Examination of Witnesses (Questions 229-239)
RT HON
HAZEL BLEARS
MP AND MR
LIAM BYRNE
MP
22 APRIL 2008
Q229 Chair: Welcome, Ministers. This
is the final evidence session in our inquiry on community cohesion
and migration. We are grateful to have both of you here as a sign,
we hope, of joined-up government. What assessment has the Government
made of the effects of A8 migration on community cohesion?
Hazel Blears: First of all, to
set this in context, our levels of community cohesion in this
country are extremely good and I certainly welcome the Committee's
inquiry into these very important issues. That statement is absolutely
fundamental for us. The latest figures we have are that 80 per
cent of people in this country feel that they get along well with
their neighbours in their local neighbourhood—in fact, it
went up to 82 per cent in the very final figures that we have—and
75 per cent of people feel a very strong sense of belonging to
their local neighbourhood. The context is that community cohesion
is good. Within that there are variations from 37 per cent to
90 per cent, so there is quite a big variation about how people
feel locally, but there are only ten areas that are below 60 per
cent. That gives a fairly good picture across the country that,
in most places, most people feel that their area is pretty good
in those terms. Having said that, I think it is absolutely right
that this inquiry is taking place because there are some communities
that, because of the scale and pace of change that has taken place,
are feeling the impact and it is absolutely right that we acknowledge
that and, as a Government and as a local government, who have
a key role here, we are preparing, planning, making sure that
we meet that impact. In terms of the particular changes in the
last couple of years, we have seen an increase in particular areas
of migration from A8 countries. I had an excellent meeting last
Wednesday with a dozen local authorities from across the country
and the situation varies in different places. For example, Haringey
were part of that meeting and their main issue is around housing,
but a lot of it is about large African families coming to Haringey.
If you talk to Boston, in fact now something like 25 per cent
of their population is from Eastern European countries. They have
said that it is fundamental to their economy, they absolutely
need those people for the skills, but equally there is a big impact,
so it is difficult to get a national evaluation of that impact.
What is really important is to drill down into those communities,
look where the impact is and then make sure that government and
local government are well prepared to be able to support those
communities in coping with that pace of change.
Mr Byrne: The two points that
I would add to that are that when we think about questions of
cohesion I think it would be a mistake to neglect any reflection
on the economic importance of migration to this country. We know
that tensions can arise in places where there is poverty and so
the economic importance of migration has been something that has
been a positive in this country over the last ten years. The evidence
that we have and which we presented to the House of Lords is that
controlled migration has been good for productivity. It has therefore
overall been good for wage and wage increases over the last ten
years, it has been good for taxes, and so the overall effect on
the economy and on the GDP per capita has been positive
and I think that that is an important factor in the calculations.
Of course we need to take into account the impact of community
cohesion when we set immigration policy. That is partly why DCLG
and the Home Office together chair the Migration Impacts Forum
and community cohesion is one of the issues that we take into
account as we launch the new points system. What we try and do
when we set the points system up is we do not just listen to the
needs of the British business community. We know migration is
good for the economy but the British business community is not
the only stakeholder in this debate; we do need to listen to other
voices too. We need to look at the impact on public services and
we need to look explicitly at this question of community cohesion
and that is exactly what the Migration Impacts Forum tries to
do.
Q230 Chair: Can I focus, firstly,
on the issue about the quality of data on migration levels and
really pick up on the point that was made about the impact being
very variable between different regions and localities, which
is obviously an issue that we have seen as well, and ask what
effect do you think the lack of data at a local and regional level
has on the ability of organisations to respond to the social consequences
of migration and what, if anything, is being proposed to try and
improve the level of data at a local and a regional level which
is where it really matters?
