UK Border Agency

Virendra Sharma Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)]

I start by thanking the Home Affairs Committee for its reports and its Chairman for his introduction, which set the tone of this debate. That tone has largely been thoughtful; oddly enough, there was more consensus that I might have expected when the debate started. Parliamentary scrutiny of Government Departments is crucial in ensuring that they are delivering Government policy properly and offering value for money.

A huge number of points have been made, and I will deal with them in a moment, but I would like to start with an overview of the UK Border Agency. The agency has changed radically in recent months. Much of the speech by the shadow Minister was devoted to the John Vine reports of last year, which were, of course, important. That is why, in February this year, the Home Secretary told the House that the UK Border Force would split from the UKBA to become a separate operational command with its own ethos of law enforcement, led by its own director general and directly accountable to Ministers.

Since then both the UK Border Force and the UKBA have done their different jobs in protecting the border and ensuring that Britain remains open for business, checking people travelling to the UK before they arrive—through visa checks, intelligence and the use of the e-borders system.

In this climate of change, we all rightly expect the agency to continue to deliver. The work of the agency is crucial in controlling migration and protecting national security. The Committee’s reports on the work of the agency have shown that, as with all organisations, there is certainly room for improvement. Of course I acknowledge that, and the Government have accepted most of the Committee’s recommendations.

I have said previously to the Committee that the agency is good in parts but needs to improve. That is why a transformation plan has been initiated by the chief executive, Rob Whiteman, to address precisely the weaknesses identified by many right hon. and hon. Members. Even if the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) does not necessarily agree with all the policies I implement, she would, as she said, like the system to work properly, and I can assure her that that is the purpose of many of the changes that Rob Whiteman is making. I am grateful for the remarks by my right hon. Friends the Members for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) and for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), who said that at a constituency level their experience is of an organisation that is getting a bit better. That is clearly a step in the right direction.

The agency faces a serious challenge—to reduce net migration while ensuring that migrants who do come here are of the calibre we need to benefit the UK. As I have said from this Dispatch Box before, the immigration debate is partly about numbers, but it should not be wholly about numbers. We have always been clear that controlled, selective migration is good for the UK. Encouraging tourism is essential for the UK economy, and this will obviously be particularly true over the next few months as we welcome an unprecedented number of visitors from around the world.

Bringing down net migration and attracting the brightest and the best are not mutually exclusive objectives. We need to know that the right numbers of people are coming here and that the right people are coming here—people who will benefit Britain, not just those who will benefit from Britain. We want an immigration policy that reflects consensus about who should be able to come here and an immigration system that can actually deliver it, with a legal framework that reflects the will of Parliament while respecting our international legal obligations, and a system and a policy that make immigration work for Britain economically.

The Migration Advisory Committee recently published a study of how we calculate the costs and benefits of immigration. Its view is that the Government should focus on the impact of migration on the welfare of residents rather than on the old assumption that because immigration adds to GDP it strengthens the economy and therefore, logically, the more immigration the better. This key insight of the MAC’s work gives us the basis for a more intelligent debate and supports a more selective approach to migration. The comprehensive set of reforms that we have introduced on work, students, settlement and family have set the way forward for such a system.

At the heart of the organisation of that system—the subject of the Committee’s reports—lies our visa regime. The UKBA administers one of the most competitive and efficient visa services in the world, ensuring that tourists and other genuine visitors can travel to the UK, enjoy what our country has to offer, and then return home. I should like to put some figures on this, because it is often under-reported. In 2011, the agency processed over 2.5 million visa applications—a 3% increase on 2010 and a 7% increase on 2009. The most recent set of migration statistics—the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) should listen to this after his claim that it is impossible to bring immigration down—showed that numbers of visa grants in every category are falling, apart from those for visit visas. Student visas are down by 21%, family visas are down by 16%, work visas are down by 8%, and visit visas are up by 9%. Those are the key figures in the immigration debate. They demonstrate how the agency is delivering the reductions in long-term immigration that we expect while not preventing valuable and genuine visitors from coming to the UK. These include people from some of our key markets such as China and India, where we have twice, and in some cases three times, as many visa application centres as any of our competitors.

