Examination of Witnesses (Questions 327
- 339)
TUESDAY 20 APRIL 2004
RT HON
HILARY BENN
MP AND MS
SHARON WHITE
Q327 Chairman: Secretary of State,
thank you very much for coming in. This has been for us at times
a slightly perplexing inquiry in that there are always dangers
that we get drawn to issues such as gangmasters in the UK, asylum
issues, the EU accession states, a whole number of contemporary
issues so far as the UK domestic agenda is concerned. I think,
as the International Development Select Committee, one of the
things we always have to recall is that the vast majority of migration
across the world is either south-south or internally or from very
poor countries to very poor countries. As you know, the Committee
was in Somaliland the other day and after the bombing of Hargeisa
practically every resident of Somaliland was a migrant at one
time or another. How do we ensure that UK Government policy and
DFID policy towards migration does not just become confused with
and overwhelmed by concerns of UK migration or asylum policy and
indeed, put another way, other than encouraging developing countries
to consider whether migration along with an ever-growing list
of issues should be a part of their poverty reduction strategies
what can DFID do to try and make south-south and internal migration
more development-friendly and, as I say, how can we ensure that
DFID's approach to migration is not shaped too much by domestic
concerns about asylum and immigration?
Hilary Benn: Thank you very much,
Chairman. Can I reintroduce Sharon White who heads our policy
division. Sharon was part of the team of officials who gave evidence
to you at the beginning of the inquiry. Can I say first of all
how much I welcome this particular inquiry not least because I
think in truth, speaking for myself, and having looked at the
evidence you have received as a Select Committee, I would say
we are all on a journey in trying to understand this issue better,
and that certainly is the case for DFID. I must confess I do not
worry about our approach to migration being excessively shaped
by domestic considerations. As you yourself said in opening Chairman,
the vast bulk of migration takes place south-south or within countries
and I think one of the contributions which this inquiry and the
evidence sessions can make is to engender a better understanding
of exactly what it is that is going on around the world. Secondly,
and perhaps most important of all, to acknowledge that there are
pluses and minuses to this process. To some people this is a very
welcome activity. It enables them to improve their lives, to use
their skills, to take on new opportunities, to improve their earning
power, particularly when people are moving for reasons that are
genuinely voluntary. For other people migration is enforced, not
a choice but a way of life because there may have been conflict
in their part of the country and they have to seek shelter elsewhere.
People who have to move due to circumstances that are not connected
with their own personal choice are more likely to be vulnerable
in terms of the conditions in which they find themselves living
and those susceptible to being exploited. I am thinking in particular
of women who can be at risk of trafficking. I think we also have
to recognise that internal migration is a way in which poor people
try and improve their lives. This is an approach which human beings
throughout human history have taken if there is not sufficient
work or the chance of earning a decent livelihood where they happen
to live, to move elsewhere where circumstances might be better.
All of these motivations and all of these circumstances are bound
down in the process and I think what we can do as a development
department is to try to work with developing country governments
to raise awareness of the benefits, where there are benefits,
of the process and also to help developing country governments
to manage this process, particularly where it is the result of
force majeur or conflict in other countries. So, at a very
practical level, giving humanitarian and other support when there
are large numbers of refugees is a way in which we can assist
countries to deal with the consequences of very large-scale movements
of people that, frankly, dwarf the number that come here to the
UK.
Q328 Chairman: Genuinely without
wishing to be mischievous, how do we get both in terms of the
story and in terms of policy? Although the NHS says they are not
recruiting nurses directly from Malawi or Ghana or wherever, on
your perfectly reasonable argument, people with skills want to
move where they can maximise those skills for a while and so we
have nurses who come to the UK, and I imagine like a lot of colleagues
during the Easter recess I spent some time visiting nursing homes
in my constituency all of whom are desperately short of trained
nurses. Who has the lead in trying to ensure that some of these
are win/win policies, that people can come and acquire greater
skills here, and do they then return to Malawi or Ghana or Syria
or wherever? Who also has the responsibility of ensuring there
is an understanding that there are pluses and positives to migration
here both for the UK and in the developing countries? I think
I am right in saying at the moment for every elderly person in
the UK for our parents there are 16 in the workforce. By the time
we retire there are going to be four. What bits of those issues
are DFID's responsibility do you think?
