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6 Jan 2010 : Column 119WH—continued
As has been said by many, we need to be much better at stopping illegal immigration as well, so we would set up a border police force that would not only crack down on organised immigration crime but, in particular, enforce laws on illegal employment. One of the often unsaid reasons why Britain is such a magnet for illegal immigration is that around the world, it is believed that it is easier to get and keep an illegal job in this country than it is in most other western European countries-and the reason why people believe that is that it is true. We are not good enough at cracking down on illegal employment, and one of the roles of a border police force would be to do precisely that.
The force would also have the extremely important job of combating more effectively than we do now the modern slave trade that is human trafficking. I am conscious that the Government have taken action on that. There is nothing between us on that. We all want to be more effective at fighting it.
We also need to do better at promoting integration among those who come here to settle. Again, we have a range of proposals. We would introduce an English language requirement to ensure better integration. We would want to tighten the family reunion rules. Again, that is outside the narrow scope of this debate, but we think that devolving power and funding to local authorities will enable them to take more decisions about their local communities. That will allow them to identify much more effectively the individual problems of integration that many hon. Members have mentioned.
The biggest of the measures will be the English language test. In its interim report, the Government's own commission on integration and cohesion stated:
"The most commonly identified barrier to 'being English' in our polling was not speaking English-with 60 per cent. of respondents identifying language as a key issue."
Figures show that not having proficiency in English results in lower wages and higher chances of being unemployed, and that deprivation tends to go from generation to generation. Everyone coming to this country should espouse the core values of our society. We will have an English language test for spouses to ensure that only those with a reasonable command of English can come here to get married.
There are measures we need to take on economic migration, on illegal immigration and on cohesion, but above all, we need to get control of the numbers to reassure people. I hope that the measures I have briefly set out reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering and others that a Conservative Government would make significant radical changes to how this country deals with immigration, with the aim of establishing better controls and greater confidence in the system, thereby capturing the economic, as well as the social, benefits of immigration, while reducing pressures on our public services, which too often cause tension between communities.
In commending my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering for securing this debate, I say that getting immigration right is one of the hugely important tasks facing any incoming Government after the next election.
3.51 pm
The Minister for Borders and Immigration (Mr. Phil Woolas):
Thank you for your chairmanship of this extremely important debate, Mr. Cummings. Congratulations to
the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone) on securing the debate. Its title, "Immigration Control", filled me with horror because it covers such a broad range of issues, but the hon. Gentleman has been very specific. I am grateful to hon. Members for the way in which the debate has been conducted.
Let me say from the start that I have never said that anybody who raises the issue of immigration should be accused of racism. My primary strategic objective when I took this job was to separate the debate on immigration from ethnicity, and I told the Prime Minister that. The issue has bedevilled this country for 30 or 40 years, but I believe that we have achieved that separation. I say that clearly and on a non-partisan basis.
The hon. Member for Kettering raised important points that I want to address. The hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) said that this is a real issue on doorsteps. I do not see this as something about which we have to persuade the public that they are wrong. As the hon. Lady said, we have to give them the facts and put forward our arguments.
I want to start with the matter of the 70 million. I have said on the record, and have been backed by the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister, that our policies are reducing net migration and that is a deliberate policy. Let us establish where the 70 million figure comes from. It is an extrapolation of net population, which is different from net migration. Population is a function of birth and death rates, as well as net migration. In the Office for National Statistics's own words, it is not a forecast. It is an extrapolation from previous years' net migration. The years chosen were the calendar years 2006, 2007 and 2008, which saw the significant increase in migration to this country from accession countries, particularly Poland-what the hon. Member for Kettering was complaining about. It is unfair to extrapolate from the experience of those three years and say that that is a realistic forecast of what our population will be in 2030. Incidentally, the ONS put that figure back from 2029 as the prospect of it diminishes.
Governments cannot control birth and death rates, and I do not think that the hon. Gentleman was suggesting that they should. That is not his policy; he is against the nanny state and, as far as I know, he is against euthanasia and compulsory birth control. It is very revealing that part of the increase in net population is a result of the birth rate of previous immigrants. What is his policy to deal with that? History shows that the birth rate among migrant communities diminishes over the years. That has been true of Irish migrants and other populations.
I do not accept that the 70 million is a forecast. I got into a lot of hot water a year ago when I controversially said in my interview in The Times that Government policy was that we would not allow the population to reach 70 million, as far as it is possible to prevent that through migration policies. I accept and agree with the hon. Gentleman's premise but I disagree with him on the validity of his fears.
As the Home Secretary pointed out, previous population projections-extrapolations, not forecasts-have been wholly wrong. In 1965, the population in 2000 was anticipated to be 76 million, based on an extrapolation from previous periods. In fact, attempts by Governments of both persuasions to control migration, such as the 1961 Bill that led to the Commonwealth Immigrants
Act 1962, the Immigration Act 1971 and the British Nationality Act 1981, have led to increases in net migration because of the "closing down sale" phenomena.