Hazel Blears: Obviously we used
the best data available in the last three years settlement that
we had, but I entirely acknowledge that, because of the pace of
change that has taken place, our data is not as up-to-date as
it could be, or as comprehensive as it could be, therefore we
have set in train a whole programme of work led by the national
statistician, undertaken by the Office of National Statistics,
to try and ensure that when we come to the next three year settlement
for local government then our figures are much more comprehensive
about the impact of migration in our different communities. I
will give you a couple of specific examples: the Office of National
Statistics are going to do a rolling household survey which will
have questions about migration in it. I think the labour market
survey is now going to have more questions around migration in
it so that we get better data. We will certainly have better data
from the e-Borders scheme, from the points scheme and I am working
very closely with the Local Government Association who have suggested
a series of more local measures about how we can get better data:
whether or not we look at national insurance numbers from workers'
registration, we look at GP registration numbers, all of these
are not perfect measures and the LGA will agree that there is
no magic bullet about getting to this, but the more measures we
can draw in, the more comprehensive the figures will be. The LGA
have recently suggested that we look at footfall in supermarkets.
They reckon that Tesco has pretty accurate information about the
people who use their stores and I welcome that kind of imaginative
thinking if it can help us to get a better and more accurate view
at the very local level of what the impact is. That work is being
overseen by Liam and by John Healey in my Department jointly to
make sure that we really do press to get better statistics and
better figures.
Q231 Chair: Even if you do, do you
think that there is a need for some additional funding, given
that the pace of change is very rapid? Even if you improve the
data from which the three year settlements are made, do you think
there is a need for some additional pot of money that can be drawn
on if there is rapid change that occurs in between?
Hazel Blears: First of all, there
is a real terms increase in local government funding over this
period of the three year settlement, and you would expect me to
say that, to try and meet a whole variety of pressures that are
in the system, particularly around social care and other issues.
Having said that, in addition there is also the £50 million
cohesion fund that our Department has for the next three years,
£34 million of which is going out through the area-based
grants to local authorities for them to be able to deal with the
impact, not just of new migration, but also of settled communities,
so there is some extra money in the system now. Under the Citizenship
Green Paper there is the proposal that we would have a transitional
impact fund financed by some increase in terms of the fees that
people pay which would be a flexible fund and be able to be directed
in areas of particular need at particular times. I think that
is a very welcome proposal.
Mr Byrne: In essence, the responses
to this question that the Government has put forward fall into
the short term period now and the medium term. In the medium term,
the £1.2 billion programme to be put in place, Border Information
Systems, will reintroduce the capability of the Government to
count people in and out, a capability that we lost back in 1994
when exit controls were phased out. That deals with flows. You
then have the question about stocks. Over the longer term, ID
cards for foreign nationals, which will be introduced on a compulsory
basis, will probably be the best indicator available of where
migrants are living and moving around. In the short term, there
is, as Hazel says, changes to the international passenger survey,
changes to the household survey, changes to the labour force survey
which will all add migration aspects to their work, so that over
the next one to two years we get a much better sense of where
people are living. As the LGA says, there is not a silver bullet
in this calculation. What we have to do in a world where migrants
do move faster than ministers is to make sure that we do have
the best possible information about where people are and, if we
recognise that there can be transitional pressures on public services,
which we do, we need to do something about it, which is why we
do think that there is a case for asking migrants to pay a little
bit extra as they journey towards citizenship, if that is what
they want to do, towards a fund which can help alleviate some
of those transitional pressures that frontline public servants
are telling us about.
Q232 Anne Main: I note your comment
with interest: "Migrants move faster than ministers"
and that you acknowledge the pace of change and the problems with
that rapid pace of change. Part of the problem that we understand
from the communities that we have talked to is that you did not
see this coming; it was not predicted. There is not the funding
in place. Do you acknowledge the fact that the figures, whatever
they are now, were totally unanticipated by the Government so
there was not the infrastructure in place to welcome the migrant
communities as they come in and help them settle in properly?
Mr Byrne: Let me put one point
on the record because it is a point that is important. This question
of unanticipated inflows comes up a lot and people point to a
survey that I think was produced some years ago that said if certain
things happen then 13,000 people from Eastern Europe will come
to the UK. It was not a Home Office study, it was a University
College London study and, as ACPO accepted last week, it was subject
to so many caveats that it is incorrectly held out to be the Government—
Q233 Anne Main: What were the Government's
anticipated figures?
