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Lord Whitty: My Lords, I think that they are exactly as described: they are relatively small nuclear reactors. I do not necessarily view them as a major contribution to the UK's energy problem, but with the boom in the Chinese economy and its consumption of fossil fuels at the moment, it is wise for the Chinese to look to all measures of saving carbon, including that which the
 
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Question was about; that is, carbon sequestration. If we can build carbon sequestration into the coal-fired power stations in China, India and elsewhere, we will avoid what would otherwise be a substantial increase in the carbon emissions from those economies.

Drugs Bill

Brought from the Commons; read a first time, and ordered to be printed.

Business of the House: Debates this Day

The Lord President of the Council (Baroness Amos): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.

Moved, That the debate on the Motion in the name of the Lord Waddington set down for today shall be limited to three and a half hours and that in the name of the Lord Marlesford to one and a half hours.—(Baroness Amos.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Immigration and Asylum

Lord Waddington rose to call attention to immigration and asylum controls for the maintenance of good race relations, national security and the provision of public services; and to move for Papers.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, immigration is an important issue of great concern to the public and, judging by the number of noble Lords who have put their names down to speak today, we think that it is a highly appropriate matter to be discussed in this place.

There are always people ready to make mischief out of immigration, but history shows that if genuine concerns are addressed in a sensible manner, immigration can cease to be politically very contentious. I say that with some diffidence, but I believe that by the latter part of the 1980s, with firm and fair immigration control established under the government of my noble friend Lady Thatcher—who I am glad to see in her place today—immigration policy had ceased to be a very contentious matter. It is the abandonment of that firm and fair immigration control that has brought immigration policy back into the headlines now.

It would be foolish and wrong to start a debate such as this without a clear acknowledgement that immigration has brought great benefits to this country. Britain is immeasurably better off as a result of the new Britons who have come here over the past half-century. Very many individuals have made a great contribution to society and we are privileged to have some of them as colleagues in this place.
 
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In more general terms, we all know that immigration plays an important part in creating a dynamic and competitive modern economy, providing skills that are in short supply and filling gaps in the workforce.

But none of this should make us fail to recognise that while immigration can bring great benefits, too much uncontrolled immigration can bring dangers. People can be frightened by over-rapid change in a locality, and good community relations can be imperilled as a result. As most immigrants tend to go to the same parts of the country, an intolerable strain can be put on public services in those parts—on hospitals, schools and housing.

The truth of this is, frankly, recognised in a report of the Government's own Community Cohesion Panel set up after the Bradford riots. The report entitled The End of Parallel Lives? states, referring to the troubles in Bradford and to places like Bradford:

"The 'pace of change' . . . is simply too great at present . . . inward migration does create tensions . . . communities will perceive that newcomers are in competition for scarce resources and public services . . . The pressure on resources . . . is often intense and local services are often insufficient to meet the needs of the existing local communities, let alone newcomers".

Now, presumably the Government say that it is in recognition of these problems that they are implementing what they call "controlled immigration", but I have to say that to describe what is going on as "controlled immigration" is a very strange use of language.

The goings-on leading up to the resignation of Beverley Hughes did not look to me much like controlled immigration. Thousands of Bulgarians and Romanians were granted British visas by the Home Office even though immigration officials knew the applications were fraudulent and said that they should be turned down. Some of the visas were granted to people who were in the country already, having entered illegally, others were for people in the country who had been refused asylum but had not left the country.

Then there is the business of sham marriages, giving people the right to stay in the country. One of the first things that Labour did was to scrap one of the barriers to this kind of abuse and put nothing in its place, so I do not find much evidence of controlled immigration there.

Then one has to ask: is immigration controlled or out of control when entry is allowed for thousands, if not tens of thousands, of bogus students, many of them signed up to attend bogus institutions? It is, to put it mildly, somewhat surprising that it should have taken an approaching general election for the Home Secretary to come to the House of Commons and say that from now on we will make them all have sponsors.

How can one talk of "controlled immigration" and, in the same breath, concede that thousands of unaccompanied children are literally dumped in Britain every year—3,000 in 2003 and 6,200 the year before? The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, was kind enough to tell me of his interest in this matter and I understand that he will be saying a few words about it later.
 
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But the most staggering change from the days of firm and fair immigration control is the more than threefold increase in the number of work permits granted since Labour took office—73,0000 were given out last year to people who were already in Britain on another pretext. Why were they allowed to enter the country for one purpose and then to stay for an entirely different purpose?

We are told that a total of 175,000 work permits will be issued this year. That is not filling gaps in the workforce. That is not immigration control but a system out of control. What about border controls so lax that the other day the Metropolitan Police Commissioner felt it necessary to express his concern about what he called the tide of foreign criminals entering the country? Again it has taken an approaching general election for the Home Secretary to come to Parliament and say that he has plans—not at once but in the next five years—to do something about it.

What about the criminals who import illegal immigrants and then leave them to be exploited, like the Morecambe Bay cockle pickers? How many times have the Government said that they are about to crack down on that kind of thing without anything happening?

