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Chris Huhne: The right hon. Gentleman’s proposal is extremely interesting. Will he suggest to his Committee that it should meet for several sessions in Croydon, in order to deal with precisely this issue?
Keith Vaz: We frequently go to Croydon, but we do not necessarily get to see what we ought to see; I have found that people are very nice to Select Committees, but we still get the information that we need from the statistics, and the statistics are poor.
I know that the Minister often says that mistakes have been made, as he did in respect of bogus colleges—if he is frowning at me, he need not, because that is the best he can do. Hundreds of bogus colleges were brought into existence under this tough Government doing tough things on immigration. As one of our witnesses said this morning, people can set up a college above a fish and chip shop anywhere—even in Oldham—and they will be able to get someone into this country. That is what the universities told us today. Over the past 12 years, hundreds of bogus colleges have been set up and tens of thousands of bogus students have entered this country.
The Minister appeared before the Committee today and said, with his usual robustness and honesty, that he knows about what has happened in the past but that we now have the points-based system, which is the great panacea, and that if we open the bottle called “the points-based system”—the most fantastic thing the world has ever seen, and certainly the most fundamental review of immigration policy since the second world war—everything will be fine and calm. We then presented him with a letter from Baroness Warwick, who represents Universities UK, which points out that the very organisations that conduct the accreditation have websites that do not list either their inspectors or the institutions they have visited.
We accept that the Minister comes with good will to the House, as he came with good will to the Select Committee, and we give him the benefit of the doubt as we know he wants to sort out this problem, but we say to him that time is running out. It is not legal immigration that we are concerned about, and I do not think the people of this country are concerned about that either; they would agree with what the hon. Member for Salisbury (Robert Key) said earlier about clause 39 and those people who have come to this country legitimately with their skills—doctors and others were mentioned—to benefit our country. Of course, they have been benefited as individuals, but they have also benefited our country, and they might now be told that they cannot get citizenship or they will have to wait—I know this does not apply to those people who currently have indefinite leave—from five to eight years, and from three to five years, and in between this wait, they will have to satisfy various criteria. We even accept that, but what we cannot accept is what the Home Secretary said today about a cap being placed on citizenship. It is no good the Minister looking at me as he is now; that is precisely what she said at the Dispatch Box today, having said all along that we do not accept the notion of a cap. She was talking in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), and she said that there would be a cap on citizenship. That is something that the Minister himself originally said when he first took up his post; he talked about a certain level of population in this country, and then said that was not the case and that he had never mentioned a cap.
If we are to have a new, points-based system for citizenship, the House needs to know about it. We do not need to be told, as if we are children, that this is a framework document and that some time in the future—in the summer—another consultation document will be published. The Minister must be fair to the House. In his wind-up, he needs to answer what has been put by the shadow Home Secretary, the Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesman and my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow. If there is something in a drawer in Lunar house on a new consultation on a points-based system for citizenship, we have a right to know what that is; we have a right to know what it is before we vote through this Bill on Second Reading, and certainly before Report and when it comes back in the final Session.
I ask the Minister to be open and honest with the House. We know there are problems. We know that the public will not accept unlimited immigration—the kind of immigration that brought me and the people who arrived on the Windrush into this country. Those days are, of course, completely gone. I am also thinking of those of my constituents whom Idi Amin expelled from Uganda and who came here from east Africa; people will never be accepted in those numbers now. Those who have come since then have all been EU citizens who have an absolute right to come here, and some of them have, in fact, returned. People do not mention the fact that they have preferred to go back to their eastern European countries because, for the moment, their economies are doing slightly better than ours—although I am sure they will all come back again when our economy is fully repaired.
That fact is that there is no mass immigration in Britain any more—the Minister knows that—but there is the illegal immigration that is so blighting our country, and we want him and this Government to do much more about that. I know that he does not like guessing the number of illegals, but he has clever officials, so he should sit them down and ensure that we get the figures. The Mayor of London has the figures and at least he has a solution to dealing with illegal immigration—the amnesty. We need to deal with this issue, and not just at the border.
The Minister, as well as being responsible for immigration, is the acting entry clearance Minister, for the time being, so he knows that there is also a problem with that. I was aghast to hear of the number of students who come from Pakistan in particular, although as I said to the high commissioner last week, this is not an issue just for Pakistan because many countries are involved. The relevant numbers are 7,000 five years ago and 26,000 now. The journalist who wrote the report in The Times told us about these bogus colleges in Manchester that are supposed to admit only 50 such students but had 1,700 on the roll. These are serious issues and the Border and Immigration Agency must investigate them.
We take all the Minister’s tough medicine today in saying to our constituents and those who seek to come here, “I am sorry that you must wait longer to become a British citizen and you have to do all these things: you have to obey the law, of course, and you have to be able to speak English.” We accept everything that is being put upon a community such as mine in Leicester, where half the population has origins abroad. We accept all
that, but in return we want the Government to do more to tackle illegal immigration, so that those who come legally will be treated properly.
Tom Brake: I think that the right hon. Gentleman was about to conclude, but before he moves off the subject of tough medicine may I ask whether he agrees that perhaps, even for UK citizens, the tough medicine goes a little too far when it involves children in immigration detention centres? Does his immigration deal address that issue with the Minister?