Mr Byrne: If you look at what
Des Browne, the Immigration Minister at the time said, he was
absolutely assiduous in saying that it would be foolish to forecast.
What the Government had to do is to make sure that there was sufficient
funding in the CSR period to support not just the pressure of
changing communities, but actually a pretty sustained programme
of investment in public services. As Hazel says, that programme
of reinvestment is going to continue in local government. If you
look at the Police Service, for example, there has been an extraordinary
increase in police funding over the ten years to the CSR period.
Q234 Anne Main: Do you not accept
that part of the problem of the communities that are expressing
concerns about the tensions is it has been too fast too quick
without the infrastructure, the money lagging too far behind,
and no real proper accounting of numbers. That is a key part of
the problem for the councils dealing with this. It is not ill
will on behalf of the settled communities of whatever their own
ethnicity, but they were saying this was the key problem: far
too many people too quickly coming into areas where councils and
infrastructure cannot cope. Do you not accept that that is the
problem?
Hazel Blears: In the meeting that
I had last week with a dozen local authorities, which is part
of a series of meetings that I have been having over the last
12 months, what came across to me very clearly indeed was that
some areas are coping better than others, that there is some excellent
practice out there where local authorities are reassuring the
settled community. If you look at Cornwall, for example, which
is a rural area—Andrew will know far better than I do—that
is an area that could have had enormous tensions. What a series
of local authorities there have done is brought together the will
to address these pressures across every single public service.
They have a thematic approach. It is in their local area agreement.
The local strategic partnership is absolutely focused on it. They
have welcome packs, they have work with the settled community,
they have the myth-busting going on to try and make sure that
blatant untruths are not told about the impact of migration and
what they will say is that in many ways the migrants coming to
the county have made a positive contribution and they have managed
it in an excellent way. I do not profess to say that that is happening
in every part of the country and therefore one of the challenges
for us is how do we get the different local authorities to share
that good practice? How do we get our specialist teams, which
we are committed to in our response to the Commission on Integration
and Cohesion, to go out to these areas to make sure that they
can help with that impact?
Q235 Anne Main: Are you saying that
these communities are wrong in saying that it is the pace of change
and actually it is just they are not good at handling the change
because they do not exercise best practice? Is that what you are
saying?
Hazel Blears: I would certainly
not say that the communities are wrong in terms of how they feel
about this issue and I think it is vitally important that we as
ministers acknowledge that there are concerns and uncertainties
and that change has been very fast but the change is also global.
It is not just this country that is experiencing this rate of
change; it is the rest of Europe, it is many countries across
the world and therefore the challenge for us is to make sure that
we are on top of it and that we are planning. The second message
that came out from my meeting last week was that what local authorities
really do want is better horizon scanning to be anticipating now
what the changes will be like over the next five years; what is
happening in those other Eastern European economies which might
mean that people start to go home and then how do we plan for
some of that?
Q236 Chair: Some of the local authorities
that we visited seem to have been caught incredibly unawares by
what has happened in their own local community. How far do you
think that it is the responsibility of national government to
do this horizon scanning and how far is it the responsibility
of individual local authorities, who must know their own local
economy better than national government ever can?
Hazel Blears: As in every bit
of this area, there is a role for national government, there is
a role for the regions and there is a role for local government
and unless we get that together we will not get the right approach.
National government has to help with whatever research capacity
we can bring to do that horizon scanning, but you have to have
the real information of the impact at local level fed into that.
The message was very strong to me last week that local authorities
are good at coping with change in their communities provided they
have the ability to anticipate and to plan and I think we have
a responsibility to help that.
Mr Byrne: That is absolutely right.