Hilary Benn: Well, making sure
that there are sufficient people in the UK with the right skills
to do the work that needs to be done is clearly the responsibility
of other government departments and not of DFID. But we do have
an interest in the consequences of the movement of migrants to
the UK to work from a number of the developing countries with
which we work. Now, if I could take the instance of Ghana, because
I was there about a month and a half ago and had a long discussion
on this very subject with the head of the Ghanaian health service.
I will tell you very frankly I expected to be given quite a hard
time about what we were doing in the UK in providing employment
for Ghanaian nurses and doctors but, interestingly, what he spent
almost all of his time talking about was the push factors within
Ghana that led people to leave. I thought that was very interesting
firstly because we have the Code of Practice which the Department
of Health has drawn up and that says very clearly that the NHS
will not seek to recruit directly. Clearly there are issues to
do with the activities of private recruitment agencies and we
are working with the Department of Health to assess the effectiveness
of the Code. There are then genuinely difficult questions about
the extent to which it would be right and proper, assuming that
someone were to argue that it was the right course of action to
take, to say that someone who has acquired skills in one country
and wants to come and exercise them in another country because
they happen to come from a country which is short of doctors and
nurses would in some way be prevented from doing so. This is a
very difficult balance to strike, frankly. How would you administer
such a policy, even if you thought it was the right thing to do?
As I reflected on the discussion that I had in Ghana—because
I was particularly anxious to do so both because of this inquiry
and because it raises some really quite fundamental questions—it
became clearer to me that from the Ghanaian point of view they
were interested in what more they could do to try and reduce some
of those push factors. Clearly this has to do with questions of
pay, working conditions, opportunities for professional development
and to what extent, even if people choose to go abroad for a time
to use their skills, it might be possible to encourage people
to return at a later point in their professional careers. I must
say I learned from that that this is an extremely complex business
and it is not a simple question of us just saying we will close
all of the loopholes and shut all of the doors so nobody from
those countries can come and work because I am not sure, frankly,
that addresses the fundamental question which is the aspirations
that people have to use their skills and improve their lives.
There are other countries—and the Philippines is a very
good example when talking about the social care sector—where
it is the conscious policy of the government to train for export
in terms of capacity and that is why people with those skills
from the Philippines are to be found working all over the world
including in the UK.
Q329 John Barrett: I would like to
follow up on exploring this link between domestic policy and the
development impact that domestic policies might have because although,
as you have said and the chair has said, the vast majority of
migration is south-south the issue which concerns the general
public (and a lot of us as Members will hear about it directly)
is the domestic impact of this. Do you think domestic policy should
be factored into the impact it will have on overseas development?
For instance, when the Prime Minister called his summit on Tuesday
6 April about immigration did DFID have an input into that because,
as has been said already, when we are looking at the overall flow
of people the amount of immigration to this country may be relatively
small but it does have an impact and is part of the larger migration
issue. Should DFID be influencing domestic policy and does it?
Is there a link, is there joined-up thinking between the Home
Office?
Hilary Benn: The departments do
talk to each other about this, there is no question of that whatsoever.
If one accepts that the policy of managed migration which the
Government is pursuing, and it is undoubtedly the right policy,
to fill the gaps in skills that there are is the right approach
to ensuring that we have the people to do the jobs that need to
be done within the UK, if one recognises that there are benefits
to the individuals that flow from being able to come and work
here in the UK—and we may come on to the question of remittances
later on in some of the questions—then I do not think it
is so much a question of trying to then control the flow of particular
individuals from particular countries in the implementation of
that policy because in the end who chooses to uproot themselves
or make the decision to go and seek to work in another country
is going to be down very much to individual choice. In all honesty
I cannot quite see how one would operate such a policy even if
one thought that there were certain countries where one would
say a country like the UK should not take anybody from that country
because I think it raises some quite difficult and uncomfortable
questions which I alluded to in my answer to the Chairman's opening
question. Undoubtedly we do have a responsibility to work with
those developing countries with which we have a development partnership
to help them to manage that process, and as the example of my
conversation with the head of the Ghanaian health service has
indicated, this is something that those countries are very alive
to and their circumstances differ enormously. In the case of India,
for instance, the benefit that has flowed to India from people
returning with IT skills in the form of the development of the
IT industry in that country has been enormous and so it seems
to me in that respect the process of migration for the purposes
of education and working has been entirely positive. I think we
need to have a conversation about the impacts but I do not think
that one could adopt a crude policy of saying we will take nobody
from these countries, if that was the suggestion made.
