Immigration Statistics

Debate between Lord Beamish and Mike Penning

Friday 28th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

We will talk about the selective memory loss of the Labour party in a moment.

Such mass immigration makes it very difficult to maintain social cohesion. The Government have set about reforming the immigration system and made it clear that it will be fairer for British citizens and legitimate migrants. These rules are tough. We would like to see net migration reduced to what it was in the 1990s, as the Prime Minister has set out. As successive net migration statistics have shown, where we can control net migration, our reforms are working. Net migration from outside the EU has dropped by 25%, but net migration from inside the EU has grown. It is a really difficult situation and we are trying desperately to control it.

Although net migration from outside the EU is down, net migration from within Europe is up by 75%. It is not just about the figures that were released yesterday—that is the indication in all the recent figures. That is why the Prime Minister is outlining today the action he will take when he becomes the next Prime Minister in his negotiations with the EU on the benefit system for migrants coming to this country.

We have already taken unprecedented action to control benefits for those from the EU and outside the EU. We are continuing to consider how this can be done and how we can control it even better. We have reformed benefits, health care and housing rules to make them among the tightest in Europe and we intend to go further. The reforms we have made, including cutting EU jobseeker entitlements, will save British taxpayers £500 million over the next five years. We are proud of that record, but we need to do more. The shambolic situation we were left by the previous Administration must be addressed, but we inherited it and we are trying to make sure that we get things right.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

It is a shambles now.

[Mike Penning]

By making comments from a sedentary position, Labour Members are showing their selective memory loss about the mess they left this country in. Perhaps they would like to ask me in a moment about the mess they left us in and how we will try to resolve that.

Net migration from outside the EU is down and this morning the Prime Minister has outlined his plans to deal with the high levels of migration from within the EU. We intend to do that and to ensure that this country is a safe place to come for migrants when they need to come here but that it is not a soft touch.

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[Mike Penning]

I have known my hon. Friend for many years and his views are well known. I agree with many of his views, but not with some of the views he has made public today. I do not think we can just stand back and say that we will not renegotiate at all and that we will just walk away from the EU. However, the Prime Minister has said today that the changes he has made are quite specific.

The Prime Minister made the statements he made in good faith, as I am sure we would all accept, but he could not have predicted the catastrophic eurozone economic catastrophe—

[Mr Kevan Jones]

The banking crisis.

[Mike Penning]

Yet again, from a sedentary position a Labour Member talks about the banking crisis that started under his party.

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[Mike Penning]

They are going to be achieved by having a Conservative Government. The Prime Minister made his speech this morning at the JCB factory rather than here because it was obviously a party political speech. All the reforms that he outlined will create a fair system in which we are in control of immigration and our benefits. That is what we should all be looking forward to.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Have we not just heard more false promises from the Prime Minister this morning? One of his proposals is that he will restrict the access to universal credit. Given that there are only 17,850 people on universal credit now, and that it will not be fully implemented until 2028, how will his proposal actually affect EU immigration?

[Mike Penning]

I was a Minister in the Department for Work and Pensions until a very short time ago, and I can tell the hon. Gentleman that universal credit will be rolled out correctly and it will not be a mess, unlike the IT projects under the previous Administration. What the Prime Minister talked about this morning was post-election; that is exactly what we expect to do when we win the election.

Mesothelioma Bill [Lords]

Debate between Lord Beamish and Mike Penning

Monday 2nd December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

No, no and no. The previous Administration undertook their consultation just before the general election. I will not get into party politics, but as the former Minister started on the subject, I will continue on it. After 13 years, suddenly there was a consultation, which was very wide ranging and did not develop the scheme. I cannot find out exactly what the previous Government wanted to do, because under the rules I am not allowed to see that, but all the indications are that what they would have proposed would not have passed into statute without huge cost to the taxpayer, or to people being insured today. None of that cost is incurred under the Bill.

The Bill is part of the ongoing commitment by the Government and the insurance industry to correct the market failure that everyone accepts there has been in respect of mesothelioma cases. It tackles the problem in two ways: first, by providing a power to set up a payment scheme and, secondly, by providing the possibility of establishing a technical committee that will, where there are disputes, make decisions that are binding on the insurance industry.

