that the best way to maximise the gain
both to the host country and to the country of origin of migrants
or to reduce the damage in terms of exporting the skills permanently
from the country of origin was to have temporary employment schemes
and I think you quoted the Swiss and the Americans perhaps in
relation to the Mexicans and you said that was the solution, and
then just a few moments after that you said the best solution
was to give people the right to go back at any time because then
there was evidence that they would want to go back, if they had
the right to go back to the host country. When we draw up our
recommendations I do not think we can very well say both, I do
not think we can say the best solution is to make immigration
temporary and the best solution is to make sure that anybody who
comes here can come back, which basically means make it permanent.
Mr Ahmed: Perhaps
I did not express myself clearly. In my mind I am not sure that
the two are contradictory in the following way. If you had asked
the question what can industrial country governments do to encourage
people who are now migrants here to return to their own countries
with the skills that they have acquired, short of forcing them
to do that, what incentives can one provide?
4 Ev Back
5
Ev Back
| 