But of course the public have perfectly reasonable concerns about the number of migrants who continue to come here. The changes that we have already made are starting to have an impact, but we have always said that it would take the full term of this Parliament to achieve our objectives. As has been widely—I think universally—agreed in the debate, that is largely due to an ineffective system that goes back to a time way before this Government. It has taken a raft of tough new policy measures merely to stop the steady rise in net migration before we see it coming down.

The checks made by the UKBA represent the key tools in ensuring that our requirements are met and that our policies deliver what we expect. The agency now has a presence in 137 countries, and despite the considerable logistical challenges involved in running this global operation, it routinely exceeds its service standard of processing 90% of visa applications within three weeks. In 2011, it processed half the non-settlement visa applications and two thirds of the business visa applications within five days. It did so with a focus on quality decisions and excellent customer service. I say gently that the sustained good performance of the agency’s visa service has perhaps escaped the Select Committee’s otherwise all-seeing eye. However, no discussion of the work of the UKBA would be complete without acknowledging it. I hope that members of the Committee agree.

A number of issues have been raised, and I will start with students. We are dealing with migrant students who have been left without a college following the introduction of the tough new rules for institutions that wish to sponsor non-EU students. About 500 colleges have disappeared from the register and are no longer allowed to bring in foreign students. That is a distinct public policy success and, again, one that is not often acknowledged.

[Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)]

Although those colleges are now not functioning and have had their licences withdrawn, the British high commissions in places such as Delhi, Pakistan and Nepal have already issued the visas and received the fees, and the students have paid their college fees but are not allowed to study. Hundreds of students have lost their money because the colleges have closed, which is no fault of theirs. What are the Government doing about that?

[Damian Green]

I will say two things. First, there has been a huge amount of fraud in the past and the sweeping away of bogus colleges reduces the chances for such fraud. This point was also raised by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). Individual students have 60 days to find a new college and their visa is still operational for that period. That is the sensible first step for them to take.

Stripping away the bogus colleges is only the first point. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) made a perfectly reasonable point about those who overstay or abscond. The UKBA has been working through tens of thousands of leave curtailments. It is stripping students and others of their right to remain in the UK if they have no right to be here and providing them with written notification that they should return home. In recent months, it has dealt with almost 25,000 curtailments. To ensure that such people return home, the UKBA is undertaking a summer enforcement campaign to target those who have overstayed their visa. The aim of the campaign is to galvanise intelligence-led enforcement activity against such individuals, with the intention of removing them. So far this summer, we have removed almost 1,800 overstayers. As has been said, that is probably 1,800 more overstayers than have been removed in any previous year. That is not just students, but all overstayers.

[Damian Green]

I apologise, but we are coming to the end of the debate and there are lots of points that I wish to respond to.

Foreign national offenders were mentioned by a number of Members. We now start deportation action 18 months before the end of the sentence to speed up the process. We are also chartering more flights to remove foreign offenders. Last year, we removed more than 4,500 foreign criminals—43% of them before the end of their prison sentence. Many Members raised the issue of those who are released from detention while awaiting deportation. In only 30% of those cases is the decision made by the UKBA. The courts make the other decisions.

The asylum legacy was perhaps the biggest bugbear of hon. Members from all parts of the House. I sympathise with them entirely. There are currently 80,000 cases in the asylum controlled archive. That is down 18,000 from last September. There is some confusion about this matter, but no new applications are being added to the archive. If we find cases while mopping up around the agency that belong in the archive, which is for very old cases, they are put there and processed. Nobody should be under the misapprehension—I think it was the hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward) who brought this up—that new applications are going into the archive; they are simply not.

