Immigration Bill

Baroness Afshar Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Afshar (CB)]

My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for remembering that I once reported to this House that the name “Afshar” trumped membership of your Lordships’ House as far as immigration officers were concerned. I was not allowed in because they thought “Baroness” was a first name. So I suggest that we should be very wary of making such people judge and jury over who is suitable for entry into this country—because I would like to continue to serve in your Lordships’ House.

I would also like to introduce a sense of perspective. Britain—the UK—is home to less than 1% of the total number of refugees in the world, so it seems to me that extending this by a small amount would not really cause an enormous strain on the resources of the Government.

Much has been said about the refugees who come to this country. They come because they are being bombed out of existence in their homelands and because drones, by day or by night, do not recognise friends or foes; they just kill you, and any of us in that situation would try to find an alternative. But it is only the better-educated and better-off—those who have the resources—who are able to scramble out of these death traps. They can offer this country enormous talent, resource and wealth. They choose to come here because they have transferable skills. We are short of doctors, nurses and carers—and these are people who have done their qualifications and very often do not need retraining. They could serve this country and they come here because they wish to come here. To try to bar their way is to do a disservice to this country at all levels. If we allow wiser counsel and look at each person as an individual rather than in terms of numbers, and if we move away from fearing “the other” and instead welcome them, we would find that the whole country would benefit.

As a university teacher, I fear what would happen to academe in this country if we started imposing restrictions that would mean that talented people, many of them born in this country, could not come and teach. I declare an interest because I was born in Iran and my husband was born in New Zealand. Neither of us would find it easy to come and teach in this country under the proposed laws.

It is far more advisable to start thinking about how to accommodate these people. But to expect them while the decision is being made to live on £40 a week is unreasonable. I challenge any Member of your Lordships’ House to live on £80 a week and see how long they would last. Surely we should do unto others as we would wish to have done unto us. That is a Christian proverb but as a Muslim I support it. There are better ways to deal with the floods of immigration than this attempt to drown talent and opportunities. Please, will you change your minds?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, I would like to address the wider context of this Bill. It comes before us at a time when the whole context of immigration is changing very rapidly. We are indeed a compassionate country, I believe, but we expect our Government to control our borders. Immigration has been a major concern for a very long time, as the noble Lords, Lord Horam and Lord Balfe, both pointed out. Indeed, in calling for a significant reduction in net migration, I have been speaking for 70% of the population, including a majority of the ethnic communities. In recent times, that concern has intensified further. Immigration and asylum have for the past six months been the very top issue of public concern. It is not hard to see why. The public are clearly conscious that the European Union has lost control of its southern borders. As a result, a mixture of refugees and others who in reality are economic migrants are arriving in huge numbers which are already overwhelming any orderly system of reception, let alone control. The Commission itself is expecting an additional 3 million migrants by the end of 2017.

Here in Britain, a moderate level of immigration is of course a natural part of an open economy and an open society, and for my part I have always supported that. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, that major efforts are needed to improve the training of our own workers so that we do not draw in unmanageable levels of migrants. But unfortunately after some fairly strenuous efforts over the past five years, net migration is now running at a third of a million a year. This mass migration will have a huge effect on our population, on our society and on our environment.

Let me take just population. Even if net migration is brought back to the average of the past 10 years, which is roughly a quarter of a million, our population will grow by 2.5 million in the course of this Parliament. That is about two and a half times the population of Birmingham. Can we really cope with that? Let us look a little further ahead. In the next 15 years, the population of the UK would, at that rate of immigration, grow by 8 million. Numbers mean very little to most people, so let me tell noble Lords what 8 million means. It is the populations of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Sheffield, Bradford, Manchester, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Bristol, Cardiff, Newcastle upon Tyne, Belfast, Aberdeen, Leicester, Coventry, Nottingham, Stoke-on-Trent and Portsmouth all added together. Is that remotely sensible, desirable or even feasible?

[Baroness Afshar]

How many people will die during that period in these cities?

[Lord Green of Deddington]

This takes full account of those who will die and those who are born. It brings all three together. Any population projection depends on the birth rate, the death rate and the net migration. Taking all three into account, on 240,000 a year we would get what I have just described. We have to accept that. We have to recognise it and decide whether we will take serious measures to get the numbers down or whether we will build the list of cities that I will not read out again.

There is no doubt that immigration is the main driver of this huge population increase. In the medium term, two-thirds of it will be due to future immigrants and their children, and in long term, of course, all population increase will be due to immigration because our birth rate is below the replacement rate. In these circumstances, the public clearly want immigration brought under control, and rightly so. This will require two elements: reducing admissions where possible; and ensuring departures. Let me take them separately.

The Bill bears mainly on the latter. It is concerned largely with discouraging illegal immigration, whether by those who seek to enter clandestinely or those who have overstayed their visas. As for the clandestines, noble Lords might like to ask themselves why thousands of people—mainly young men—are camped near Paris in pretty dreadful conditions in the hope of getting into Britain. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, spoke eloquently about the conditions in which they find themselves.

Surely it has to be recognised they are not there because they are desperate, as the press so often says. They are already in a safe country and are perfectly at liberty to claim asylum in France. It is only because they believe the conditions in Britain are so much more favourable that they will take considerable personal risk to get here. Indeed so, because they know that if they do get here they can work on the black market—an activity that is not even illegal in this country, as the Mayor of Calais never fails to point out. They also know that if they are discovered they can claim asylum. Indeed, about half of all asylum claims made in Britain are made on discovery, not on arrival. If they succeed in their claims, as about half of them do—