Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20
- 39)
TUESDAY 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 10% 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 3% 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[5].
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[6].
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?
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