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6 Jan 2010 : Column 107WH—continued
Mr. Woolas: The hon. Gentleman is saying that if somebody arrives on the shore of the UK and claims asylum they should be sent back to France. Is that compatible with the Geneva convention? Does he think that the Geneva convention needs reform?
Mr. Hollobone: That is compatible with the Geneva convention and that always used to be the case. The problem with not applying these rules correctly is that asylum seekers are encouraged to chance their arm to come to these shores. That is why the French are all too happy for these people to live on the north coast of France, chancing their arm and jumping on the nearest lorry or ferry to get here. It is a humanitarian catastrophe that is the result of a weak, feeble-minded immigration policy. The tougher a nation is on such issues, the fairer and kinder it is.
Mr. Woolas: This is a good debate and the hon. Gentleman is giving way generously. I am not trying to score points; I am trying to get to the practicalities. I agree with his proposition that sometimes the kindest thing to do is to be tough. I have said that before and have been pilloried for saying it by members of the press who support the hon. Gentleman's party. But the reality is that Calais is an example of the UK having tough border control. Does the hon. Gentleman not agree with that?
Mr. Hollobone: Well, yes, it is good that we are stopping people crossing the channel, but sadly lots are still crossing it. If they were not, there would not be people on the north coast of France. If we were stopping people crossing the channel illegally, there would not be a camp on the north coast of France. [Hon. Members: "There is not."] Well, there are certainly lots of people hanging around the ports. Whether they are in a formal camp or not is of no particular concern to my constituents.
Damian Green: I agree with my hon. Friend that mostly the problem is that, across the world, Britain is regarded as having weakly defended borders. But there are also problems on the French side. I visited Calais fairly recently, where they have expensive pieces of kit that lorries have to drive through, with monitors that can see whether living bodies are inside. I asked the French operatives how effective they were and was told, "They're very effective. We catch several hundred people every month." I asked what happens to them and the operatives said that they are taken to the edge of the port and released to the police. I asked what the police then do with them and they said, "Oh, they let them go." It is not surprising that they keep trying. I was told that 70 per cent. are caught, so people just keep going until they are in a particular week's 30 per cent. That is what happens.
Mr. Hollobone: I do not know which international body is responsible for enforcing the Geneva convention-presumably it is the United Nations. The Secretary-General of the UN ought to have a word with the President of France about why so many people are being left in limbo in that country.
I can see why people want to come to our shores: we are an English-speaking nation and we are prosperous. But my constituents are concerned that, at a time when we are sending our young men and women to die in
Afghanistan in defence of ours and other people's freedoms, refugees are making their way halfway across the world to claim asylum in this country from the very country that we are trying to sort out.
Philip Davies: My hon. Friend is right about people's motivation and why they might want to come to Britain, but would he add to his list another motivation, which is that many of them know that if they get here the chances of their ever being removed are slim? Once they are in they are in, which is why they want to get to the UK.
Mr. Hollobone: My hon. Friend is right. One of the big magnets is London. It may surprise lots of people to learn that London is the biggest city in Europe and the most cosmopolitan city in the world. Some 40 per cent. of the population in Greater London were born overseas. It is a huge magnet for illegal immigration. There are many good things about the diverse population in our capital city, but there are many bad things as well, one of which is the large number of illegal immigrants here who attract further illegal immigrants from other countries.
It is a disgrace to the European Union that so many refugees from across the world are making their way across countries in the EU to try to claim asylum in the UK.
Mr. Woolas: I agree with the hon. Gentleman's point: the pull factor is a real problem. Diaspora communities attract people. Illegal operatives and agents charge money and promise people things. However, France has more asylum claims than the UK does. This is a global or a western problem, not just a UK problem. I think that the hon. Gentleman agrees with that point.
Mr. Hollobone: I am not particularly concerned about how many asylum claims France has. It needs to speak to its European partners about that. But clearly there is a problem with the external border of the EU if so many are coming in in the first place.
Britain is almost the last country that people can get to, apart from the Republic of Ireland, if they are coming from Africa or Asia, and they will have had to cross so many other safe countries before they get here. So in a way France's problem is a bit like ours, and the EU countries closer to the external border on the east and the south need to do more about it. I strongly suspect that Spain, through the Canaries, Italy, Malta, Greece and other countries are not being tough enough on the people coming across the Mediterranean.
Mr. Woolas: The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. In fact, within the EU the Italians are criticised the most for being the toughest.
Mr. Hollobone: That is not a complaint that I would make, because lots of people who pass through Italy clearly end up on our shores.
Mr. Andrew Turner: Will my hon. Friend give me some information? Is not the point that if people come to this country, there are no circumstances in which they can claim asylum legally, except for those who have come in a boat from an unknown source? Nobody else who comes can legally claim asylum.