As has been mentioned, we are now checking cases not just against public sector databases but against credit scoring databases and so on, to see whether people are leaving any footprint in this country. If they are not, there is clearly evidence that they have left, which allows us to concentrate on those who are here so that everyone gets a decision. As the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee said, the target is finally to clear the backlog this year.

Another big issue that many right hon. and hon. Members brought up was the changes that we are making to family visit visa appeals, which we are restricting. I should point out that no other category of visit visa attracts a full right of appeal, and it is a disproportionate use of taxpayers’ money to fund a full right of appeal for a visitor, to be heard by a tribunal in the UK. No other country does that. From 9 July, the new regulations will restrict the full right of appeal to those applying to visit a close family member with settled refugee or humanitarian status.

I repeat that it is quicker for people to reapply than to appeal, and it is not the case that every decision is simply rubber-stamped. I believe it was the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) who brought that up. I assure him that each case is examined by a more senior member of staff, and that some decisions are changed by the entry clearance manager.

[Mr Virendra Sharma]

Will the Minister give way?

[Damian Green]

I apologise, but I do not have time to give way.

The right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) mentioned a number of individual cases, and if he wishes to grab me after the debate I will of course take them away and look at them. I strongly recommend that his office use the Members’ hotline and the case owner system, as other Members do. As the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee said, relationships can develop that may well deliver a faster service to constituents. I seek to reply to the many letters that I receive from the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton as quickly and efficiently as possible, but he might find it easier and better for his constituents if he used the systems that have been set up precisely because of the various problems that have existed over the years.

I take the points that many Members made about the use of intelligence. We have set up a special directorate to use intelligence and information from the public much better, and we are developing a central database to enable allegations to be tracked on an end-to-end basis. I listened carefully to the point that, if possible, people who have given information should get some sort of response about what has happened, but I am sure hon. Members will appreciate that that cannot always happen.

The Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association has brought to our attention a few points of detail in the new appeal regulations, but they do not require us not to introduce those regulations on 9 July.

I do not believe that everything in the UKBA is perfect. It has a number of difficult jobs to do, and mistakes will be made, but the agency is now working to a clear and comprehensive set of policies to reduce net migration and is transforming its operations to perform its day-to-day business more efficiently. That is the current reality of the UKBA, and I hope that the many Members who for obvious reasons take a personal interest in its activities recognise that it is changing for the better.

Home Affairs and Justice

Virendra Sharma Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I welcome you back to the Chair. It is great to follow my neighbour, the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod). I listened to her interesting contribution, and although I may disagree on a few issues, I did agree on others. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak in this important debate about the home affairs and justice elements of the Gracious Speech.

Before I come to some specifics, I wish to put on the record my general thoughts about the impact on my constituents of the Government’s proposals in the Gracious Speech. Given the country’s woeful economic position—thanks to the double-dip recession made in Downing street—my constituents will see little hope in these proposals. We face record levels of unemployment, with 1 million young people looking for work. They will see little assistance from a Government who are out of touch and fixated on giving help to millionaires but offering little to hard-pressed families.

Nothing is being proposed to get the economy back into growth, to create jobs or to tackle runaway energy bills and train fares. The picture is bleak for my constituents and other hard-working families in Britain. The Government, with such a thin programme of legislation, are effectively walking by on the other side of the road as ordinary people suffer; they are helping only their millionaire friends.

Let me first make some remarks about the Crime and Courts Bill and the proposal to set up the National Crime Agency to take on serious, organised and complex crime, enhance border security, tackle the sexual abuse and exploitation of children, and tackle cybercrime. That agency will be continuing the work of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, which was launched by Labour in 2006, and we wish it well. However, Labour Members are concerned that the Government have taken reform in this area backwards by scrapping the National Policing Improvement Agency. Chief constables are very concerned that scrapping bodies such as the NPIA will mean losing focus on crime-fighting and having to worry about the delivery of training, IT and other services instead. The Home Secretary has refused here, in this Chamber, to answer questions to confirm the budget for the NCA. With the loss of 16,000 officers, further cuts to the NCA will only undermine it even further. The loss of 16,000 police officers from the front line will have a serious impact on efforts to tackle serious and lesser crimes as well as antisocial behaviour.