Keith Vaz: I am happy to have given way to a member of the Select Committee. He is right in what he says, and it applies not only to children. Those who come to our surgeries, including the Minister’s surgery in Oldham—I am so pleased that he is in this job, because every Friday he knows what the problems are—discuss not only children in detention centres, but people waiting for years for Miss Homer and her wonderful team to settle these cases. These people cannot work, as has been said by my hon. Friends the Members for Walthamstow and for Islington, North in every immigration debate that I have attended. We do not give these people the right to work. We keep them in destitution for four years because of our administrative inefficiency and eventually we ask them to leave. As we speed up the processing of those cases, we have to find a compromise that will allow them at least to take up work while their cases are being considered.
I take the point about my almost concluding as a hint that I should do so. A number of hon. Members have discussed the nature of active citizenship and the path to citizenship, and the Select Committee touched on that in its report on this Bill. May I remind the Minister of the reason why we had to conclude our investigation and then report? When this Bill was originally published the Minister did not know what was going into it, so we had no detail. A broad-brush approach was being taken and there was no detail for the Select Committee to scrutinise—that is why we had to conclude. As there was no information to allow us to scrutinise what the Government were proposing in the Bill, there was no point in our continuing our work and so we published our report.
The Committee said that it was extremely worried about this notion of active citizenship. Who is an active citizen? Are we putting on immigrants to this country—who choose to come here to become British citizens—a greater burden than we put on our own citizens? Are we going to ask such people to be better citizens than those born in this country? I was not born in this country, but my son and daughter have been born here. Does that mean that if I did not have citizenship when I came here I would have had to do more than someone who was born here? That is the problem with creating two classes of citizenship. Of course it is a great privilege to be a British citizen. My father and mother always wanted to be British citizens, and they wanted the same for their children. In a sense, those who come here as immigrants respect this country much more, because they know what a privilege it is to stay here. We need to address these issues, and people need to know what they must do in order to gain citizenship.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol, East) (Lab): I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way just as he was about to rise to a crescendo at the end of his speech. Does he share my concern about those young people whose parents are long-term overstayers? I have a significant number in my constituency. The parents are mainly from Jamaica, and the children were born in this country. I met one young woman who did not even realise that she was not a British citizen until she applied to study English at university and was told that she would be classed as an overseas student. She was also told that she had to take the English language test and other tests, which would be a bit of a farce. Does he share my concern that if such people have to jump through various hoops to become British citizens, they will get entirely the wrong message?
Keith Vaz: My hon. Friend is right. We have to have rules—not everyone can arrive and suddenly become a British citizen. That does not happen in the US—people need a green card. If someone then commits a criminal offence, they are removed or do not get citizenship. However, we do need to be very compassionate in how we deal with such situations, especially when it comes to people—many from the Caribbean—who have lived here for many years, since Windrush, and have not bothered to get a passport or any documents and therefore have never become naturalised.
The Minister was very proactive in responding to my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, who talked about the possibility of bogus voluntary organisations being created to provide certificates to prove to the Home Office that people had done their active citizenship service. We need to be careful about that and not just put that provision through on a statutory instrument. We should consult the public and Parliament, and we should then come up with criteria of which we can all be proud when we invite people to become equal citizens with us in this country. The Minister has given similar assurances in the past, which we have accepted readily and gladly, and we want to see that happen in this case.
There is still much work to be done on this Bill, and I hope that it will be improved in Committee. I hope that the Minister stays true to his promise to be open to suggestions so that we have a robust system, as we all want, and so that people who come here legally are properly treated, and those who come illegally, who are not asylum seekers and have no right to be here, are removed. It must also be a fair system so that we can retain the values that have made us one of the greatest countries in the world.
5.48 pm
Mr. Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con): It is always a delight to follow the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee. He mentioned those who were born here who now wish to be naturalised and the requirements that they have to meet. Clause 41(3)(d) requires that a person has
“sufficient knowledge of the English, Welsh or Scottish Gaelic language”.
I am not sure that anybody coming to live in Wales or Scotland will have English and Scottish Gaelic or Welsh.
Another requirement is that a person
“has sufficient knowledge about life in the United Kingdom.”
I suspect that some people who were born in the UK would fail some of the questions asked of people who wish to come and live here. It is good to have such tests, and to expect people to integrate, to be able to communicate in the language of the country and to know about our customs and how things work, but it struck me as odd that we might be setting a much higher hurdle for those coming here than for those who happen to be born here. Perhaps we should consider setting such tests in schools, and ensuring that people can pass them.
Pete Wishart: The hon. Gentleman would have already failed that test. It is not Scottish “gay-lic” but Scottish Gaelic. I have taken the test—it is available on most of the social networking sites and I invite hon. Members to have a go; I failed. Perhaps it should come as a badge of honour for me, as a Scottish nationalist, to fail a Britishness test, but the test is very difficult. It would be worth while for hon. Members to have a go at it.
