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6 Jan 2010 : Column 113WH—continued
Many areas have been left without resources. That has fuelled the sense of resentment of indigenous white people, and we need to deal with that where resources
are scarce. We need to look at where the people are going and whether those are the appropriate places for them. We need to reintroduce exit checks, first and foremost, and to know who is actually here. We need hard-headed assessments of need in different regions and different parts of the economy. In the south, there is not even enough water, but areas such as Scotland need more migrants. We would propose a points system to match the need with the area. New migrants should be permitted to settle only in the appropriate areas, as opposed to congregating in areas such as Sparkhill in Birmingham, where it is difficult even to see a white face as one goes through.
We also need to reassert control over our borders, with a national border force with police powers of arrest. We should not join the EU open borders scheme, but we should co-operate on cross-border crime across the EU. We need more employment checks on rogue employers. In nearly 12 years up to 2008, there were only 114 such prosecutions, and certainty of detection in all areas of crime is the highest guarantee of compliance with the law. Often, the lack not of rules, but of enforcement causes disregard of the rules and laws of this country. Immigrants must tolerate and respect British values, which is why a reduction in the availability of language lessons is a short-sighted and mean-spirited action by the Government. The numbers were reduced by 39 per cent. between 2005-06 and 2006-07.
The Conservative policy of annual immigration limits is not, however, the answer, because economies are flexible and needs vary in unplanned ways. If the set level was reached, would the Conservatives block Robinho from joining Manchester City?
Lorely Burt: I hear mutterings from a sedentary position that that might not be such a bad thing.
Would the Conservatives stop Japanese sushi chefs from coming over, bringing their skills and contributing to the diversity of the British restaurant industry? An amnesty for illegal immigrants, as proposed by Boris Johnson, is not the answer either, and the hon. Member for Kettering has already said that it has been tried in southern Europe and it merely encourages more migrants to come. The Liberal Democrats would instead propose a tough, earned route to citizenship, only for those who have been here 10 years, who make amends through community service and who speak English. They would be given a work permit for two years before citizenship was awarded.
The Government's plan to deport all illegals-the median number estimated in a London School of Economics study was 720,000-would cost £8 billion. We cannot afford that sort of figure in these times. The difficulties of implementation have already been discussed at length. I wonder whether the Minister can give us a more sensible plan, because, my goodness me, we need it.
3.28 pm
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD):
I congratulate the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone) on securing the debate. I agree with him on at least one point: we should certainly not be scared of discussing this matter. It is not to anyone's
benefit to pretend that it is not an issue. We need to discuss the benefits and disbenefits of immigration in an open and frank manner, because we will all benefit from that and it will help to put down the extremist parties who want to use it to their advantage.
What is important about the debate is the way in which we conduct it and the tone that we use. A couple of comments made by hon. Members fell into the category of being unhelpful in tone, such as the remark by the hon. Member for Kettering that we have flung open our borders to all and sundry. He cannot substantiate that statement, and it is clear that we have not thrown them open to all and sundry. The hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr. Jackson) referred to the fact that half the people in police custody in his area do not speak English. That might be something that he can substantiate statistically, or it could be a throwaway comment with no factual basis.
Mr. Stewart Jackson: I am happy to disabuse the hon. Gentleman of the notion that I made up that fact. It is contained in a periodical report by the Cambridgeshire constabulary as part of its ongoing campaign for better funding from the Government to deal with these issues-it is a matter of public record.
Tom Brake: I welcome the fact that I have given the hon. Gentleman the opportunity to confirm that he can prove that point. However, I am afraid that the hon. Member for Kettering cannot prove that we have opened our borders to all and sundry.
Tom Brake: I look forward to hearing his proof.
Mr. Hollobone: Which people from Poland are not allowed to come to the United Kingdom?
Tom Brake: We could get into a long discussion about that. Presumably, "all and sundry" would apply to people from all over the world, not just to the Polish people to whom the hon. Gentleman refers. My point is that we must be careful about the terms and tone that we use so that we have an open and frank debate that is based on fact, rather than people's perceptions-or, occasionally, their prejudices.
Immigration is clearly an issue, however. We have heard lots of statistics, but it would be useful to cite other figures in this debate-perhaps the Minister will refer to them. We often believe that immigration is a problem for the UK alone, but it would be interesting if the Minister referred, for example, to the number of asylum seekers, refugees and illegal immigrants in South Africa, Chad and Kenya.
Mr. Andrew Turner: We are not in charge of them.
Tom Brake:
I accept that, but it is helpful to have such facts and figures in the public domain so that the British public can appreciate that immigration is an issue across the world and not just something that the UK-the fourth richest country in the world-has to deal with. It
is often something that very poor countries have to deal with, to a much greater extent and at much greater cost than we do.
My hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) spoke about Britons who work in the EU, and there are more Britons living abroad than there are foreigners living in the United Kingdom. One in 10 British nationals lives abroad for part of or all the year-that is 6 million people, including about 1 million pensioners. When debating whether there should be tighter restrictions in the EU, for example, or whether we are being too generous, perhaps we should talk to Spanish politicians about how generous the Spaniards are towards those British pensioners who retire to the Costa del Sol and use the country's excellent health services. Clearly, there is a quid pro quo. The UK receives many immigrants from other EU countries, which puts pressure on our system. Equally, however, there are other European Union countries that are not as enamoured as we feel that they should be about receiving British citizens who make use of their services. This cuts both ways, so it would be useful to have some of those facts in this debate.
Public perception is obviously that immigration is an issue. A recent poll found that more than 60 per cent. of the population believed that there were too many immigrants living in Britain. What can we do to address that? A degree of incompetence and underinvestment in the system has threatened the historically progressive approach that we in this country have had to immigration. It is not the Labour party that is responsible for that, but rather parties or Governments of the past. Before I was elected in 1997, there was a Conservative Government. I remember seeing asylum seekers in my surgery who had been trying to get their cases dealt with for eight, nine or 10 years. There is a historical legacy on immigration and asylum that recent Governments have failed to address.
I am fortunate in that my hon. Friend has outlined all the Liberal Democrat policies that have been proposed to tackle problems involving immigration, such as exit controls, a national border force and a regional points-based system. The only initiative that she did not mention was that of ensuring that employers pay more for permits to employ immigrant workers coming to the UK, so that that money can be used to train British workers to do the jobs that those immigrants have taken.
Before I conclude, I will touch briefly on the issue of amnesty. There is clearly a split within the Conservative party on that issue. Research conducted by Boris Johnson identified that there were about 750,000 irregular migrants in London. It is our view that under certain strictly controlled circumstances, as outlined by my hon. Friend, there is a case for dealing with those people in a compassionate way. How many Labour and Conservative Members have campaigned publically in their local papers in support of families in their constituencies who might have been in an irregular position but perhaps have children at local schools? Perhaps an exception should be made in such circumstances. Perhaps an amnesty could apply to a particular individual or family. We must be compassionate if there are strict controls in place, such as a 10-year period, no criminal record, the ability to speak English and so on.
I shall conclude on that point to allow the official Opposition spokesman to make his remarks. I believe that it is possible to have a fair and firm immigration
policy that is beneficial to the country as a whole, and we are moving slowly in that direction. We should not be afraid of saying that immigration provides benefits to the UK, providing that it takes place in a controlled manner.
3.36 pm
Damian Green (Ashford) (Con): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) for sitting down a little early. As he mentioned, a lot has been said today, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone) on securing this debate on what we all agree is an important topic. I believe-as I know my hon. Friend believes-that the country needs a significant change in policy.
I would like to correct one factual error. Things have been said with which some of us agree and others disagree, but the factual error was made when the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) repeated the Government's canard that all exit controls were taken off by the Conservative Government. In fact, the main exit controls were taken off in 1998 by the current Government. Some controls were taken off in 1994, but the final abolition of exit controls was in 1998 under this Government. I know that the Minister dislikes me pointing out that fact, but I feel the need to do so.
A lot of the good, detailed debate between my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering and the Minister attempted to establish what lies at the root of the projection of a population of 70 million in 20 years' time. At the root of that projection lies the sheer scale of the rate of change in our population over the past decade. The current Government's immigration policy has seen the largest and most sustained rise in immigration in the UK's history. There has been a fivefold increase in the 10 years between 1997-when this Government came to power-and 2007. Even after that, our most recent figures show that 512,000 people came to the UK as immigrants in the year ending December 2008. That is a pretty small change from the 527,000 from the year ending December 2007. As my hon. Friend pointed out, the sheer scale of those numbers puts pressure on the public services. We have heard about GPs, police and housing, which are vital public services that lie at the core of what many people-particularly the most disadvantaged-demand from the political system. When people feel that they are not getting a decent service in those essential public services, they are turned off from mainstream politics, and that is what lies at the root of the problems. It is about the scale of change.
It is also worth noting that grants of settlement-those who are staying here permanently-rose by 19 per cent. between 2007 and 2008 from just under 125,000 to 149,000. That suggests that the pressure on public resources imposed by these high immigration numbers will be permanent. The problem with the solution that the Minister is no doubt about to commend to us-the points-based system-is that it does not work without other measures, which need to be introduced, not least because the immigration system itself is still in chaos.
