Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240-259)
RT HON
HAZEL BLEARS
MP AND MR
LIAM BYRNE
MP
22 APRIL 2008
Q240 Anne Main: That suggests you
have a number in mind that you find acceptable and will top up
or reduce according to whatever economic migrants are coming in
from the EU. That suggests you have a sort of figure.
Mr Byrne: No, what we have is
a system for looking at what the economy needs in any one particular
year and a system for monitoring what the wider impact on public
services is so that we are able in any given year to come to a
conclusion about whether the points score for non-EU migrants
needs to go up or go down.
Q241 Anne Main: You have touched
on the restaurant trade and concern about the points-based system
across Chinese restaurants, Bangladeshi communities and so on
and they have been talking about to me about this as well. It
could be that we will need a whole load of Bangladeshi chefs for
the curry houses which we all love in our high streets but if
we have enough from the EU countries we will not be able to do
that.
Mr Byrne: No-one has said it would
be an easy decision.
Q242 Chair: I suspect that almost
all MPs have been to their local Bangladeshi restaurants to assess
the extent of the problem. Can I pick up on a remark one or other
of you made about the council tax and ask two questions. One is
whether any data is available on whether, in particular, A8 migration
has actually increased the council tax base of the communities
into which they have gone? I say that because, anecdotally, A8
migrants seem to live in houses of multiple occupation, which
would suggest that however many you cram in you do increase the
council tax base. The second issue is that there has been a suggestion—I
am not quite sure whether it is from the LGA or whether it is
from Tony Travers—floated that maybe a way of getting additional
finance into authorities which have experienced a very rapid population
growth might be to allow some authorities to retain all the council
tax of some of the ethnic population. Are you considering that?
Hazel Blears: I am not aware of
any specific data in relation to particular areas. This is part
of the need to improve our data and our figures and that is why
we have this big programme of work going on. Tony Travers comes
up with a number of innovative suggestions about how local authorities
might have more control over the taxes that they raise and this
is clearly one of them. I continue to work with the Local Government
Association on making sure that we do manage the impact of migration
in their communities, not just for local authorities, but for
the health service, for schools and for a whole range of public
services as well. I am not specifically looking at this option
at the moment. I have no doubt that the LGA will want to discuss
various issues around finance with me as we take forward those
discussions.
Q243 Anne Main: Have you considered
establishing a contingency fund to assist local authorities who
have experienced rapid migration because, if they are not reflected
in national statistics, this could help integration more if the
funding was there?
Hazel Blears: The Local Government
Association suggested several months ago that there should be
a fund I think for £250 million for various authorities to
bid against. We have not adopted that approach because what has
been really important is to give local authorities the stability
and predictability of having a three year settlement. If you were
to create a contingency fund that money has to come from somewhere.
That could have meant undoing the three year settlement that had
been worked out. Local government themselves have welcomed the
predictability and stability of that three year settlement. As
I said earlier in one of my replies, that gives local authorities
another real terms increase over the next three years of something
like £9 million to cope with a whole range of contingencies.
In addition to that, we have the £50 million funding going
out to support cohesion, particularly in communities across the
country, and we have the possibility of the transitional impact
fund from the Citizenship Green Paper. I think that is a better
approach than simply having a pot of money which the LGA themselves
were prepared to admit that they do not have the specific evidence,
data and ability to be able to quantify this, and to some extent
I think that that kind of approach is a very temporary, short
term approach. What is important is to improve the data, make
sure that when we do the next three year settlement and the next
CSR we get that embedded in mainstream public services because
this change is going to be with us for quite a long time to come.
Q244 Anne Main: Therefore do you
think it would be advisable to have a national strategy then for
integration, leaving aside funding pots directed at certain groups?
Do you think there should be some strategy to try and improve
integration?
Hazel Blears: That is a wider
question beyond the funding. Obviously we have had the report
from Darra Singh and the Commission for Integration and Cohesion
which I thought was an extremely useful report. I have read his
evidence that he gave to this Committee. I was pleased that Darra
thought, I think his phrase was, "the glass was more half
full than half empty" in terms of the Government response.