Mr. Hollobone: I would welcome the Minister's clarification on that issue.
Mr. Woolas: That is an important point. I should say, factually-for information, not to make a point-that until 2006 17 per cent. of asylum claims within the EU member states were duplicate claims: people had claimed in Greece and Ireland, for example, or France and Germany. The Dublin agreement and Dublin II allow us to return people to the country of first claim. The problem with that is that it could be argued that it encourages routes. The truth is that there are different routes within the EU. For example, Germany is a destination for people from some colonial countries, as are Denmark, Sweden, the UK and France, so this is a European Union problem. But I respect that point.
Mr. Hollobone: I am grateful to the Minister for that most helpful intervention.
Perhaps I should bring us back on track. Although asylum is an important issue for all hon. Members and our constituents, the number of asylum claims is small compared with immigration as a whole. I believe that asylum claims are now running at a rate of about 30,000 a year, which is only 10 per cent. of net foreign migration. The big problem in this country is legal immigration, which brings us back to the population projections of 70 million.
I understand that a migrant now arrives on our shores every minute. We must build a new home every six minutes for new migrants. Immigration will add 7 million to the population of England in the next 15 to 20 years, which is seven times the population of Birmingham. Immigration directly added a million people to the UK's population in the years 2003 to 2007. There was a net inflow of 2.3 million people to the UK between 1991 and 2006, and 8 per cent. came from the new east European members of the EU.
I differ from my party in not agreeing with the free movement of people across EU borders. Effectively, we have, by agreement of our Government, uncontrolled immigration within the EU. The Government told us that there would be 13,000 new arrivals from the new entrant eastern European EU countries, but the figure was approaching 1 million at its peak-perhaps the Minister will confirm what the figure was-which was a world apart from the 13,000 that we were told about, and it has placed huge strain on local infrastructure.
Mr. Stewart Jackson: My hon. Friend touches on an important point about EU migration. Is it not a disgrace that the Government took four years to establish a Migration Impact Forum to look at the impact of migration on housing, policing, the health service and education, when dozens of local authorities, including my own in Peterborough, were advising them that they simply could not discharge their responsibilities with regard to those public services?
Mr. Hollobone: My hon. Friend is right-it is an absolute disgrace. The issue has been completely mismanaged. While other major EU countries took up their rights to defer migration from the new EU entrant countries, Britain deliberately did not. That was a major policy error, given the difference between the Government's estimate of 13,000 and the 1 million people who actually came here.
Mr. Woolas: The hon. Gentleman argued 10 minutes ago that Spain had to give an amnesty because of the large numbers of immigrants. What is his point?
Mr. Hollobone: My point was that Spain gave an amnesty to illegal immigrants who were already in the country but it at least had the good sense to block new arrivals from the new east European entrant countries, while Britain-almost alone-did not. There will be frightening consequences for this country should Turkey become a member of the EU and should the UK Government at the time not defer the arrival into this country of what could be millions of Turkish people.
I have nothing against Polish people, people from other east European countries or people from Turkey, but this country simply cannot cope with the number of people arriving here all at one time. An article in the Daily Mail on 22 December said that more than one immigrant a minute is registering with a GP for free health care. It said:
"Analysis of NHS research shows that 605,000 people who arrived from overseas registered with a doctor in England and Wales last year-up by 50 per cent. in only seven years.
Campaigners say this places a significant 'strain' on services and could force patients to wait longer for appointments and treatment.
While the number of GPs has increased over the past seven years it has not kept pace with the increase in registrations."
That is causing genuine problems for well-meaning GPs, who are having to spend far longer on consultant episodes with new patients, often because of language difficulties. They are having to draw diagrams to explain medical conditions because they cannot converse in English with patients.
Mr. Stewart Jackson: On policing, half the people processed through the custody suite at Thorpe Wood police station in Peterborough do not speak English. It takes an enormous amount of time to process people whose first language is Lithuanian or Polish, and that has a massive impact on front-line policing. Does my hon. Friend, like me, also deprecate the fact that the Government specifically opted out of the sharing of criminal records, which seven other EU countries introduced post-2004? The Government set their face against that, which means that our law enforcement agencies have their hands tied behind their back. [Interruption.] I am glad that the Minister thinks that is amusing.
Mr. Woolas: That is an important point, but I simply reflect on the fact that the hon. Gentleman's local authority and others in his part of the country lobbied me to increase the seasonal agricultural workers scheme.
Mr. Stewart Jackson: It is not true.
Mr. Woolas: Well, I had a debate in this hall-it happened to be with Conservative Members, but they were genuinely representing their constituents-on how to cope with the skills shortage. I do not deny the important points that the hon. Gentleman makes about the impact of migration, but the Migration Impact Forum was set up after representations from areas such as his.