Over the years, we have seen a series of Home Office scandals. The latest is the student visa scandal. For many years, the Minister's predecessors-I will exempt him from this because he has taken some action, but for many years the Government ignored warnings about
abuse of the student visa system, and the consequence was tens of thousands of bogus students in the UK and hundreds of unregulated colleges providing student visas but little education. That has been extremely dangerous, as we have seen recently, but it has also been a significant contributor to the collapse of public confidence in our immigration system.
Mr. Stewart Jackson: What does my hon. Friend make of the comments of Andrew Neather, the former speechwriter to the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair? Andrew Neather let the cat out of the bag in the media a few weeks ago by saying that the policy of uncontrolled immigration was in fact a systematic and pre-planned policy to teach the right a lesson, rather than some accident that happened to this Government.
Damian Green: As my hon. Friend can imagine, I was fascinated by those comments. I do not know whether the long-term really serious policy failure by this Government was a result of a cock-up-I normally subscribe to cock-up rather than conspiracy theories-or whether, as Mr. Neather said, it was a conspiracy from the start. Only those who were there at the time can answer that. Either way, it has been a disaster for this country. To some extent, it is interesting historically, but in the time available, I do not particularly want to go into the history, not least because, bringing this right up to date, the current Home Secretary is the first in a long line of Labour Home Secretaries to begin to show welcome signs of admitting that we have had a disastrous decade in immigration policy. He says:
"I accept that governments of both persuasions, including this one, have been maladroit"-
"in their handling of this issue".
In an interview with the New Statesman, he described the Conservative party as having a
"decent, centre-ground debate on immigration"
and he said that debate on a migration limit was "legitimate". That is the first time any Labour Home Secretary has admitted that.
I urge the Minister today, in this new phase of the Government groping towards an honest assessment of their immigration policy, to go further and admit openly that significant mistakes-really serious mistakes-have been made in the past 10 years on immigration.
There are those who argue that simply the act of having a big national debate about immigration will somehow solve the problem of political extremism. I do not agree, because I think that what is needed to lance this boil is a change in policy, so that the British people can see that immigration is once again under control and therefore not a source of significant worry to many of them.
The history of the past 60 years tells us that that is possible. Immigration has moved up and down the league table of political salience. In eras such as the 1980s and '90s, when broadly speaking it was under control, it was not seen as a difficult and contentious issue at the top of the political agenda in the way it certainly is now and it certainly was in the '60s and '70s, so we should not despair about the impossibility of having a successful immigration policy. This country has within living memory had successful immigration
policies. What is clear is that we cannot go on like this. We need a change in immigration policy, and this is the year for change, so let me set out what a Conservative Government will do if we are given the chance.
We believe that Britain can benefit from immigration, from attracting the brightest and the best from around the world to this country, but we do not think that we benefit from uncontrolled immigration. We want to see net migration running at the levels of the 1990s-tens of thousands, rather than the hundreds of thousands that we have had in recent years-and we have developed a range of policies to enable us to achieve that. Those include: placing an annual limit on non-EU economic migration; preventing illegal immigration through the creation of a national border police force-I was delighted to be reminded that the Liberal Democrats support that-and reducing the numbers of what are called family reunions through an English language requirement before people come to this country to get married.
Let me briefly run through each area of policy, because they will all be needed to reduce the numbers and establish control. I shall start with legal economic migration. That area of policy has several key elements. As I said, we need to set an annual limit on non-EU immigration according to labour market needs. We should impose transitional arrangements on any new EU entrants.
Damian Green: If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I have only a few more minutes.
We are not being wise after the event. The Conservative party said to the Government before the A8 countries joined the EU that we should have transitional arrangements, just as all the other big western European economies did at the time. The Germans, the French and the Spanish established transitional arrangements. The result of that was of course that far more people came to this country, because this was the only labour market opened to them.
This is outside the scope of this debate, but of course we need to reform our welfare system and skills training for British workers, because if we are to limit, in particular, unskilled people coming to this country, we need to ensure that at all levels the skills necessary in the British work force are there in a way that they are not at the moment. I am sorry; I cannot leave my old friend looking forlorn, so I shall give way to him.
Mr. Turner: I intended to ask my hon. Friend about another issue-immigration from the EU. Although we have to provide for those who wish to work here, does he accept that some people are hanging around and trying to find work beyond the 31 days to which they are supposed to restrict themselves?
Damian Green: I dare say that some are. There are a number of problems and there is clearly a wider issue of benefit claiming across borders within the EU, which is done by British citizens as well. I recognise that that is a problem, but what we can control is the numbers coming from outside the EU and we can have the transitional arrangements within the EU, which in terms of that economic migration are what are needed to bring us down to levels that people will find acceptable.
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