We have agreed to follow up all 57 recommendations from the Commission
and indeed we are getting on with implementing very many of them.
I think that has been a very useful piece of work. What we do
need to look at further, and Darra talked about this, is not simply
having cohesion, but having a stronger emphasis on integration
on bringing people together. I think the measures we have taken
around translation, around speaking English, around the funding
for various voluntary sector groups to try and ensure that we
are moving not just to support people in the same conditions as
when they come to this country, but move them on a journey so
that they become fully active citizens in their own communities,
is going to be one of the most pressing challenges over the next
few years. I therefore think that we have more to do but I think
the basis set out in that report gives us a very strong foundation.
Q245 Anne Main: Do you believe that
the links between CLG and the Home Office and the communication
is good enough to achieve what you have just described?
Hazel Blears: Yes, I do, and I
think it is improving day by day, dare I say. My Department now
is taking the lead on preparing a cross-government impact plan
for migration and that is working not just with the Home Office—the
Home Office are fundamental partners here because of the borders
and because of all the measures and their responsibility for migration
as a whole—but it is really important to work with the Department
of Health to look at the impact on the NHS. We are working very
closely with DCSF to look at the schools' position. They obviously
have the emergency grants that they can bring in to reflect very
quick changes in the number of school children. We are working
with DIUS around English as a second language, trying to refocus
the provision of English as a second language towards cohesion,
so that cross-government approach I think is fundamental to getting
it right here and making sure that we work with the local authorities
when we work on our cross-government plan.
Q246 Anne Main: You have mentioned
an awful lot of bodies then and departments. Do you think there
would then be a case for having a single body that was a national
body for integration for migrants?
Hazel Blears: That was one of
the recommendations from the Commission. We have not accepted
the recommendation to simply have a new body. What we have said
is that we want to do some further work, let us look at the business
case. Is it right? What I do not want to do is to add extra layers
of bureaucracy with more bodies that then have to be serviced.
I want to make sure that we can spend our money on actually making
a difference on the ground, but we are willing to explore whether
or not that might be a useful way of taking this work forward.
What we do not want is simply to create a plethora of administrative
bodies because we have to make sure that we make a difference.
Q247 Andrew George: You mentioned
earlier that you congratulated the local authorities in Cornwall
for a number of things which included being able to rebut myths
in relation to migration. I noted that you rejected the recommendation
of the Commission on Immigration and Cohesion to set up a rapid
rebuttal unit to counter myths about migrants. Why is it that
Government feels that it is not its role to rebut the myths? Is
it because you believe that the Government is not in the best
position and that it should be done by others?
Hazel Blears: On much of this
agenda it is important that it is done very locally and it will
be different in different places, different approaches will work.
Those communities will be unique and I think Darra Singh agreed
with that in his Commission's report and that therefore the one-size-fits-all
and having a national rebuttal approach is not necessarily the
right thing to do. A lot of places have done myth-busting leaflets.
Some of them have worked; some of the evidence is that in certain
circumstances it can be counterproductive because, unless the
information comes from a source that you are actually going to
be able to depend on, and clearly is absolutely being independent
in some ways, then you can add to some of the difficulties and
conflicts that are out there. I think it is a more complex picture
than simply the Government issuing ten points of why you are wrong.
I think you need a dialogue with people about this. You need to
build relationships, you need to build trust and the best way
of doing that is for the settled community to come into regular
contact with the new community doing practical things at a local
level rather than simply issuing what could be seen as propaganda
on this very sensitive agenda.
Mr Byrne: I would underline that
point. In preparation for the publication of the Green Paper I
spent three or four months going around the country meeting quite
large groups all over the UK talking about what are the British
values that we want to put at the heart of immigration reform?
What consistently came back to me was a sense that people in this
country want to be more welcoming; they actually want the Government
and local authorities to do a little bit less. Very often people
would say we bend over backwards to welcome people into this country
and what people were actually saying is that they wanted government
and local authorities to do a little bit less and they wanted
to create more space in which they personally could take on a
bit more of that job of extending a great British welcome.