That figure of 16,000 was the number of police officers deployed on the streets of London after the riots last summer. In my constituency, the community came together powerfully in partnership with the police to protect our religious places and businesses from the wanton criminality of the riots, but I fear the consequences if there was a repeat of those events with police resources so diminished. The 12% cut proposed by the Opposition could have been made without the need to cut front-line resources and officers, and the fight against crime could have continued successfully as it did over the lifetime of the Labour Government.

[Bob Stewart]

In what way would the hon. Gentleman keep front-line policemen under the Opposition’s proposals when cuts need to be made? How would he do it?

[Mr Virendra Sharma]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question and I shall answer it later in my speech.

The Government talk about enhancing border security, but the complete shambles over which the Home Secretary is currently presiding gives little confidence that that can be done. Reports from Heathrow at the weekend that, in order to clear the queues at passport control, UK Border Agency staff were taken off security checks and Customs work are very worrying. My constituency, like many others throughout the UK, has a problem with drug-related crime and at the moment the Home Secretary is giving the drug barons and terrorists a clear run through Customs and our borders as she fails to get a grip on this crisis.

One other area of concern, particularly to many of my constituents, is the Government’s proposal to remove the full right of appeal for a refused family visit visa. Like many other MPs, I deal with hundreds of visa cases on behalf of my constituents who often want family to join them for important family events such as weddings and funerals. Mistakes are and will continue to be made and natural justice demands a full right of appeal. Why is that element of justice and fairness being stripped away?

Another disappointment is the absence of a forced marriage Bill in this Queen’s Speech. Again, this is an issue in my constituency, and given the Prime Ministers’ words in January, when he stated that the Government were looking to make forced marriage a criminal offence, and following the conclusion of the Home Office consultation in March, why is no Bill proposed in this next Session of Parliament?

Before I finish, let me highlight a positive aspect of the Government’s proposals. The judicial appointments reform that will increase diversity in the judiciary is very welcome and long overdue. That said, there is very little positive to focus on in the Queen’s speech. As the Leader of the Opposition said, it is a message of “no hope” and “no change” and the Government

“just do not get it.”—[Official Report, 9 May 2012; Vol. 545, c. 14.]

Violence against Women and Girls

Virendra Sharma Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Member for her intervention. I did not know that particular piece of information and it makes me even more alarmed than I was when I first stood up to speak. It shows that this is part of a much bigger issue, which is about ensuring that our teachers are properly equipped to pass on that vital training.

It is interesting that Education Ministers have signalled that they want these issues to remain outside the statutory curriculum, running the risk that many young women and men will never be exposed to education designed to reduce gendered violence. Cuts to specialist local-level posts, such as domestic violence co-ordinators and teenage pregnancy co-ordinators, risk exacerbating the problem even further.

In its report, “A Different World is Possible”, the End Violence Against Women Coalition recommends a “whole school approach”, with heads taking a lead, teachers been trained on the issues and all students receiving comprehensive sex and relationships education on consent, equality and respect. That is already a top priority in Brighton and Hove—it builds on work by a number of the agencies that I mentioned earlier. The local authority’s strategy states:

“Evidence shows that to be effective in domestic violence prevention work, addressing the issue in PSHE and SRE lessons or in assemblies has limited impact and value, if the messages promoted are not supported by other initiatives and the broader ethos of the school.”

I therefore ask the Minister to call on her colleagues at the Department for Education to clearly identify one single Education Minister to lead on preventing violence against women and girls. I also ask her to tell us what contribution she has made to the Department for Education’s internal review on PSHE, and whether she has argued the case for sexual consent and all forms of violence against women to be a compulsory part of the curriculum.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister hosted a summit on tackling the commercialisation and sexualisation of children and announced a range of policies, many of which I warmly welcome. However, amid the messages about consumer and parent power, there was an element missing: empowering young people themselves to be media literate and to cope with the bombardment of often inappropriate images. Although I recognise that the measures announced will go some way towards cutting down on the images that young people are exposed to—outside schools, for example—we can safely say that this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Like any parent, I absolutely understand the desire to protect our children, and one of the best ways of doing so is through specific education that allows young people to be more in control of their sexualisation, rather than being dictated to by the media or by advertising. There is no plan as yet, however, specifically to address that in schools.