Mr. Hollobone: There have been lots of problems as a result of lots of people from eastern European coming here all at once. One example involves motor vehicles. Someone who drives their motor car over to this country from Poland is allowed to run it on the roads for six months before being required to take it for an MOT to ensure that it meets British standards. As far as I can tell from questions that I have asked in the House, there is no effective monitoring of the time that people take to put their cars through an MOT. I strongly suspect that tens of thousands of effectively illegal motor vehicles from eastern Europe, which have not had the required MOT, are being driven on British streets. That is just one example of the problem. If we had a controlled migration system, we could have tackled the issue in a sensible and controlled way. Given that we effectively flung open our borders to all and sundry from eastern Europe, however, the danger posed by vehicles on British roads has increased.
The Government are not taking the population projections of up to 70 million seriously; indeed, as we have heard today, they do not believe them. However, all sorts of statistics show the effect on our country. The Department for Transport's 2008 road transport forecast predicts a one-third increase in vehicle traffic by 2025. Quite reasonably, I asked the Minister of State, Department for Transport, how much of that increase was driven by unacceptably high levels of immigration. His reply on the Floor of the House was:
"I have seen lots of tenuous causal links, although not one involving immigration"-[Official Report, 25 June 2009; Vol. 494, c. 932.]
If important Departments of State such as the Department for Transport are not taking the impact of immigration seriously, the country will be heading for the buffers. We already know that our roads are far too congested. On many routes on our rail network, there is often only standing room at peak times. The idea that our roads can absorb a one-third increase in traffic by 2025 fills me with absolute horror-I have no idea how on earth this country will absorb that traffic. If the 70 million estimate is wrong-if it is on the downside, and the number is actually higher-we are heading for even more trouble.
Immigration is an important concern for my constituents, as I am sure it is for many constituents around the country. Those of us who express concerns about immigration are not racist and we will have our say because it is important that the issue is taken up by mainstream politicians; if it is not, the extremists will have their day.
I very much support the efforts of the all-party group on balanced migration, because we must tackle the issue of net immigration. We must cut it by 75 per cent., from 168,000 a year to 40,000 a year. The Government should have an explicit and reasoned target for net immigration, as recommended by the House of Lords, and they should adjust their immigration policies in line with that objective.
That mention of the House of Lords brings me to the economic benefit of immigration. In a major report in April 2008, the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee said,
"we have found no evidence for the argument, made by the Government, business and many others, that net immigration-immigration minus emigration-generates significant economic
benefits for the existing UK population...The overall fiscal impact of immigration is likely to be small, though this masks significant variations across different immigrant groups."
I simply do not accept the Government's argument that immigration is of net economic benefit to our country. I forecast that there will be grave problems for England and the United Kingdom unless this Government or the next Government take balanced migration seriously. If they do not, we will be heading for an unsustainable population of 70 million.
3.19 pm
Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD): I shall be brief, Mr. Cummings.
John Cummings (in the Chair): I intend to call hon. Members to make the winding-up speeches at half past the hour.
Lorely Burt: In that case, I shall do my best to share the time equitably.
As for the concerns of the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone) and those expressed by his constituents when he meets them on the doorstep, the situation in Solihull is very similar. In Solihull, as in Kettering, the number of ethnic minority people is low-about 8 per cent. However, the perception in this country is damaging. Many people whom I speak to on the doorstep see the country as full-bursting to the seams, with immigrants coming and taking jobs and social housing and pushing the indigenous whites to the back of the queue for health, housing and other services. We ignore that perception at our peril. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that that is the elephant in the room.
We cannot ignore the perceptions of the people of the United Kingdom. Much of what they believe is not factually accurate. Tabloid newspapers-I name and shame the Daily Mail-feed on people's worst fears and paint a picture that is so exaggerated that the vast majority of people in Parliament could not, I am sure, recognise it. However, it is a real fear, and so we must address it and do whatever is necessary to reassure the British people that that is not the situation. We must address the real concerns, many of which the hon. Gentleman has outlined today.
We have had quite a discussion about Europe. More British people work in other parts of Europe than there are Europeans in the United Kingdom, but most people, certainly in the west midlands, where I come from, see immigrants as people with a different skin colour from theirs. In the west midlands, they are seen as mostly emanating from the Indian subcontinent. The Government have made a number of mistakes, some of which were outlined by the hon. Gentleman, but the first was made by a Conservative Government, when the then Mrs. Thatcher abolished exit checks. That situation was not redressed by the Labour Government. How can we know how many people we have here when we do not count them out? The hon. Gentleman mentioned the prediction of 52,000 people coming over four years when the EU eastern European borders were opened. The actual figure was 766,000. I wonder whether that was the worst Government forecast in history. [Interruption.] It must be close.
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