Q248 Andrew George: A lot of the
myths are also expressed at a national level as well through national
tabloid newspapers and others, so you cannot simply say that the
local authorities have a responsibility to respond to that as
well. Surely there is a role for government there?
Hazel Blears: You can do this
in a whole range of ways. The recent report from the Commission
on Equality and Human Rights looking at allocation of social housing,
their interim findings are that people are not given an unfair
advantage from migrant communities and over 90 per cent of the
people coming to this country in the last few years are in the
private rented sector, many of them are not eligible for social
housing and where they are they are treated in exactly the same
way in terms of their needs and allocation process. I think that
it is really helpful that you have a body like that looking at
the evidence and then reaching their own conclusions. I think
there is a responsibility on all of us to make sure that the facts
are out there, but I think it is at local level through building
those relationships that you get beyond headline rebuttal into
something that is far more meaningful for people. I think that
is the challenge for us.
Q249 Andrew George: Taking that a
stage further, the Commission's report identified a great deal
of variability in the success of integration in terms of the measurements
which they established between 38 per cent and 90 per cent in
terms of the success of the immigration policy, depending in which
local area one is in. The Government's Public Service Agreement
21 describes quite detailed performance indicators. I wondered
to what extent the Government can deliver on its targets to improve
community cohesion, given the way in which the Government appears
to be perhaps micro-managing, perhaps dictating too much from
the centre. Do you think that the balance is right in terms of
local initiative and government direction?
Hazel Blears: The way in which
you have framed those two questions really illustrates the dilemma.
Are we going to have a national rapid rebuttal unit? No, I do
not think that is the right thing to do—I think we need
to do that locally—but absolutely we have to, as a government,
have a national framework to assist local authorities to be able
to make a difference in their communities that we all want to
see happen and therefore our response to the Commission's work
does commit us to producing a delivery framework by the summer,
bringing together analysis, evidence, best practice, helping those
local authorities to take it forward. We have already issued the
guidance on translation, which I think local authorities have
found extremely helpful; not to say do not ever translate but
think carefully, use your common sense, check whether you need
to translate. Can you use translation as a way of getting people
to learn English? Do it with your partners, do not repeat things
and, for goodness sake, do not translate annual reports which
nobody will ever read in English, let alone in other languages,
so that has been very welcome. The guidance that we have issued
on the funding of voluntary sector groups, again, not saying that
in no circumstances will you fund a single issue group, but when
you are funding groups think about how you can get them to bridge
to other communities as well as looking after the particular focus
that you were working with. I think all of that from a national
level is hugely helpful and I take responsibility personally on
this agenda that we will be absolutely supportive. The key to
this for me is in those local communities which are experiencing
change for them to be able to have enough flexibility to bring
people together. What I am very pleased about is we have got the
first cuts of the local area agreements at the moment and I think
85 local areas have chosen cohesion as one of their top 35 priorities.
That is hard for local authorities because you want to do everything
on education and all the rest of it, but they are saying cohesion
is really important to us and we are going to make it a priority.
I am optimistic that people really do see how fundamental this
is to making the place a great place to live and government has
a responsibility to help them to do it.
Q250 Andrew George: Would you say
that that is the reason why there is such variability in terms
of the success of some local authorities in achieving greater
success with cohesion than others which are clearly failing? What
are the key ingredients as far as you are concerned?
Hazel Blears: I do not simply
put it down to whether or not the local authority is any good
at dealing with this issue. I think there are a number of underlying
factors and the analysis that the Commission's work undertook
was extremely useful. They set out a kind of typology of areas
that would be likely to suffer extra impact and it was the places
that were not very affluent, the places that have experienced
manufacturing decline, the places that were urban that were likely
to have a bigger impact, and then if you look at the different
nature of the numbers of people coming to different areas, some
places have had a bigger challenge than other areas. If you are
used to diversity, if you are an inner city, if you look at the
piece on Birmingham in the Sunday papers at the weekend, very
encouraging, two-thirds of people think it is great to live in
such a diverse community. If you go to a place which has never
had immigration then the stresses and strains will be that much
greater. Yes, there are things people can learn from each other,
but I do not think it is simply a matter that this local authority
is excellent and this local authority is poor. Some places have
different challenges.
