Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Brendan O'Hara and Holly Lynch

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 16th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Brendan O'Hara]

Personally, I think that the greater devolution of power, as widely as possible across any nation state, is an exceptionally good thing. Anything that can attract people to come, live, work, invest and raise families in our rural communities must be looked at and broadly welcomed. It was broadly welcomed in the recent Migration Advisory Committee report, which said:

“The current migration system is not very effective in dealing with the particular problems remote communities experience. If these problems are to be addressed something more bespoke for these areas is needed…The only way to address this question in the UK context would be to pilot a scheme that facilitated migration to these areas, then monitor what happens over several years and evaluate the outcomes.”

As my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East said, that idea was welcomed by the right hon. Member for Bromsgrove in a ministerial answer on 23 July 2019, where he accepted the need for the development of a pilot scheme. To date, there has been very little movement and we fear that there has been backtracking by the UK Government about what they plan to do next about setting it up.

The Minister knows that the Scottish Government stand ready to work with him to design and develop a solution that is tailored to meet Scotland’s needs. I can tell him that if the MAC is willing to provide the advice, and the Scottish Government is minded to follow that advice, then Argyll and Bute is prepared to put it itself forward as a pilot area for such a scheme. I spoke yesterday to the chief executive of Argyll and Bute Council, Pippa Milne, who confirmed that the council would be happy to work with the UK Government and the MAC to see how a bespoke regional immigration system would work in practice. Will the Minister act on the MAC recommendation, which was supported by the former Home Secretary, and help Scotland to fight the curse of depopulation?

[Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Sir Edward. I will briefly outline our position on amendment 17 and new clause 33. We are entirely sympathetic to amendment 17 for the reasons that have just been outlined, seeking to protect Scotland from the impact of this hard stop on free movement without a plan for mitigating the effects on key sectors. On more rural areas, our focus will continue to be on finding a solution for the whole of the UK rather than just Scotland. We understand that the Scottish National party has not given up on its aspiration of independence for Scotland, but I am afraid that that is where our parties diverge. To have an immigration system for Scotland that is different from that of the rest of the UK without that broader sense of a more regional approach affecting every area of the UK would open a raft of further questions around the management of that system and the means of enforcing it geographically. We say this in the spirit of loving Scotland and wanting it to stay and prosper as part of the United Kingdom. On that basis, we cannot support amendment 17.

We welcome the approach behind new clause 33 in principle, but again feel that it misses the opportunity to consult with the English regions as part of the process. Richard Burge of the London chamber of commerce said in last week’s evidence session that the MAC was slow and unwieldy. He said that it needs

“to involve business much more directly and that, it is hoped, will enable it to be much more responsive”.––[Official Report, Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2020; c. 12, Q18.]

Frustration with the MAC and a genuine and well-founded scepticism that, without radical reform, we would not be able to respond in anything like realtime to emerging workforce issues and skill shortages was a recurring theme in the evidence session and has been throughout our engagement with stakeholders ahead of the Committee. With this in mind, we are inclined to agree that one way of making immigration rules and shortage occupation lists more responsive would be to grant the devolved Administrations a greater say.

As I have already said, however, the glaring omission in new clause 33 is that it does not propose to consider the needs of the English regions in quite the same way. As a Yorkshire Member, it would be remiss of me not to reflect on the fact that the population of Yorkshire is comparable to, or greater than, those of the devolved nations. We hope that a report of the kind outlined in new clause 33 might take into account our needs and those of other regions, alongside those of the devolved Administrations. As a party, we will be looking to review the MAC and the shortage occupation list process in their entirety, shaping our own proposals for transformation in due course. On that basis, we broadly support new clause 33, but we will be shaping our own proposals in the coming months.

Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill (Sixth sitting)

Debate between Brendan O'Hara and Holly Lynch

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 16th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Holly Lynch]

The new clause would require the Government to commission the Migration Advisory Committee to produce a report on the impact on the health and social care sector of ending free movement.

I very much welcome some of the new developments that the Minister outlined earlier, to do with the changes in the way that the Migration Advisory Committee will operate. The group includes a number of new clauses, and we very much recognise the merits of all of them. In essence, they all plead with the Government fully to think through the implications of putting this hard stop on free movement in place without the systemic reforms to health and social care that would be required to address the workforce issues in those co-dependent sectors.

At the evidence session last week, we heard some pretty damning evidence from witnesses, even though, interestingly, none of them were there explicitly to represent the health or care sectors. Martin McTague of the Federation of Small Businesses told the Committee that the FSB felt that the £25,600 minimum income threshold

“should be lower, because there are quite a few jobs, especially in the care sector, that pay less than £25,600.”

He went on:

“That is why we have called for a care sector visa, because we think the requirements of that sector will always be uniquely different from most of the rest of the economy.”––[Official Report, Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2020; c. 6, Q5.]

In response to a follow-up question from my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North, Martin McTague said:

“It is clear from the experience that we have had over the last few months that this sector is under massive pressure. Any major changes would be disastrous.”––[Official Report, Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2020; c. 11, Q16.]

We can all agree that this Bill represents a major change in immigration.

Brian Bell of the Migration Advisory Committee made a number of scathing points, which we should all reflect on. He said that

“immigration has historically been used as an excuse to not deal with the problems of the social care sector.”––[Official Report, Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2020; c. 21, Q44.]

He is right. The problem is, when we suddenly turn off freedom of movement at the end of December and the Government are not able to deliver the radical reforms required in that timeframe, what happens to social care?