Mr. Evans: That says it all. My error would mean that I could not go and live in Scotland, and the hon. Gentleman’s error would mean that he should not really be here. Perhaps, if he accepts my part of the deal—we will see.
This is an important debate. Immigration is clearly high in the minds of a lot of people at the moment, particularly at a time of recession—no one has mentioned immigration yet. Immigration is always on people’s minds, but when the economy is booming it is less of a priority for a lot of people. Now, of course, there is a recession. Unemployment is high and it is growing. A lot of people look at immigration and see it as part of the problem. They think that they are unable to get jobs because so many people are coming here.
Let me return to the issue of the EU and the 10 countries that came in. Whereas Germany, France and the majority of the other countries had derogations to protect their economies, which allowed them to control who was coming in, as we have now done with Romania and—
Mr. Evans: And Bulgaria. We have derogations in those cases, and I still think that we should have had derogations with those 10 countries, too. That might at least have made it somewhat easier.
Keith Vaz: I am surprised at the hon. Gentleman for saying that. Does he not believe that since enlargement the arrival of eastern Europeans from Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic has helped to boost our economy? Since the downturn, many of them have returned. Those who have stayed have filled jobs that they want to fulfil.
Mr. Evans: I will come back to that point in a moment. I just think that we should have been on an even keel with all the other countries in the EU. There should have been some consistency. It does not take a rocket scientist to see that if we and one other country had no derogations, we would be the major recipients of people coming from those 10 countries. However, I shall say more about that in a while.
The Government have passed seven pieces of immigration legislation since they came to power. With that in mind, I want to express my disappointment that despite acknowledgment on both sides of the House and in another place that our immigration laws are already extremely complicated, the Home Secretary has produced yet another layer of proposals. Indeed, the former Immigration Minister, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr. Byrne), said:
“This complexity reduces the efficiency of decision-making processes, resulting in delay and the risk of mistakes.”
The principle, therefore, of a consolidatory or simplification Bill as proposed in July 2008 by the draft immigration and citizenship Bill was, I believe, welcomed. The Loyal Address made no mention of such a codifying Bill and so here we are today, wading through yet more supplementary legislation—the eighth time we have done so in the past 12 years.
I recognise that there are a variety of issues to discuss but, conscious of time, I shall limit myself to the proposals, or lack thereof, that cause me most concern. On immigration in general, we all need to recognise—particularly when we have EU and local authority elections coming up—that immigration should not be used as a tool by any political party just for party gain. I am clearly thinking about one particular party—the British National party—and about the UK Independence party to a lesser extent. I think that their views are not the best as far as a healthy economy is concerned, nor as far as people who wish to come and reside here legitimately are concerned. We should stress that. The debate about immigration must be sensible and grounded.
Kerry McCarthy: Will the hon. Gentleman join me in condemning UKIP for its policy of putting huge billboards in areas of quite high immigration—it certainly does so in my constituency—stating “Say no to unlimited immigration”? We certainly do not have unlimited immigration in the UK, and I can see that the only purpose is to stoke up resentment in those communities.
Mr. Evans: I know exactly what UKIP is doing, but I believe that the Government are partly responsible for not grasping the immigration problem earlier. That has given UKIP and the BNP an opportunity to use it as an argument against mass immigration into this country. If only the problem had been tackled years ago, I do not think that the attraction of those parties would be as high as we are led to believe in the national press.
There is no denying, as the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee has said, that immigration can be a boost to the economy, providing a highly skilled work force. We have seen that, in particular, with the Polish plumbers. Their skill is superb and people talk about them as a great asset to the country. Some people resent the fact that such workers have gone back to Poland or whatever country they came from. That was the difference in reaction between France and Britain. Britain was quite pleased, whereas France was not pleased about skilled workers coming into the country.
Keith Vaz: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way a second time. Of course, he will know that it was not just plumbers who came from Poland.
Mr. Evans: The tabloids used them as an example of what was happening. Clearly, a lot of other skilled people came from within the EU.
The Government estimate that there are up to 570,000 illegal immigrants in the UK. However, according to Migrationwatch UK a study by the London School of Economics in March 2009 suggested an estimate of more like 725,000, of whom 518,000 are based in London. Those figures prompt the question why on earth the Government have not included proposals to create an integrated border police capable of tackling this problem at source. That way, we would have sworn officers who could be recognised as such by the public. I would be interested to hear the Home Secretary’s reasoning against a proposal that seems to go hand in hand with the Government’s intention. The Government want to tighten up border security but do not want to be seen to use a Conservative initiative that would prove effective.
A border police force would have all the necessary powers to arrest, detain and prosecute offenders. Only such a fully integrated border police force will allow the development of specialist skills in fighting people trafficking, illegal immigration, and drug smuggling. Illegal immigrants, however, are part of a wider issue of population. The Office for National Statistics predicts that the population will increase by 4.4 million to 65 million by 2016 and reach 71 million by 2031. Immigration is expected to contribute some 47 per cent. of that growth. Is such growth acceptable and when will the Government wake up to the reality of the situation and institute plans that the Conservatives have suggested for annual limits on economic migration?
That aspect has been neatly summed up by the all-party group on balanced migration, which has stated:
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