Q251 Andrew George: There is one
very specific issue which is raised by Slough Borough Council
and by others where there is a tension between the settled minority
ethnic community and the newly arrived migrants, particularly
where the settled minority ethnic community finds that the claim
is that their jobs, wages and economic opportunities are being
very much affected by the recently arrived migrants, particularly
from Eastern Europe. What is the Government doing to reduce the
tensions between those two communities?
Hazel Blears: I meet with Slough
regularly—it is on my agenda—including Members of
Parliament as well as the local council, and rightly so. It has
to be said that Slough is still a thriving economy. It is a place
where people want to live, it has very high employment levels
and is a very large contributor to the regional economy where
they are as well. Clearly there are issues between different communities.
The Mori polling that we did initially about 18 months ago said
that 45 per cent of established migrant communities felt that
there was too much immigration. This is an issue out there and
we have to bring those communities together as much as we do the
white community and the Eastern European community. This is basically
a matter for all of us. We are all in this together and therefore
in those particular areas it will be the local authority that
is best placed to know what their communities are like. They will
have data, they will have information and then how can they proactively
try and bring people together and support particularly the voluntary
and community sector, who are often better at this than statutory
organisations. Certainly the local authorities are saying to me
that the churches, the faith groups, the people who are absolutely
the grassroots, can be tremendous contributors on this agenda.
The challenge is how do we make sure that local authorities are
in a position to support that voluntary sector activity in a more
sustainable way?
Mr Byrne: I have nothing to add
only to underline that I do not think this is a race issue in
the way that it was debated in the 1960s. That is the great thing
that has moved on in the immigration debate. If you read back
over the Hansards of the 1961 Immigration bill, which is something
that I did over last summer, you can see former Members of this
House openly talking about the need for immigration control in
terms of race. They are extremely unpleasant passages to read.
I think that the immigration debate has now moved on immeasurably
since then and I think it is a reflection of something Trevor
Phillips said in a speech to the CRE last year that actually Britain
is a very tolerant place where we are comfortable with the difference
in this country, but it will be the local authorities that are
in a better position to think these plans through because they
are going to have that insight into their communities in a way
that, frankly, ministers and civil servants will be unaware.
Q252 Anne Main: Specifically on the
myth-busting, I would like to reiterate that the settled ethnic
communities, for example, in Peterborough did say to us that there
was a degree of flight from the City Centre because of the churn,
of the pace of change, people coming into private rented accommodation,
led to them feeling this was not their community anymore. I think
that is something that needs to be addressed, that London and
other areas placing their communities where they cannot house
themselves in rapidly changing communities elsewhere adding to
the tensions. It is not always just best practice within a community;
it is also best practice within neighbouring communities that
will use the resources. I think that area needs to be really looked
at because that came across loud and clear.
Hazel Blears: I understand that.
I do think there is a challenge as well for local authorities
to be working together in their areas and working across boundaries.
People do move around—as Liam said, migrants move faster
than ministers—and I think it is important that local authorities
have means and mechanisms to share abilities. One thing I would
say about houses in multiple occupation, because this is a significant
issue for us, we obviously have a licensing scheme that applies
to three-storey buildings and if there is more than five people
and then a discretionary scheme if it is a two-storey building
and it is four people. We have a review going on at the moment
about the effectiveness of those licensing schemes because there
are management regulations as well. What I want to try and make
sure is that the scheme that is in place is sufficiently flexible
and easy for local authorities to use because one of the problems
is where you get landlords who are possibly exploiting people,
you get to a situation of overcrowding and that can cause difficulties
for people and therefore we need to make sure that the housing
and multiple occupation licensing framework is actually in the
right place and a practical and useful scheme for local authorities.
