Brexit: UK-EU Movement of People (EUC Report)

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak only very briefly in the gap. I had no intention of speaking in this debate until, during Question Time today, my noble friend Lord Hain passed me a question he had asked the Minister and included with it the response that he had received. I shall come back to that in a moment.

I do not want to repeat my own contribution of 20 February to the debate on the withdrawal Bill apart from to say one thing: I believe that in Labour areas of the United Kingdom the vote in the referendum was based entirely on attitudes to immigration. I am convinced that, in the event that immigration was not surrounding this whole debate on the future of our position in Europe, there would have been an overwhelming vote in favour of remain. We have to isolate the issue of immigration if we are to understand the way forward. The debate taking place today contributes to that, but we have to go far further and in more detail. That brings me to my noble friend Lord Hain’s question.

He asked,

“how many EU nationals in the UK have the Home Office removed under article 14.4(b) of directive 2004/38 because they did not satisfy its work requirements? Does not this provision enable EU nationals not in work to be returned home while the UK still remains in the single market and the customs union?”.—[Official Report, 4/7/17; col. 787.]

You would expect an answer to that question. The Answer he received to a Written Question of the same date and requesting the same information was,

“only … obtained at disproportionate cost”.

That is the problem with this whole debate. Insufficient information is feeding public prejudice. If you want to deal with public prejudice on the issue of immigration, you have to provide hard statistics. Such Answers are nothing but rubbish. They are meaningless and they discredit the institution of Parliament.

I was talking to a colleague in the House of Commons only an hour or so ago who said that you would not get away with an Answer like that there. It might well be that we should start tabling Questions at both ends, because we cannot carry on on this basis. There are many questions. Earlier in the debate, we heard about the inaccuracy in information provided, with it being based on general assumptions and statistical nonsense. That is not good enough. If we are to deal with the issue of immigration and satisfy the British people and the views that many of them hold, we must have the facts. I ask the Minister to go back to the department and tell it that we want statistically accurate information if we are to proceed properly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Are statistics on the removal of EU citizens from the United Kingdom kept anywhere at all?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

In answer to the noble Lord’s noble friend on behalf of his noble friend, to unpick it was quite an expensive undertaking. That is the response that I gave his noble friend, but I am quite happy to take that point up with his noble friend if he would like to speak to me about it.