You have to remember that this is one of those questions where
sweeping generalisations do not really help anybody. If you take,
for example, one of Anne's colleagues, Peter Luff from Worcestershire,
he is somebody who has been lobbying me to relax immigration control
in Eastern Europe because he is talking to local farmers, local
agriculture workers, and they are saying we want to make it easier
to bring in low-skilled migration from outside today's EU. When
I was in Newcastle recently I think it was a Liberal Democrat
lady on Newcastle Council said we want to try and grow the population
of Newcastle by 100,000 over the next ten years. As hard as we
try, we are not going to achieve that by encouraging the good
citizens of Newcastle to breed faster. We are going to need people
to come in from outside. The truth is that there are some communities
and there are some local economies in this country which are ambitious
for growth over the next decade—Birmingham wants to grow
its population by about 100,000—and we do not think that
all of that population growth is going to come from the resident
population. What government has to do is manage immigration policy
for the good of the country overall, which is why we have to balance
off economic needs and social pressures, which is what will happen
in the new points system, but it has got to be local authorities
that think about the future of their own communities and prepare
for those because to have civil servants in Whitehall and ministers
in Whitehall second-guessing that, I do not think would be a recipe
for good policy-making.
Q237 Mr Dobbin: The points-based
system was mentioned in an earlier contribution. Has the Government
had time really to measure the impact of the points-based system
on community cohesion? Further, how is the Government going to
monitor that impact?
Mr Byrne: The way we have decided
to organise the points system is that instead of having decisions
about the technicalities of it taken in a dark room in the Home
Office we think that that policy-making process should be transparent,
it should be based on evidence, not anecdotes, and that is why
we set up two independent committees: the Migration Advisory Committee
chaired by David Metcalf to look at what the business community
said that it needs, and that is a pretty controversial issue.
Many of us will have seen the demonstrations in London on Sunday
about some parts of the community saying that we need more immigration
rather than less. The second committee is the Migration Impacts
Forum which is designed to look at wider impacts of migration.
We were very careful in the way that that forum was set up. Its
members are frontline public sector managers from all over the
country. The direct answer to your question is that the points
system is only just coming into effect now and so we are not able
de facto to monitor the impact on community cohesion so
far but we have studied this question of community cohesion. The
Migration Impacts Forum will advise us on the statements of intent
that we publish which will explain how the points system will
work. We will publish those six or seven months before the points
system actually comes into effect so that there is plenty of time
to make adjustments if we have not got things quite right. The
Migration Impacts Forum will be absolutely crucial going forward
because, having set the policy, having set up the new systems
to monitor the flows of people in and out of the country, we will
want to form our own views about whether we have got the points
score too low or too high and community cohesion will be one of
the things that we ask the Migration Impacts Forum to report on.
What becomes possible, to take a hypothetical example, is for
the Migration Impacts Forum to report back to us with a conclusion
that community cohesion is coming under sustained pressure because
of the pace of migration. We would then be in a position to actually
increase the number of points that a migrant would need in order
to come in. That would reduce the number of people coming in and
alleviate the problem that MIF identified. For the first time
we have a much more transparent, evidence-based process for managing
and controlling migration into the country. The chief advantage
of the points system is its speed and flexibility. It is much
faster now to move a points score up and down in order to control
migration flows than the system which we are replacing which consisted
of 80 different routes into work and study in the UK, very complicated,
very difficult to manage in that kind of flexible way.
Q238 Chair: It does not affect A8
migrants at all, of course.
Mr Byrne: No, but we are using
non-EU migration almost as a balancing item. We are obviously
looking at the total flows of people coming into the country.
The scope of the Migration Impacts Forum is to look at all immigration
rather than simply migration from outside the EU.
Q239 Anne Main: I was very interested
in the phrase that you have just used—"We are using
non-A8 countries as a balancing formula". Does that mean
you are taking a particular group of people and saying that they
are going to be used as a counterbalance to maybe a huge influx,
or maybe not a huge influx, of migrants from European countries?
Is that how you are working your system?
Mr Byrne: I put it in a slightly
different way. I think there is a pretty well-developed consensus
now about free movement within the EU. After all, the 2004 Free
Movement Directive consolidated nine free movement directives,
seven passed under Conservative administrations, two passed under
Labour administrations, but when we are setting overall immigration
policy we have of course got to look at what the inflow is from
the EU because that will have a—
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