In the brief time that I have available I shall turn to policy issues. I think there is much more agreement among the parties than the public debate perhaps recognises. The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) spoke very well for the Liberal Democrats, as did the hon. Member for Solihull. He accepted the case for controlled migration within the context of the net benefit to our country of immigrants. I agree with him on that point, as I believe does the hon. Member for Kettering, and I do not think there is much between us but I disagree with the idea of a cap. We know, following the debate at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacturer and Commerce, that the figure would be in the tens of thousands. I think that the cap is only on the tier 1 and tier 2; that arbitrary figure is not on general migration.
We should bear in mind that the ONS definition of a migrant is somebody who stays in this country for 12 months or more. Interestingly, the biggest single group of immigrants into this country in 2008, according to the ONS definition, were returning British people-85,000, which is more than any other nationality. They are defined as immigrants. Within that figure are overseas students. Many Members, on both sides of the House, put me under intense pressure not to restrict tier 4 immigration. I hope that those Members support the hon. Gentleman's policy but I suspect that they will not.
It is not a simple issue. A key policy point in the press release from the cross-party group on balanced migration is that we need to end the assumed automatic jump from presence in our country to settlement. That is a key policy issue that the Government and the official Opposition support, and it is what we are intent on doing. The points-based system is a huge shift forward in achieving that. There have been teething troubles, which I recognise.
On the marriage proposals and the English language test, I was one of the first politicians to suggest that English language teaching rather than translation services should be the priority. I said that in 2001 and I was pilloried by all sides and accused of being a racist. There is now a competition to see how much we can spend on English language lessons. The 39 per cent. reduction mentioned by the hon. Member for Solihull is on NVQ work-related English language teaching; the overall budget for English language teaching has gone up.
The hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) mentioned marriage policy. We accept that there should be a basic English language requirement. He and I debated that in the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill Committee. The issue of student visas has also been raised. We have introduced tier 4 and closed around 2,000 bogus colleges, but there is a cat and mouse game, which we are addressing.
My basic point in response to the debate, and I thank the hon. Member for Kettering for securing it, is that controlled migration is necessary, beneficial to the country and provides the public with the reassurance that the hon. Member for Solihull was concerned about, but the devil is in the detail. The measures that we have put forward have brought about the biggest shake-up in migration controls since the exit control changes in 1994 or 1997. The fact is that this country has never had
as strong migration controls at its borders as it has now. That is recognised in the debate in the United States, where the call from all sides of Congress and the Senate is, "Let's do what the Brits are doing." That is good advice, Mr. Cummings.
West Yorkshire Police (Funding)
4 pm
Mr. Paul Truswell (Pudsey) (Lab): It is a pleasure, Mr. Cummings, to serve under your watchful eye.
Hon. Members are often accused of special pleading in such debates, but I believe that what I am about to say does not amount to special pleading. All that I ask my hon. Friend the Minister and his Home Office colleagues to do is to fund West Yorkshire to the extent suggested by their funding formula. Progress made with local policing in West Yorkshire, particularly in my constituency, has been phenomenal during my time as an MP, which goes back to 1997.
At one time-my right hon. Friend the right hon. Member for Leeds, West (John Battle) will echo this-our contact with constituents was much more to do with the unsatisfactory responses and attitude of our local police force than with the crimes being suffered by the community. Today, although challenges remain and criticisms continue, they are few and far between compared with those of the earlier period. The no-can-do mentality that characterised the previous era has been almost totally reversed.
It is a tribute to Colin Cramphorn, the late chief constable of West Yorkshire, and his extremely able successor, Sir Norman Bettison, that the development of neighbourhood policing has been driven forward so effectively. They worked in concert with the police authority, under the chairmanship of Mark Burns-Williamson. It is always difficult when naming names because one invariably misses some, but many individuals have helped to translate neighbourhood policing into a reality. They include people such as Chief Superintendent Ian Whitehouse, the divisional commander, and his two predecessors, Howard Crowther and Ian Levitt. I also single out some of the neighbourhood police team inspectors-Tom Horner, Simon Hepworth, Richard Coldwell and Richard Cawkwell-and their immediate superiors, Chief Inspectors Paul Money and Elizabeth Belton. I am sure that I have missed some names, but I have mentioned the most recent incumbents and those with whom I work.
Substantial real-terms increases in Government funding for the police have played a huge part in West Yorkshire's success, and we have seen tremendous improvements in my constituency. Over the past seven years or so, acquisitive crime has fallen by something like 35 per cent. That includes burglary and robbery, and crimes such as the theft of motor vehicles for which the figures are even more impressive. Although that kind of improvement cannot go on for ever, we must provide the resources that the West Yorkshire police need to keep a lid on crime, in which they have so far been most successful. However, resources on their own are not enough. They have to be used effectively, and change has to be transmitted from the top down to the local level, with every police officer playing his or her role in the constant fight against crime, to meet the expectations of the local community.
My hon. Friend the Minister will be aware that the Audit Commission recently praised West Yorkshire police for their ability to provide a policing service that offers good value for money to the local people. It will not come as a surprise, therefore, that I want to concentrate
on the police funding formula. The Government have already given a clear indication that the settlement for 2010-11 will remain unchanged. Although it is obviously to be welcomed that West Yorkshire will receive an increase of 3.3 per cent., the force is still almost £18 million short of what it would have received if it had been fully funded under the raw funding formula.