Q253 Andrew George: I note the Government
claims that migration into the UK makes a £6 billion contribution
to the economy. In those circumstances why is it that the Government
is not able to find a portion of that, if it is making that contribution,
to actually deal with the social challenges and consequences which
we have been talking about?
Mr Byrne: I think it is. Let me
start with the economic contribution. The £6 billion figure
is the Treasury estimate of the contribution of migration in 2006
to output. Alongside that, probably the best study in this area
was by the IPPR of how much migrants pay in versus how much they
take out. When the IPPR looked at the 2003-04 period, they concluded
that migrants pay in about 10 per cent of taxes and take out about
9.1 per cent; in other words, they pay in proportionately more
than they take out. When you look at particular parts of the economy,
taking for example financial services, it is inconceivable that
the City of London and Britain's financial services sector would
be as successful as it is today without migration. Why is that
important? That is important because financial services contribute
24 per cent of corporation tax takes. It is with that help—I
put it no stronger than that—that government is able to
recycle money into public services. If you look at the police,
for example, the Police Service funding between 1997 and the end
of CSR period has increased by something like 60 per cent; that
is £3.7 billion. Not all of that money has come from resident
British workers; some of it has been contributed by migrants as
well. Hazel has talked about the increases that have been driven
into the local government settlement too. The fact that we have
a successful economy—remember that in the last decade employment
has gone up, productivity has gone up and wages have gone up—that
is a triple that the British economy has not pulled off for decades.
It is on the back of that economic success to which migration
has been a contributory factor that we are able to see the levels
of public service investment that we see today.
Q254 Andrew George: Do you not think
that in those areas, for example, where new migrants are coming
in to provide particularly seasonal labour gang workers—I
am thinking of my own area there but are many others where there
is an extremely serious shortage of local housing—in those
circumstances being able to provide housing for migrant workers
is an extreme challenge. Is there not a role for government in
assisting in those kinds of circumstances, given the fact that
you are saying that they do make a contribution to the overall
economy?
Hazel Blears: Clearly there is
an issue about housing supply in general terms. We estimate something
like 65 per cent of growth in housing would be needed in any event,
irrespective of migrants, and that is why we have a massive increase
in the money that we are spending particularly on affordable and
social housing—£8.4 billion over the next three years—to
try and make sure that we cope not just with migration, but with
the increase of the people in the settled community who are increasingly
living longer, which is a good thing, and actually living in single
person households. As a country we have to press on with the commitment
that we have made to build three million new homes over the next
few years and therefore that is what we are doing. We are working
particularly with local authorities to try and bring this housing
forward, both in terms of the social rented sector, working with
housing associations, putting money into all of those programmes
that we have—the low cost home ownership, the equity share,
all of that—which is important for the country, not specifically
just simply for the migrant population. 90 per cent of the migrants
coming in are actually in the private rented sector. We are currently
again looking at a review of the private rental sector because
I do think there are issues, not particularly connected with migration,
but in general terms about the quality of that sector and they
will be reporting to us in October of this year. Making sure that
our housing policy as a whole meets the needs of all the people
of this country is an increasingly important priority for us.
What you have seen in the last couple of years is that rising
up the agenda with appropriate funds to back it up. £8.4
billion is by no means an insignificant sum.
Q255 Chair: Can I ask about the £6
million that is available for the preventing extremism agenda
and ask whether you think that has any relevance to community
cohesion?
Hazel Blears: Clearly the agendas
of community cohesion, preventing violent extremism and the work
that we are doing on faith are connected, overlapping and involve
sometimes similar approaches, but I have been very clear, as has
the Commission on Integration and Cohesion, that you can have
very cohesive communities and sometimes you will still get some
problems around violent extremism within those cohesive communities.