Diffuse mesothelioma is a fatal disease caused exclusively—this is crucial to the Bill—by exposure to asbestos. It has a long latency period, often of between 40 and 50 years, but after diagnosis average life expectancy is, sadly, only eight to nine months, with very few exceptions living beyond that. The long delay between exposure and developing the disease, combined with inconsistent record keeping in the insurance industry, means that too often people struggle to trace an employer—the employer may no longer exist—or the insurer who provided the employer’s public liability insurance, against which they can make a claim for civil damages. The insurance industry and the Government recognise that this is unjust, and that a provision must be brought forward in the Bill.

The obvious question is: why is legislation being introduced? Despite recognition of the failure of the market, the insurance industry has not been able to put forward a scheme of its own that would compensate those concerned. Disputes between insurers, and the different interests of companies that still offer employers’ liability cover, or active insurers, and those no longer offering cover, or run-off insurers, have prevented the industry from agreeing a voluntary levy; I think that was looked at in the consultation.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mike Penning]

I want to make progress. I am very conscious of the time, so I will not take an awful lot of interventions. Colleagues will have the opportunity to speak, either later on Second Reading or in the later stages of the Bill.

Industry representatives asked for legislation imposing a levy to support the payment scheme. The Bill establishes a payment scheme that will make substantial lump-sum payments to eligible sufferers from mesothelioma—and, crucially, eligible dependants of sufferers. The scheme will be funded through a levy on insurers active in the employers’ liability market, meaning that the active employers’ liability insurance market will bear the cost of the scheme.

[Mr Jones]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I know that the insurance companies are trying to sell this as a generous scheme, but all estimates say that it will be worth about £350 million. Last year alone, the profits of Lloyd’s of London were £2.7 billion. Does he not think that, from that perspective, the insurance companies are getting away very cheaply?

[Mike Penning]

Nothing is perfect, but there was nothing there before, and if we had carried on the way we were going, nothing would be there, going forward, for people who are suffering so much, and who need help today. [Interruption.] It is no good the hon. Gentleman chuntering; he has had an opportunity to intervene, and perhaps later he will make a speech. That would be more useful than chuntering. As a friend of mine, he should know better, because I will not respond to that sort of chuntering. It just wastes time in the House.

The scheme is intended to be an alternative to seeking civil damages, which we still want people to do, if the opportunity arises. The driving principle is that where adequate records are not available—this is why the scheme was developed—the disease has been diagnosed, and there has been negligence or a breach of the statutory duty, a person should still be able to access payment for their injury. That is the crucial part of the Bill. Payments should be made, wherever possible, to the sufferers themselves, while they are still alive; I think that everyone would want that, but sadly it has not been happening. The scheme will therefore be straightforward, simple, and quick to process claims.

Sadly, we expect roughly 28,500 deaths from mesothelioma between July 2012 and March 2024, when the scheme is expected to come to its conclusion. We are seeing a peak at the moment.

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[Mike Penning]

I am good friends with the hon. Gentleman, and I know him well. I do not see it that way, as he knows, but I understand why he does. There has to be an arbitrary cut-off date, and the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) said that the date will be arbitrary whatever we do.

We have been in deep negotiations—there is no argument about that; it will all come out—but the insurance companies did not just stroll up to Lord Freud’s office and say, “By the way, can we do a deal?” They were dragged there, otherwise that would have been done under the previous Administration. The Bill is not perfect and it probably can be amended, but it must not be delayed.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I am interested that the Minister says there has to be an arbitrary date. No, there does not; there has to be a date that is justifiable, and the only such date is the 1965 date of knowledge.

[Mike Penning]

That would be an arbitrary date too, because, as the hon. Gentleman said, mesothelioma was known about before 1965. Whatever happens, if we get bogged down in a legal argument, it will delay the Bill, and the compensation that everyone has worked towards for so many years will be massively and dramatically affected.