Earlier, I noted that central Government cuts might undermine efforts being made to tackle violence against women and girls, and I am particularly concerned about cuts to legal aid. Informing women of their legal rights and giving them access to legal representation is one way of empowering them and of trying to protect them against violence. It can give them the information they need to stand up to their abuser. There are serious risk implications, therefore, for women who cannot access legal aid. By reducing women’s ability to access legal aid, the Ministry of Justice risks damaging work at the Home Office on preventing violence against women and girls, and I would love to know whether the Minister shares my concerns about that.

I also wonder whether the Minister is dismayed by the Home Secretary’s proposal to change the eligibility requirements under paragraph 289A—the domestic violence rule—of the immigration rules. That would mean that all applicants under the domestic rule must be free of unspent criminal convictions. That actively undermines the Government’s commitment to eliminate violence against women. Will the Minister contribute to the UK Border Agency consultation, and remind the Home Secretary about the coalition Government’s obligations and commitment to protect all women from domestic violence?

The Equality Trust points out that 24% of women in Britain are worried about rape and that all kinds of violence are more common in more unequal societies. It stands to reason that preventing violence against women and girls is closely linked to tackling inequality and other social injustices. As just one example of what happens if we fail to do that, Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, tells me that more than a third of girls in the youth justice system have experienced abuse and a quarter have witnessed violence at home. Of the more than 4,000 women currently serving a prison sentence, more than half report having suffered domestic violence and one in three have experienced sexual abuse. For the vast majority of those very vulnerable women, prison is not the answer, and that is why both I and the Howard League for Penal Reform support community solutions for non-violent women offenders. I am keen, therefore, to see the Government’s target interventions to ensure the prevention of violence against women and girls address intersections of gender with other social inequalities.

I stress that the Government’s work on preventing violence against women and girls needs to encompass an international perspective. Here, too, we see evidence of a lack of leadership and concerns about co-ordination. There are now a number of very welcome Government strategies that reference international violence against women and girls, so oversight of all the different processes is vital and, for maximum impact, the different strategies and policies across Government should be coherent and mutually reinforcing.

[Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)]

Is it not important to bring the international communities into this—the women and girls of different nationalities with different cultural backgrounds? The Prime Minister will be attending a conference in a couple of weeks’ time at which he should raise that point, so that we can get the international communities behind us.

[Caroline Lucas]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman’s important intervention.

At the highest level, a member of the National Security Council should have explicit responsibility for women, peace and security, to ensure that gender perspectives are taken into account in all discussions. Despite some references in the “Building Stability Overseas Strategy” document and in the UK national action plan for the implementation of UN Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security, violence against women and girls is still not fully recognised as either a foreign policy priority or a security matter. It is not recognised as both a cause and a consequence of conflict. When violent conflict occurs, violence against women and girls is not seen as a priority matter.

The UK Government must take a leadership role internationally, to ensure that preventing violence against women and girls stays on the international agenda. Globally, about one in three women or girls have been beaten or sexually abused in their lifetime, and 75% of the civilians killed in war are women and children, so I am keen to hear from the Minister what has been achieved, or what has changed in our approach to violence against women as a foreign policy issue, since she was appointed to the role of overseas champion about a year ago.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tessa Munt]

rose—

[Mr Virendra Sharma]

rose—

[Lynne Featherstone]

I will give way to the hon. Member for Lincoln (Karl MᶜCartney) and the hon. Member for Wells (Tessa Munt), but briefly, because I want to answer the questions asked by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lynne Featherstone]

I thank the hon. Lady for making that point.