The Government's revamping of the police funding formula recognises the chronic underfunding to which areas such as West Yorkshire had been subjected under Tory Governments. As I said, there is no denying that extra funding for West Yorkshire has allowed the number of police officers to rise to record levels. I have already mentioned the beneficial effects of that in my constituency and that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West. However, that clearly does not change the fact that West Yorkshire is still about £18 million adrift of what it should have received under the Government's own assessment of its needs.
I appreciate that one reason for the Government's decision is that they need to mitigate the impact on those authorities that receive more than is suggested under the funding formula. Unfortunately, the dampening of their pain also dampens West Yorkshire police's ability to continue meeting the challenges-and meeting the expectations not only of the local communities but of the Home Department. Those expectations are quite legitimate.
Other factors constrain West Yorkshire and prevent it from escaping that financial impasse. For instance, there are obviously wide variations in council tax between the different police authority areas. West Yorkshire's precept is now the third lowest in the country. If my hon. Friend and his ministerial colleagues are not already doing so, I urge them to apply pressure to get some flexibility in the capping process.
The capping system currently focuses more on increases in precept and in overall council taxation than on the individual budget increases and precepts of authorities such as West Yorkshire. That is particularly important in West Yorkshire, because it has such a low gearing. I understand that an increase of 5 per cent. in the West Yorkshire precept increases the overall council tax in places such as Leeds by only 0.5 per cent.
Another concern in West Yorkshire is the potential vulnerability of specific grant funding, which is exacerbated by the overall failure to deliver resources through the funding formula. The loss of specific grant, or funding from external partners such as local authorities for police community support officers, would obviously have a tremendous impact on the force's capacity to continue imposing downward pressure on crime and meeting community expectations.
I understand that a few posts remain at risk and that no commitment has been given to continue funding. They include 60 detention officer posts paid for by the Home Office and three senior police officer posts funded by the Ministry of Justice. I hope that my hon. Friend can give me some assurance, if not today then perhaps in writing, that that funding is safe.
There are also problems on the capital funding front. They reflect the difficult economic circumstances and the state of public finances. I understand that an announcement is due to be made later this month about capital funding. The provisional figures are £3 million
for supported capital expenditure and £5.6 million of capital grant, but the fear is that will not be confirmed. The difficulty is that those figures have been injected into the planning process. Any shortfall will result in the revenue budget being raised to pay for the revenue consequences of meeting capital expenditure, yet a lot of that capital expenditure is much needed, and it will create savings over time. I would be grateful to my hon. Friend if he commented on that factor.
John Battle (Leeds, West) (Lab): I thank my hon. Friend for giving way-and thank you, Mr. Cummings, for allowing me to intervene. My hon. Friend has rightly been praising the work of the police force in our neighbourhood, but he, too, deserves some credit for his consistent and indefatigable campaigning for public services, particularly the police, transport and fire services.
Will my hon. Friend join me in suggesting that the pioneering restorative justice project in Leeds, which operates out of the Belle Vue police centre and has great leadership, is proving to be a brilliantly successful scheme that could be pushed out across the country? We do not want to see its revenue funding undercut.
Mr. Truswell: I thank my right hon. Friend and neighbour for his comments. I agree wholeheartedly with what he said and thank him for his accolade. I have been accused by some people of having been "bobbied", which is a reference to those who at one time were hostile to the police and who have now been taken very gently under their wings. If that was put to any of the officers whom I mentioned earlier, they would smile because they know what a robust relationship we have. I have always believed in credit being given where credit is due.
The crux of the problem is that West Yorkshire is not receiving the funding it should under the funding formula, that various aspects of its funding are under some specific threat and that many of the priority developments that it is taking to respond to Government initiatives and the demands of the local community increasingly have to be funded from savings. Although the authority is efficient and has proved its ability to make savings, that is not in the long term a sustainable way of meeting the funding challenges, especially on the revenue front.
The authority was conscious of the difficult economic climate when it settled its budget for 2009-10, and agreed a 2.99 per cent. increase in the police precept, which allowed for an increase in spending of 3.38 per cent. overall. However, two thirds of that is already locked in by the pay award that was negotiated over a three-year period. Savings have been identified from the base budget to divert into priority areas, such as the automatic number plate recognition team, the road death investigation team and additional resources for Every Child Matters and force intelligence. The result was as we would want it-the force strength remained virtually unchanged. Some of that was achieved by leaving vacancies open for much longer than is operationally desirable, which I regard as the cracks starting to appear in the revenue budget.
The preliminary estimate for the budget that is required in the next financial year is an increase of 4.3 per cent. Again, more than half of that is locked in by pay awards that have already been agreed. The increase is also required to meet the full-year consequences of
some of the developments to which I referred a minute or so ago. It is also needed for further developments, such as the replacement of body armour, making up for the loss of interest on investments resulting from reductions in interest rates and the revenue implications of capital expenditure.
4.12 pm
Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.
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