Examination of Witness (Questions 1-19)
SIR ANDREW
GREEN
8 JULY 2008
Q1 Chairman: Sir Andrew, welcome to this
first session of the Select Committee's inquiry into the points-based
system. Can I refer everybody to the Register of Members' Interests,
where our interests are declared. In particular, can I declare
an interest: my wife is a solicitor and part-time judge. Sir Andrew,
welcome. Can I ask you a general question first of all because,
obviously, you are a key commentator on these issues. Do you think
we have too many immigrants in the United Kingdom?
Sir Andrew Green:
Chairman, first of all, thank you for your invitation. It is an
honour to be your first witness. I would like to make it clear
that we are not opposed to immigration as such. We believe that
a sensible level of immigration is a natural part of a global
economy, that is migration in both directions. We have no difficulty
with that and, of course, we have no difficulty with our existing
migrant communities. Where we do, I think, differ from the Government,
probably, is where this is leading. I think it follows from your
question if I say to you that we are now in a situation where
70% of our population growth is as a result of immigration; that
the Government's main forecast, the central forecast, is that
the population of England alone would increase by 10 million in
the next 25 years, of which seven million will be as a result
of immigration. That is seven times the population of Birmingham.
So, I think my answer to you, Chairman, is this. Our view is that
we cannot and should not continue down this course; that there
should be a substantial reduction in the level of immigration
to one which our society can absorb and which is acceptable to
the population at large. I am sure you will have seen many opinion
polls that suggest that 75% of the population want to see a significant
reduction in immigration. I hope that is an answer to your question.
Q2 Chairman: Thank you. The points-based
system, of course, is about skills. Do you think it is better
than the system that was in operation before? Would it mean that
people with real skills will come into this country in order to
deal with the shortages that obviously exist in certain sectors?
Sir Andrew Green: I think, if
you are going to evaluate a system, you have to evaluate it against
its purpose, and I do not want to repeat myself, but there seems
to be a vacuum at the heart of the Government's policy. They do
not know what scale of immigration they want and, therefore, it
is quite difficult to say whether this system or that system is
effective. That said, if you examine the detail (and I will not
go into the detail here) the two systems are remarkably similar.
What the Government have done is to add points, as it were, to
the requirements that existed previously, and that enables them,
as you know, to raise or lower the threshold and the aim of that
is to have some control over the numbers. The difficulty, from
our point of view, is that it only controls one part of the numbers
and it is, as it were, ex post facto—you only know
later how many people you have admitted under this or that scheme—and
one of our concerns about the points-based system (and we may
come on to it) is that there is a sort of automaticity about.
If that if you get the points you come in and it will not be until
later that the Government know how many applications they have
accepted. I draw your attention to the American experience, where
they have a broadly similar visa called H1B, which is a kind of
work permit, broadly speaking. They had 65,000 available and they
went on the first day, many of them to India, but not all. So
we could find very large numbers applying, and I think that is
something that the system and Parliament needs to be aware of.
Q3 Mrs Dean: A recent report by Sarah
Buttler Associates found that the UK ranked only 17 out of 20
global economies, in descending order, in terms of strictness
of their business migration policies. The same report concluded
that the points-based system would increase the strictness of
the UK's policy. Do you agree with that and is that not a welcome
development from the point of view of Migration Watch?
Sir Andrew Green: Yes, it would
be if it were so. I think it is a little early to judge, frankly.
A great deal depends on how it is administered. The devil, as
always, is in the detail and, of course, the detail is very important
to individuals, as you will almost certainly know. To give you
one example, you get points, as you know, for age, qualifications
and salary. A key element is how you assess the salary in a foreign
country. What kind of exchange rate do you use? I will not go
any further, but you can see the difficulties.
Q4 Mr Streeter: Going back to your
first answer for a second, Sir Andrew, you mentioned seven million
growth due to immigration. How many of those seven million are
due to children of people already here, or are you talking about
seven million extra people coming into the country?
Sir Andrew Green: I am talking
about seven million extra people. That is a very important question.
I am not talking about the children of the existing immigrant
community. What I am talking about is the projection of the Government
Actuary's Department. The way they do it is to look at what would
happen to the population on certain assumptions about immigration,
and then they subtract from that what would happen if there was
no immigration, and that is the difference that I am talking about.