Q330 John Barrett: When immigration
and asylum policy is being developed are DFID part of that process
and what should they be trying to influence? Is it something we
ought to be saying this is a domestic issue, it is a case of hands
off, or should we be saying, as we were talking about earlier
on, if we are looking at migration of skilled population this
does have a development impact? It may be on the one hand that
DFID are trying to fund the training of nurses abroad and at the
same time there is active recruitment of these same nurses across
to the UK. It clearly has an impact and I am just wondering whether
DFID are in there having discussions when policy is being developed?
Hilary Benn: Sharon White may
want to say something from her perspective but undoubtedly what
we bring as DFID to those discussions within government is an
understanding of patterns of migration in developing countries
and the phenomenon of south-south migration and internal migration,
because all of us need to be better informed about what is this
process that is going on and to draw on that knowledge and information
in taking decisions about how UK policy should be developed.
Ms White: That is absolutely right.
The only point I would add is that we are significantly more involved
even than we were a year or 18 months ago. That is partly because
as a department we have recognised that migration is a key issue
alongside trade to very quickly improve the lives of poor people.
In terms of the discussions which the Home Office or the Treasury
or the Policy and Strategy Unit have on migration, DFID has got
a regular seat and much more to contribute than we had, as I say,
even nine or 12 months ago.
Q331 John Barrett: Would DFID like
to have been invited? Were they at this meeting on the 6th or
would they like to have been invited along?
Hilary Benn: I think I was overseas
at the time is the answer to that particular question. My experience
goes back six months so the state of involvement of discussion
is the one that I have experienced since I became Secretary of
State and before that Minister of State. I think the involvement
that Sharon has just described recognises that we all have an
interest in this and we have a particular knowledge and perspective
to contribute, but I would just emphasise again that these are
very, very complex issues and the conclusions that one could draw
from our involvement, I hope, will result in good policy being
pursued because we all have something to learn from this process
of understanding what is this that is going on which is in the
end the result of decisions that individuals are choosing to take
or being forced to take by their personal circumstances. That
is what migration is.
Q332 Mr Battle: I sometimes get the
impression, Secretary of State, that you are describing a process
and we are trying to analyse a process. I am tempted to be personal
about it and emphasise it is not just decisions of individuals
but the process itself which is being shaped and is being changed.
I will put it to you in these terms because you mentioned India
and I thought it was quite interesting in a way. It is not just
that these things are happening and we watch them, and they are
complex, and we then try and do a summary of how it is working
because there are movements and government decisions being made
that influence the process massively. I will put it in these terms.
I remember some years ago learning that trade was much more significant
than aid. There was a cartoon of a Mexican peasant 30 years ago
receiving a teaspoon and on the teaspoon was written the word
"aid" but there was another hand round the throat of
the peasant and on the arm was emblazoned "trade". What
is the point of giving a teaspoon of aid if the windpipe is choked
off by trade policies? I think we have got that. However, if we
push the trade polices and the Government is going to stress the
opening up of trade, then some interesting contradictions come
in. In our own city of Leeds the concept of offshoring for IT
jobs—and there are 20,000 call centres, some have already
moved to India and will the ones that are left there now be retained
in Britain and what is the relationship—is a complex and
difficult question. I would just ask you is there any discussion
in government because you could have a government arguing for
opening up trade in terms of goods and services but being mortally
opposed to mobility of labour in practice. I want to know really
if in fact we know that developing countries can actually increase
their benefits as developing countries just as they can with trade
so they can with the mobility of labour and if they can have more
temporary labour working elsewhere in the world sending back remittances
it can add massively to the budgets of those countries, so what
are we doing to not just accept it when we are forced to but to
positively encourage it? I would just like to ask a very particular
question: does the Government's stance on migration differ from
its stance on the liberalisation of trade in goods and services
and if there is a difference is it because the economics of migration
differ or is it because of the politics and distributional consequences
of migration—put loosely that we do not like people coming
here for a varying number of reasons—rather than battening
down the hard economics?
Hilary Benn: There were a number
of questions there. I think the first thing I would say is that
the free movement of goods and the free movement of people raise
different kinds of issues. I think the Government recognises that
and it is right that the Government should recognise that. Secondly,
I do not think it is a question of just observing the process.