There is specific work to be done in tackling and preventing violent
extremism to keep our communities safe. Again, increasingly local
authorities are recognising that and doing specific pieces of
work. That £6 million which has been there in the first year
for our Pathfinder is going to expand quite significantly and
there will be £45 million over the next three years going
to local authorities through the area-based grants to work on
those issues. What I am keen to do—I know there has been
some question should we ring-fence that money so that that money
just gets spent on preventing violent extremism—is not only
to have the money that is going specifically for that, but also
local authorities now I think are seeing the challenges to their
communities and may well be able to bring in other resources to
try and increase the strength and the ability of their communities
to deal with these issues. They are different but they are not
completely separate and actually building cohesion and building
strong communities where people come together—they share
experiences, they do things together, they share food, they share
activities—I think can have an impact on making also our
Muslim communities more resilient to that violent extremist message,
so there is specific work to be done. They do overlap, they are
not identical and therefore I think it is important to keep a
focus on the separate funds that we have.
Q256 Chair: Is the Department monitoring
the effectiveness of preventing extremism, the faith funding and
the community cohesion funding and when will you review the effectiveness
of those three streams?
Hazel Blears: Clearly we have
the PSA 21 which Andrew referred to earlier on which is building
cohesive, active and empowered communities and that is a cross-government
PSA. Underneath that we have three indicators, but two of those
indicators are actually in the local authority set so we will
be able to measure the cohesion side through the Places Survey
which will take the place of the best value performance indicators
which were previously measured. There is a very good performance
framework around the cohesion. We are expecting those 85 local
authorities who have put it as one of their top 35 priorities
to achieve a statistically significant improvement in cohesion
in their areas but we will be monitoring all local authorities
because it is one of the 198 indicators, so all local authorities
will be monitored on their cohesion levels. What I do not want
to see is a really good improvement in the 85 who have made it
a priority coupled with a national decline; I want to see everybody
going forward. In terms of the preventing violent extremism moneys,
clearly because this is a relatively new area of work for local
authorities are now increasingly focused on it, working with their
police services, again we put the money into the area-based grant
but I said that after the first year of the LAA I want to take
a fresh look at that to see exactly what has been done. Is it
making a difference? We are working now on how we are going to
be able to measure our PSA on preventing violent extremism. This
is one of the most complex areas, as you can imagine, to try and
get a proper measure of, but our task is, and I am determined
that we will, be able to show that, particularly Muslim communities,
have increased their resilience to be able to stand up and condemn
and tackle violent extremism. We have got to do this cross-government
with Home Office and with the FCO. Our Prevent strategy is completely
a cross-government strategy but we will be ensuring that we keep
a very close eye through the regional offices on where that money
is being spent and the effectiveness of it.
Q257 Mr Dobbin: We paid a very interesting
visit to Peterborough and we were welcomed at the New Link Centre
which is a newly opened centre for migrants. We were told that
the transient migrant population were a bit reluctant to integrate
because they were not going to be stopping in that particular
area. How is the Government going to try and aid and help other
local authorities to create those kinds of facilities—welcome
centres—to finance that kind of initiative to help coordinate
the integration of migrant communities?
Hazel Blears: Two things: obviously
where people have a significant population then it is important
that there are facilities available. Again, that will vary in
different areas. Some places will not be seeing the level of changes
that places like Peterborough and Boston are experiencing so we
have to be flexible enough to work with them. In our ongoing discussions
with the Local Government Association we will be looking at exactly
the kind of thing that you have talked about, but already so far
as a national government we have worked on the welcome and introduction
packs that we have said that every local authority really should
have as a matter of priority. We have IDeA, who are the Improvement
and Development Agency, working and we have just issued a template,
we have issued a pamphlet that says the best practice, how you
can do an introductory pack that will reassure people but also
reassure the settled community, so that is something that we can
do nationally. I do not think it is a national responsibility
to set up a welcome centre in each of those areas. I do again
think it is for local partners but it is not just the local authority
and I would make this point that the new system that we are now
moving into is local authorities coordinating a range of public
services, whether it is health, police, transport, housing, whatever,
and that is the way that partnerships can be measured in future
on their effectiveness at how they make the place a great place
to live. It may well be that you have some facilities through
the health service, through the PCT, some kind of community centre
that exists in the voluntary sector. That is what has to be explored
locally. What I was impressed with in Cornwall was this ability
to get this issue as a theme throughout the Local Area Agreement
which meant that every partner had to focus on it rather than
simply saying: Over to you, local council, it is all your job
of work to do.