I agree with the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion that prevention, which is one of the four key planks of our strategy, is extremely important. I assure her that my Department and I will bring as much pressure to bear as possible in discussions for the Department for Education to get a shift on with its consultation on personal, social and health education, which just finished and will be published in November. We regard it as vital, although we do not necessarily regard it as vital that it be statutory. We await the results of the consultation. I agree that young people’s attitudes and behaviour are vital, and that teachers need training in order to intervene successfully.

[Mr Virendra Sharma]

rose—

[Lynne Featherstone]

I am not taking any more interventions.

The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion mentioned the teenage relationship abuse campaign. It is one area on which we are spending money. The NSPCC research that she discussed is shocking. The abuse that teenagers seem to accept as normal—they think that it is okay to be treated like that—is the most frightening aspect. I do not know whether she has seen the films from the abuse campaign, but they are incredibly powerful and successful. The site has received more than 75,000 visits. It is not just about the film and the campaign; the purpose is to signpost young people towards help.

[Mr Sharma]

Will the Minister give way?

[Lynne Featherstone]

I will not. I am keen to answer the hon. Lady’s points, as it is her debate.

The hon. Lady asked me about my role of international champion in tackling violence against women and girls. The other half of that is policy coherence across Whitehall; it is in the job title. I assure her that when I came into the post in December, the first thing that I did was engage across Whitehall. Clearly, I will not be effective on my own in tackling worldwide violence against women and girls, unless I find a multiplier for the work that I am doing. I have done so, and have developed numerous messages on women and on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues. Travelling Ministers have agreed to take those messages to international meetings and raise them wherever they go. The issue at the moment is finding out who is going where and when, but it is an important step. I reassure the hon. Lady that I have nothing but support from the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for International Development. They are absolutely committed to the human rights agenda, and I argue that equal rights are human rights.

Immigration

Virendra Sharma Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Field]

I wish that the hon. Gentleman had put the full stop a little earlier in his intervention. I do not think it is for the Government to lay down the emotional or other circumstances in which people should marry. Given the success rate of marriages based on emotion, I do not think this country is in any position to lay down the rule that arranged marriages are a bad thing! I have not seen the figures, but I doubt whether we come off better in that respect. I will touch on the point later, as it is one area where I hope the Government will give us more idea about what they are thinking.

[Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)]

I disagree with the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh). I came to this country 42 years ago for an arranged marriage. I am still married to the same lady and still have my children, who are contributing to this country’s welfare.

[Mr Field]

I could not agree more. That is a valuable intervention. I would hope that in those 40-odd years, the sense of the community has developed. Although I think we should not put our sticky fingers into issues such as whether arranged marriages are suitable, quite a large number of people here are, in a sense, in the arranged marriage market. Much of the tension might dissipate if there were more arranged marriages from communities in this country rather than between people brought in from the Indian sub-continent. Unless those people have the ability to speak English, they might find that they are not treated in this country as we would wish them to be treated.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Field]

Yes, I made that point earlier.

[Mr Virendra Sharma]

A person who understands how arranged marriages are organised would not raise these questions. Does my right hon. Friend have any figures for the rate of unsuccessful arranged marriages, and what evidence does he have that bogus marriages are taking place in this country?

[Mr Field]

I do not have figures on that and, as my hon. Friend knows, that is a difficult set of data to get hold of, because those who have come here in an arranged marriage and who cannot speak English will find it difficult to register the fact that they might not be happy with the arrangements that they find here.

In no way do I want to give the impression that the way marriages have commonly been governed in this country comes down from Mount Sinai and is a proven recipe for success. We have only to look at the figures to see that that is not so. We ought to have a little charity when viewing other forms of contract which might well have equal, if not better, rates of success than our own established institutions.

Finally on this area of debate, I want to stress how important it is that the Government address where the electorate are on the issue. In their mind’s eye, they see people coming here to work then automatically getting the right to citizenship. That is the factor which is growing our population and that is the issue that people wish the Government to deal with. The more effectively they do so, the less heat there will be in the number of arrivals in any one year.