I think we do have to understand that it is largely driven by
choices that individuals make and also by policies that governments
pursue. I was just trying to make the point that these flows of
migration are the sum total of lots of decisions that individuals
make and therefore the ability to control and influence is limited
in some respects, although if a country decides as far as its
immigration and migration policy is concerned, clearly it has
an ability to control it from the receiving point of view. Since
you mentioned the example of Leeds and call centre jobs, which
is dear to both of our hearts, from the development point of view
the fact that jobs are being created in India and providing employment
and increased opportunities is undoubtedly a good thing. From
the city of Leeds' point of view it depends whether those jobs
that then transfer overseas are replaced by other forms of employment
or not. One of Leeds' successes over the last 30 years has been
its ability to create new jobs and new industries and new services
which have replaced the other forms of employment that used to
exist. From a domestic point of view the fact that we have got
a record number of people in employment shows that it is a process
which the country has been able to manage so far reasonably successfully.
But I think there is a difference between the free flow of goods
and the free movement of people. We are not in favour as a government
of mass migration but we are in favour of trying to manage the
process in the interests of the economic circumstances of the
country and in the process to offer opportunities for people to
undertake that journey you describe which leads to them earning
more money and sending it back in the form of remittances to their
own countries. What we have learnt increasingly in recent years
is just how important remittances are as a source of finance for
developing countries, and that is a good thing.
Q333 Mr Battle: Just to link it with
the Chairman's question, just to push it a little bit further,
I can remember the argument in the 1960s and 1970s around the
textile industry and there was a great row in Leeds that import
penetration from overseas developing countries would destroy the
textile industry. I remember doing the research and seeing the
headline "Leeds market full of cloth from Mauritius".
I researched the import penetration of cloth from Mauritius in
Leeds. It was 0.2% of the whole of the textile industry. It was
not undermining it but laws were passed banning textiles from
Mauritius coming into Leeds. What happened was Mauritius then
cancelled an order for a textile processing machine so 300 jobs
were lost in the factory that made the textile machines next door
to the very people who had been campaigning to keep textiles out.
I think we learnt from that that trade has to flow two ways. We
could put the economic arguments very strongly for expanding the
economy, finding new jobs and services in our city, as we have
done, but can you see us arguing more positively and winning the
argument to say that we need more temporary—I use that word
quite deliberately—migrant workers who are trained to, for
example, care for the sick and the elderly in our city in the
next 20 to years because we have not enough young people trained
in those skills to actually do it and seeing that argument being
won in the same way as it was won on trade? Is there a difference?
Hilary Benn: If one thinks of
the two hospitals in our city and the number of foreign nurses
who are working there, Leeds citizens experience every day of
their lives the benefits of people coming to the UK to work to
provide them with care. I suppose if they stopped and thought
about it they would realise if they were not doing their job and
there were not the people to take up those forms of employment
what the impact would be on the health care that they received.
As I said at the beginning, to the extent that we as a country
need to manage migration and need to manage the flow of workers
it is right and proper that we should do so in the interests of
meeting the needs that our economy has got, meeting the needs
for our public services, while recognising at the same time that
that does bring benefits. It is a very moot question as to whether
that argument is won or not with the public because I think if
you asked the public, "What was the nurse like who looked
after you when you were in hospital?" then most people would
say that they were very kind and provided them with help and so
on. If you were to ask, "What do you think about the issue
in general?" some people might take a rather different view.
I think as politicians part of our responsibility is to say, "Look,
without those types of workers filling those types of jobs what
would that mean for the provision of public services?" but
I think we also recognise that the movement of people creates
other issues as far as societies are concerned. Britain's whole
history has been about accommodating different waves of migrants
and refugees and immigrants and it is a process that societies
have had to manage, and that process will undoubtedly continue.
I think it is an obligation on us as politicians to point out
what the consequences would be if we did not have people to fill
those jobs.
Q334 Mr Battle: Exactly, I completely
agree with you but a final point on this if I may Chairman. In
terms of the language I am glad that we have moved away from "control"
as the key word. We have controlled migration and we used to have
controlled trade, and that was exactly the same parallel. The
Home Office submission refers to managed migration. We do not
talk about managed trade though. I just wonder why the language
is tightened up in that kind of way. We have got managed migration
but free trade. I am wondering whether that contradiction or that
language is not helpful and maybe we need to search for some new
concepts to get across the notion that migration is a good thing
two ways.
Hilary Benn: Personally I would
not interpret the phrase "managed migration" as having
the negative connotations that some people might ascribe to it.