According to the Office for National Statistics, total net immigration to the UK, which in 1997 was 46,800, has over the past five years averaged 157,000 a year. That means enough net immigration a year to populate each year a new city the size of Peterborough.

According to the Government's own predictions, the population of Britain will grow by 6.1 million over the next 30 years; 3.6 million of the 6 million will be new immigrants and they and their offspring will together account for 5.1 million of the 6 million. That is enough to populate six cities the size of Birmingham.

Of course almost certainly those figures are a hopeless underestimate and will have to be revised upwards. Why? The reason is that they do not take any account of how wildly inaccurate were the Government's predictions of the number of people who would come here from the new member states of the EU. An absolute maximum of 13,000 a year, the Government said, but in fact they have been arriving at the rate of 10,000 a month.

The figure of 6 million also takes no account of failed asylum seekers who do not leave the country when their claims are turned down, and other illegal immigrants. But even assuming the published figure is right, admitting to the country enough people to populate six cities the size of Birmingham is not filling gaps in the workforce to meet the needs of an expanding economy; it is changing the landscape.

I find it impossible to accept that immigration on this scale is necessary for the economic benefits it brings. Benefits for whom, one might well ask. Large-scale immigration like this certainly does not benefit the unskilled whose wages it tends to lower and among whom unemployment tends to rise.

The Prime Minister talked about the benefits of immigration for an expanding economy. But, if his prediction was correct, it would mean at the most an
 
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increase in wages for individuals in Britain of roughly 50p a week. So, one is talking about a trivial benefit for all these enormous changes that would come about by that scale of immigration.

We were told in January that the Government were going to introduce new measures to demonstrate their determination to address public concerns, but the Home Secretary's Statement in the other place a few days ago was about the thinnest I have ever read. We were told that people would have to be here on a work permit for five years rather than four before they could stay permanently. But most people—I know from my experience when I worked at the Home Office—make themselves irremovable long before the four years are up. The truth is that there is no point in such a change if there is to be no limit on the total number of work permits issued.

I do not doubt that the Government are worried about what might be the electoral consequences of their incompetent management of immigration, but, insulated from real life as most of them seem to be, I do not think they really care about the worries of ordinary people.

Certainly, Mr Blunkett did not seem to be caring when he famously said on BBC "Newsnight" on 12 November last year that there is no obvious limit to legal immigration. Mr Clarke did not seem to be caring very much when he said on "Newsnight" on 7 February that the current, unprecedented rate of around 150,000 additional people settling in Britain each year was in his view "about right".

So far I have not said a word about asylum policy. I am certainly not mixing up the two issues. I have been very careful not to do so, because I want to make a very important point. Although asylum may be the most contentious and difficult area, it is only to a small degree responsible for the enormous increase in immigration under Labour. In fact asylum accounts for less than one-fifth of foreign immigration. It follows that immigration could be greatly reduced, brought under proper control, and the sort of firm but fair immigration control we used to have restored, without touching asylum policy.

Turning very briefly to asylum, however, there is a crying need not just for someone to run the existing system with a modicum of competence, but for us to examine whether the time has come to introduce an entirely new system. Of course we should maintain our proud tradition of giving refuge to people fleeing persecution, but surely we should seek to do so without allowing the system to be abused in so obvious a fashion. Only two in 10 of those who arrive here and apply for asylum are actually granted asylum, and rather less than another two in 10 are granted exceptional leave to remain. As to the rest who are refused, they are not sent back to where they came from. Just one in five is removed, and it is estimated that there are over a quarter of a million failed asylum seekers now living somewhere in Britain.

The system is in a chaotic state and I cannot believe that it cannot be made to work better. However, the question that has to be addressed is whether we should not aim to secure a new system.
 
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The Home Affairs Select Committee was certainly not very happy with the present system. It made the very important point that the vast majority of claimants enter Britain by circumventing controls, either completely or by deception. That means that asylum seekers who do manage to make a claim in Britain are not representative of the world's wider refugee population. They are more likely to be young, male, healthy, educated, with access to significant financial support, and less likely to be old, female, ill, uneducated or poor; and a large proportion of them arrive in Britain as the result of illegal people-smuggling operations conducted by criminal gangs.

It was no doubt as a result of all that that, not so very long ago, the Prime Minister himself said that the UN Convention was drawn up for an entirely different world, and he hinted broadly that he was in the business of negotiating changes to it. The fact that since then he has, stealthily and without consulting the public, signed up to EU directives which effectively prevent him from doing so is hardly a reason for his criticising the Leader of the Opposition. The same thing goes for the suggestion that people should be sent to zones away from the country, where their claims could be assessed.

The Hague programme of the EU calls for a feasibility study of just such a proposal, and I understand that discussions have actually taken place between the EU and Libya. It is absurd, therefore, to dismiss out of hand the suggestions that have been made by my right honourable friend Mr Michael Howard.

I have spoken for long enough and I am anxious to hear what noble Lords have to say about this fascinating and extremely important subject. I beg to move for Papers.

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