Immigration

Debate between Lord Field of Birkenhead and Lord Barwell

Thursday 6th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Field]

I would be grateful if Front Benchers would listen. What I said was that the one survey that we have shows that after that period of time we could account for 20% of the students who come to our universities. They were still in this country—they had every right to be here—and they were pursuing studies or, more likely, working. We do not know from that Home Office study what happened to the other 80%.

[Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)]

I share the right hon. Gentleman’s concern about the scale of net migration, although I do not support the wording of the motion. What is his view of the level of net migration that would be necessary to meet the terms of this motion? According to the research done by the Migration Observatory, even if we had no net migration into this country the population would reach more than 66 million in about 20 years.

[Mr Field]

We are not talking about 66 million in the motion, but about the rate that would push us over 70 million. One of the points in this debate is to ask the new Minister what steps he has taken to prevent that from occurring and to fulfil the Government’s objective to reduce net migration to tens of thousands rather than hundreds of thousands.

[Gavin Barwell]

I support the manifesto on which I stood, but the terms of the motion are very clear that we are seeking to

“stabilise the UK’s population as close as possible to its present level and, certainly, significantly below 70 million.”

To achieve that, we would have to end net migration or even have positive emigration.