Q335 Mr Robathan: During the course
of the investigation of this subject we have discovered that there
is very little hard evidence and data available, indeed the research
is somewhat lacking which is one of the reasons we are pursuing
the subject, and indeed there are many assertions made with which
one might or might not agree without hard evidence to back it
up. To pick up, for instance, on your historical assertion about
Britain taking waves of immigrants. Of course the immigration
that has taken place in the second half of the twentieth century
is hugely greater than anything that has taken place, as you rightly
say, throughout our history from the Angles and Saxons, but the
point is there is no clear data. People make assertions but they
do not know. By the way, may I apologise for arriving late. My
question to you is do you think we need more comprehensive, detailed
and rigorous information so that we can develop our policy on
the basis of evidence? What significant gaps do you see in
your department in the knowledge and understanding that we have
and what, if anything, is your department of government doing
to improve the evidence base for those migration policies?
Hilary Benn: If you are asking
me, Mr Robathan, about information on migration flows into the
UK, then that is not my—
Q336 Mr Robathan: I think more generally.
Hilary Benn:—That is obviously
not my direct responsibility. The general point that you make—would
it be good if we had more data about this process and the kind
of flows that we are talking about—of course it would because
I would like to think that good data helps to inform good policy.
Q337 Mr Robathan: Could I give you
an example, Secretary of State. For instance the issue of disbursements/remittances
back to developing countries is very important both to individuals
and to societies in developing countries but I remember being
in Ghana where a minister said, "I wish you British would
stop shipping jumbo jet loads of nurses from our country to the
UK." This is where the lack of tangible data is important.
Hilary Benn: I think before you
came in, Mr Robathan, we had—
Q338 Mr Robathan: Was that mentioned?
I am sorry.
Hilary Benn: We had been talking
about nurses in Ghana and I had been describing the conversation
I had with the head of the Ghanaian health service which was principally
about the push factors that led nurses and doctors to leave Ghana
rather than the pull factors from the UK or New York and New Jersey
where it is said that there are more Ghanaian doctors working
(in the states of New York and New Jersey) than in the whole of
the public Ghanaian health service. I think the honest truth is
we as DFID are trying ourselves to develop a better understanding
of what these processes and movements of people entail in terms
of the countries with which we are working. There are the UN estimates
of the number of international migrants. They are estimates because
it is, by definition, quite difficult to count particularly when
you get to refugees. I also think the fact we have difficulty
in pinning down the amount of money that goes back in remittances
is an example of how difficult it is to draw up an accurate assessment
of the total amount. But even the measures which we do have indicate
that this is a very, very considerable amount of money. 20 years
ago if you had talked about remittances and development—I
do not know, I am surmising here—they perhaps would not
have figured terribly prominently in the kind of discussions that
we would have had, the inquiries the Committee would have undertaken,
and the work that DFID's predecessor organisations would have
undertaken. The fact we now recognise the importance of remittances
is a good sign. All of us would like to understand better and
more precisely what their amount is, where they flow from and
where they flow to and how they are used. The evidence we have
so far is they do have a developmental benefit and that is a good
thing, that is a good effect of migration.
Ms White: You also asked about
what we are trying to do to fill some of the information gaps
and there are a few specific things we have already got in train.
We have set up something called a development research centre
which is specifically looking at migration. One of the biggest
gaps the Secretary of State has already mentioned is on remittances
and the size of flows. Another is getting a better handle on what
the poverty impact of migration is. Again we have got reasonable
qualitative evidence of the positive and negative aspects but
we do not have any concrete evidence of what X number of additional
flows mean in terms of real poverty reduction. That is one of
the things we are trying to get a better handle on. We also support
some work which the World Bank is doing, which is quite a long-term
research programme, that again is trying to get a better handle
on remittances, who they go to, how poor the people are, what
the money is then used for. So perhaps if you were coming back
in 18 months' time with a follow-up to this inquiry we would have
a much better information base than the one we have currently.
Q339 Mr Robathan: That is extremely
helpful, particularly on remittances. Because we are the Development
Committee, we have discussed at length the impact that remittances
have, of course, on the developing countries, and they must, of
necessity, be benign, because it is money going into countries,
often largely disproportionate amounts, from a country where costs
are high, as here. Is there any research being done by your Department,
or perhaps by the Home Office, on the counter-effect of remittances,
which is, of course, that it is money coming out of the economy
here to go to developing countries?
Ms White: The work that has been
done, mostly in terms of the impact in the UK, has been less in
terms of remittances per se and much more in terms of the
employment effects of skilled or unskilled workers coming into
the UK, where the impacts are generally small but positive. What
we have not really taken a look at is whether there are deleterious
impacts on the sending country—the UK, for example—of
remittance outflows. But if you take the impact of migration,
what we tend to find is that it is generally positive overall
for the UK, but again, the data is not fantastic.
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