Q258 Mr Dobbin: Moving on to English
language, how important is it for local migrant communities to
be able to speak and understand English? What sort of representations
are you making to the Department of Innovation, Universities and
Skills to work with ESOL to try and achieve that?
Hazel Blears: I could not possibly
overestimate how important I think it is. I think if you are going
to have a sense of people being comfortable with each other, being
together, then the ability to speak a common language is really
fundamental to that. If you are going to get a job, if you are
going to get on, if you are going to be able to do the normal
things we take for granted, then you need to be able to speak
English. That is why they give the guidance on translation. That
is why I have been working with John Denham to say how can we
focus the English as a second language provision on really encouraging
cohesion and integration? DIUS have had a consultation over the
last three months and they are going to be responding to that
in the summer. They are very keen to do this. I also feel quite
strongly that employers should be taking a significantly bigger
role in helping to fund some of the essential English language
classes. The budget for ESOL has actually tripled in the last
few years; it is now £300 million. We have put a huge amount
of money in and because of the scale and pace of change there
is still a lot of demand in the system. Employers like First Bus
and Tesco are actually doing English language classes either in
the supermarket or in the bus garage, people do not have to take
time out and it is a better way of working. I know that DIUS are
very keen to say to employers: Look, you are getting the benefit
from these people coming in, doing the jobs, working hard, making
you more productive, you have the responsibility to make a contribution
to the costs of learning English and to do much more of it on
site in a more flexible way. I think that is the way forward.
Mr Byrne: I would add that promoting
English is now becoming one of the most important values that
is now driving immigration and citizenship reform. As part of
the preparation for the Green Paper, speaking to people all over
Britain, the ability to speak English is the first value above
all others that the British public wants to see absolutely at
the heart of immigration reform. That is why in the points system
we have said that economic migrants will need to be able to speak
English if they want to stay for any length of time. We are consulting
on whether people coming in on spouse visas need to acquire some
English before they can come in. In the Citizenship Green Paper
we have said that people will need to improve their command of
English if they want to move from becoming a temporary migrant
to becoming a probationary citizen or a citizen. This hardwiring
of English into the immigration reform is now absolutely fundamental
to our plans for 2008.
Q259 Mr Dobbin: How are you ensuring
that English language classes are available to all, particularly
to women in African and Asian communities?
Hazel Blears: I think it would
be disingenuous to say that every single person who wants to go
to a class will find an abundance of provision in their local
area because that clearly is not the case. Expenditure has tripled
in the last few years but there has been huge demand out there
so there are still pressures on the system in particular areas.
That is why the consultation that DIUS have done is to say what
are the priorities? Where should we particularly be targeting
the provision? There is an enthusiasm to try and make sure that
in providing English language provision it is not simply to people
who are going to be here on a short term basis, come here, do
a job and go away, but actually how do we reach the people who
perhaps have been here for some time and are still not able to
access the services and to become fully integrated into our communities.
We also held two citizens' juries earlier this year—one
in Hull and one in London—to try and get to the views of
local people. If you have to make choices where do you think the
priorities should be? That has helped to inform our thinking as
well. If employers could make a bigger contribution that would
free up some of the resource to direct it at people who genuinely
cannot afford it; people who can afford it should make a contribution
and we have to get the balance right here. One of the things I
know that John Denham is thinking about is how to make it more
flexible. If it is simply in an FE college is it in the right
place where people go to? I went to a centre recently where there
were women from a whole range of different ethnic backgrounds
and they would go to that centre: it was local, there was childcare
on site, it was in their community. I do not know whether they
all would have travelled some distance to an FE college but they
were reaching people who would be called hard to reach, but they
were very enthusiastic. You have to have more flexible solutions
as well.
| 