Effectively, it is new immigrants and their children in a nutshell.
Q5 Mr Streeter: The Government set
up the Migration Advisory Committee to look at the issue of occupational
shortages. Do you have any comments about whether or not that
is the right committee to judge the ebb and flow of occupational
shortages and do you think it is sufficiently well resourced?
Sir Andrew Green: The chairman
of that committee gave evidence to the House of Lords, as you
may know, and he was very interesting. He said himself that the
whole concept of a shortage is (his word) rather a slippery one,
because he said that in a market system, as we know, the market
adjusts to shortages, wages go up, people are brought in to that
field, and so in a sense whether or not there is a shortage depends
on how long you are prepared to wait for the necessary people
to be drawn into that profession, and that depends, of course,
on what you are talking about. If you are talking about a doctor,
it is seven years; if it is something else, it might be two years;
so it is a slippery concept. It is the case that immigration is
not the answer to skill shortages—that is the view of the
CBI and I hope it is the view of the trade unions—but I
have not seen them say it, for the very reason that over time
you should be able to produce the people you need. That is not
to say that ad interim (in the interim period) you do not
need some people, but it is an interim thing and it should be
a short-term thing. Are the MAC the right people to do it? Yes,
why not. They are quite small, but then I think small organisations
are nearly always better.
Q6 Mr Winnick: You have painted,
not for the first time, Sir Andrew, a picture of continued mass
immigration into the United Kingdom. As far as the figures are
concerned, I think it is Dr Coleman who supplies most of the statistics.
Sir Andrew Green: No, it is the
Government Actuary's Department.
Q7 Mr Winnick: Yes, but you have
a Dr Colman involved?
Sir Andrew Green: We have a Professor
at Oxford, who is an Honorary Consultant, yes.
Q8 Mr Winnick: His name is?
Sir Andrew Green: David Coleman.
Q9 Mr Winnick: Thank you. How far
is the situation different in the UK to other advanced western
countries—France, Germany, Holland? Presumably in the last
30 or 40 years they have had the same amount of immigration?
Sir Andrew Green: That is a very
interesting question. There are two halves to that answer. One
is they are forecasting populations which are completely different.
In Germany, Italy and Spain, if there was no immigration, there
would be a significant fall in the population of the order of
15-25%. That is a completely different situation from ourselves,
where if we brought immigration into balance, which is what we
would like to see, we stabilise our population of 65 million.
That is not the case for other major European countries. They
face a totally different situation.
Q10 Mr Winnick: It does not quite,
if I may say so, Sir Andrew, answer the question. What I am saying
to you is, whatever may be the balance in population of the rest,
what we have witnessed in Britain, say, since 1945, 1948, whichever
year you want to use—shall we say post 1950—to a very
large extent, am I not right, this has been the situation in other
EU countries, certainly the leading ones?
Sir Andrew Green: That was the
second half of my answer. No, that is not quite right. The situation
in the UK is that there was no net immigration until 1985: more
people left than came until 1985. For the next 10 years net immigration
was of the order of 50,000. It is only in the last 10 years that
that has increased very substantially, and it is now 190,000 a
year on the Government's own numbers; so the whole pattern in
the UK has been very different. The present pattern is of a very
considerable increase, and when you look at the future, what the
Government Actuaries Department does, and these are their numbers,
not ours, of course, if you are going to talk about the future
population what you have to do is make to make an assumption about
future immigration, and you just take a flat line. So you say
your best guess is that in the coming year it will be 190,000—that
is the Government's present position, and that is what we base
our numbers on. Is that clear?
Chairman: Thank you.
Q11 Bob Russell: Sir Andrew, you
co-founded Migration Watch UK in 2001 and you are its chairman.
Can you tell us, please, how many members it has got, who elected
you chairman and when did that election take place?
Sir Andrew Green: I elected myself
chairman because I founded the organisation, and we started six
and a half years ago in December 2001 when we opened a website.
Q12 Bob Russell: How many members
do you have?
Sir Andrew Green: We do not have
any members. As a matter of policy, we have no members so there
is no risk of any particular group trying to take us over. We
have supporters, of course, who finance us. We are financed by
donations from the public and we have several thousand people
who donate to us.