I will answer that. Unless we have a significant breakthrough with a vaccine, care homes and the care sector will still be battling the coronavirus. If we do not do our due diligence on this, by adopting the new clause, the Bill will be set recklessly to undermine social care at a time when it can least afford it.

A MAC report is necessary, and would give the Government an opportunity to develop a coherent strategy by conducting the exercise annually for the health and care workforce. That could inform both the domestic skills agenda and our immigration policy, allowing us to create fast tracks within immigration based on our needs at the time. Without that, the NHS will struggle to function. According to the British Medical Association, 29% of doctors in the NHS are from overseas. Freedom of movement has greatly facilitated that, as for years EEA staff have benefited from the flexibility it grants, allowing them to work in the UK and EEA simultaneously.

We have discussed in earlier stages of the Committee the potential introduction of visas and the costs attached to the changes brought about by the Bill. That might act as a major disincentive against attracting the best talent to the NHS. As always, there should be a clear national commitment to training future healthcare workers. Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine that the domestic workforce alone will be able to deliver. For a long time, the workforce has been supplemented with EEA workers.

The NHS reported nearly 90,000 job vacancies between October and December 2019. That has already led to rota gaps across the medical profession, and to well-founded concerns about the ability to staff services adequately. It can take up to 10 years to train a doctor. It is unrealistic to believe that a domestic push will address that vacancy shortage or likely subsequent shortages due to the UK’s decision to leave the EU and free movement.

Domestic recruitment drives also have barriers to overcome. The Royal College of Nursing has reported that the Government’s much publicised increase of 50,000 nurses consists of 12,000 more international nurses, 15,000 student nurses and another 15,000 retained nurses who had previously left the profession. In reality, therefore, only about 27,000 nursing vacancies have been filled, and that fails to address adequately the 40,000 nursing vacancies reported in the NHS in November 2019.

In the evidence session, Brian Bell, interim chair of the MAC, stated that occupational shortages were

“a failure of the British education system”.––[Official Report, Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2020; c. 24, Q49.]

If the Government seek to prioritise domestic healthcare recruitment over immigration, some pretty urgent steps must be taken to address that.

The threat of ending free movement for the NHS is incredibly concerning. The threat of ending free movement for our social care sector is existential. The proposal to extend the tier 2 visa system to EEA nationals would sever recruitment and compound gaping occupational shortages.

The Institute for Public Policy Research modelled the impact on EEA nationals currently living in the UK and working in social care, and found that 79% of EEA employees—about four in five—working full-time in social care would have been ineligible to work in the UK under the skills and salary thresholds proposed by the MAC. Unison reports that there are currently 110,000 vacancies in social care, and while I suspect the Minister will tell me that his aspiration is to fill those solely through domestic recruitment, I wonder what assurances he can give us that that is possible in the timeframes required.

It was encouraging to hear the MAC report that senior care workers would be eligible to be included in future shortage occupation lists, yet we fear that deterring the recruitment of care assistants and more junior care workers from overseas may lead to a further increase in job vacancies in the care sector. We have all heard the warnings from Brian Bell that migrant workers cannot continue to act as a sticking plaster, working their socks off on low pay to mask the systemic problems in social care, but it is clear that we will be exacerbating the workforce issues impacting on the quality and availability of care unless the Government undertake a full and regular review. I urge the Government to adopt new clause 21 in order to fully understand the ways in which the new immigration system will affect patient care across all health and social care settings.

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I will speak to new clause 61, which seeks an independent evaluation of the specific impact of the Bill on the health and social care sectors across the United Kingdom. This independent evaluation would follow from consultation between the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the relevant Ministers in the Scottish and Welsh Governments, the relevant Northern Ireland Ministers, service providers, those requiring health and social care services, and others. The new clause would require the Secretary of State to lay a copy of that report before both Houses of Parliament

“no later than one year after this Act is passed”,

and would require a Minister to make arrangements

“no later than six months after the report has been laid before Parliament”

for it to be debated and voted on in Parliament.

The new clause has gathered support from service users, third-sector organisations, trade unions and charities from every part of the UK, among them the Scottish and Northern Irish councils for voluntary organisations, Disability Wales, Unison, Camphill, Scottish Care, and the Welsh and Northern Irish branches of the British Association of Social Workers. I think the reason why they and many others have supported this independent assessment is that, as people who work on the frontline of health and social care every day, they are extremely worried that the Bill, which will end freedom of movement and introduce a points-based immigration system, will adversely affect hundreds of thousands of their clients: disabled people, children and young people, older people, unpaid carers and those with long-term health conditions—those who rely most on the health and social care services to look after them every day.

There is no doubt that the current coronavirus pandemic has given us all the opportunity to see just how precious our national health service and social care sector are. The NHS has risen to the challenge magnificently, as has everyone who works in it, and we are all hugely indebted to them. It has also reinforced just how lucky we are to have our national health service—should that have needed reinforcing—and we must do everything we can to protect it, so that future generations can have what we currently enjoy. We cannot afford to take chances with the future of our NHS or our social care services, and I believe that anyone who took chances with them would never be forgiven.

That is why so many in the health and social care sector are deeply concerned about what is contained in the Bill: they recognise that there is already a crisis in social care across the United Kingdom. On top of the seemingly relentless pressure on funding, we have an ageing population with increasingly complex care needs. The health and social care sector is battling every day to find and keep the workforce it requires, yet this Government have cut off a source of labour, with no clear plan as to what will replace it.

At the end of September 2019, NHS England reported having more than 120,000 unfilled posts—an increase of 22,000 on the previous year. Both the Care Inspectorate and the Scottish Social Services Council have found that 40% of social care organisations have unfilled vacancies going back over a year.