Q13 Bob Russell: Do you have a constitution
which people can read? Do you have meetings that people can come
to?
Sir Andrew Green: We have a website
that you are very welcome to read. That is our main, if you like,
interface with the public.
Q14 Margaret Moran: Following that
point, could you say who your main sponsors are?
Sir Andrew Green: We have several
thousand donors who give us such money as we require, but I remind
you that we are a voluntary organisation and, therefore, we do
not need very large sums of money.
Q15 Margaret Moran: Could you provide
us with a list of your sponsors?
Sir Andrew Green: Absolutely not.
I do not know of any organisation or charity that does list its
donors. For a start, we do not have their permission. I have never
heard of anyone doing that.
Q16 Margaret Moran: I am sure, under
the charity rules, that most charities do indicate their main
sponsors.
Sir Andrew Green: First of all,
I do not believe they do, but, secondly, we are not a charity,
we are a private company.
Q17 Margaret Moran: You just referred
to yourselves as a charity?
Sir Andrew Green: No, we are a
private company limited by guarantee.
Q18 Margaret Moran: We have had lots
of evidence that there would be difficulty in relation to low-skilled
workers in particular sectors, particularly particular forms of
catering, Bangladeshi catering, for example, agriculture and health,
and that the points-based system might not help that. What is
your view of those arguments?
Sir Andrew Green: I think it is
important to distinguish here between short-term seasonal workers
and longer-term workers, and I think your question was about the
second. I would make three points about that, one about the economics,
another about principle and, thirdly, about the practicalities.
As far as the economics is concerned, this was considered by the
House of Lords Economics Committee, which, as you know, is a heavyweight
committee. They said that the argument that immigrants do the
jobs that locals cannot or will not do is fundamentally flawed.
That is a quote. It ignores, they said, the potential for higher
wages to draw in labour. So, that is the economic point which
they examined and they dismissed. As regards principle, do we
not have to ask ourselves whether it is right to import what,
without being offensive, you might call a kind of underclass of
foreign workers who are prepared to work in conditions that British
people are not prepared to accept? I am not at all sure that is
the right way to go. Then you have the question of whether their
children are prepared to do that kind of work, and usually you
find that they are not. So is it to be that we have a continuous
inflow of people working for conditions that Britons will not
accept? Lastly, the practical point, which is that access to cheap
labour of this kind, according to the House of Lords, reduces
employers' incentives to look at other options, particularly changing
production methods. They quoted evidence from the United States
tomato industry, from the Australian wine industry, where when
such cheap labour was not available they turned to different methods
of production. It is not always possible, but it is certainly
a point that needs to be considered. Finally, I think it is worth
bearing in mind that there is no such thing as cheap labour in
a welfare state. It is to the benefit of employers, of course,
but it is the taxpayer who picks up the bill for all the other
aspects, like heath, education, housing, and so on, to the extent
they use them. So I think we need to look very carefully at these
arguments. It tends to be special pleading. There may be cases
which do need careful examination, but the arguments, I would
suggest, both economic and practical and even in principle, are
quite heavily against it.
Q19 David Davies: Sir Andrew, why
do you think that a quota system for entry would be more effective
than targeting skills? How would that quota system ensure that
the skills that the UK requires are actually brought in?
Sir Andrew Green: That is an extremely
good question. I think that goes to the whole heart of the debate
actually. Can I in a couple of sentences, Chairman, go back to
first principles? I mentioned that immigration is not an answer
to skill shortages (and that is the CBI's view), so what we have
to do is to find some way to balance the relatively short-term,
but very important, requirements of industry against the longer-term
pressures on our society. If you have a quota, then you risk cutting
off people who we need. If you have targeting skills, then it
is hard to see how you can get this balance between the needs
of society and the needs of industry. That is why we have stressed
a very different approach which the committee might like to consider.
We would suggest that you distinguish between work and settlement.
At the moment anyone who comes here on a work permit can settle
after five years, more or less. Most applications are accepted.
What we would suggest is, instead of that, you say, "Okay,
work permit, valid for four years. After four years, you go home
or on to another country, you use the experience and the funds
that you gained in Britain for the benefit of your own country."
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