I wish to discuss two final things. First, and importantly, we cannot make sense of this debate without thinking about the programmes of Governments past and current on welfare reform and education. Under the stewardship of the previous Government, whom I was proud to support, more than 3 million jobs were created, largely in the private sector, but also in the public sector. Yet the number of men and women of working age claiming benefit during that period, when there was record growth in the economy and jobs, fell from 5.6 million to 5.2 million. So there was clearly a dysfunction between what we said we wanted to do on welfare reform and ensuring that those who benefited from those programmes were actually available for work.

Let us examine the latest figures. I know that the Government might say that they have been elected only recently and thus want to wash their hands of this, but they will not be able to continue to do that. The latest data show that we have had 126,000 new workers and the number of immigrant workers in this country now stands at 3.8 million, which is a record level. That has occurred while the number of British workers in work has fallen by 180,000. Clearly there is something wrong with our education system if we are still producing a large number of people who do not aspire or cannot aspire to the jobs that are so willingly taken by immigrants, who teach many of the host community what we used to mean by “the work ethic”. This is a chilling reminder. It is important for the Government not only to respond today on the numbers front, in which we are all interested, but to see the issue in the much wider context of welfare and educational reform.

We should rejoice in this debate, the nature of it and the number who wish to participate in it. However, until recently most of our electorate felt that we let them down and that an extraordinary change had been occurring in this country over the past 15 years. We had an open borders policy and a large number of people came into our community without our laying down any conditions about how they should perform and what sort of citizens they should be. That is why I am so anxious that nobody uses this debate to clobber people who came here, found that we were not terribly interested in how they got on in their lives and just conducted their lives as they wished, nobody having told them otherwise. There was a growing sense among people who felt part of this country, perhaps over some generations and not many, that the place they thought they were joining or growing up in was changing in a way that disturbed them. That sense of disturbance could have been put to one side had we had a debate.

However, what really galls my constituents is that something so fundamental as an open borders policy was conducted without any consultation of those on the receiving end: my constituents, those of my hon. Friends and those of Government Members. I am pleased that we are now able to have a rational debate and that all the interventions have been technical ones; none has disputed motives, as in previous attempts to conduct a debate. The debate has moved from one about principle—whether we oppose or wish to continue open borders—to one in which we all agree that it is about numbers and the rate of immigration. For that, I can say on behalf of my constituency, thank God.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

It is a huge pleasure and an honour to follow the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field). May I start with a word of tribute to him and to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames), who sadly is at a family funeral and very much regrets being unable to be with us? The way in which they have taken this issue of huge concern to people up and down the country, including many who are themselves of immigrant stock, detoxified it, moved us away from the old debates of the past and brought the real concerns of millions of ordinary people into this Chamber and the public domain cannot be commended too highly.

So many immigrants have made such a huge contribution to British life, economically as well as socially. Examples abound: the impact on manufacturing and culture of the influx of Huguenots, which was largely in response to the horrid repression under the Louis in the 17th century; the contribution of Jewish immigrants to banking and the rise of the supermarkets; and, post-war, the last-ditch rescue and transformation of so many small community shops, including my local village shop, by Indian families—it was just about to go bust, but is now a thriving venture.

Most debates have all too often focused on matters relating to assimilation. There are some issues to be raised in that regard but, like the right hon. Gentleman, I wish to focus almost exclusively on issues associated with numbers. Before doing so, I wish to make two wider points. The first is that I am extremely proud that my grandfather served in the Indian army. He did so in the first world war, but it is worth remembering that in the second world war, under the British Crown, the largest volunteer army in the history of mankind assembled, fought against the unspeakable evil of the Japanese army and prevented it from repeating the massacres of millions of people that had occurred in neighbouring China. This volunteer army was an organisation that brought together people from a wide range of ethnic groups and religions, and that has some lessons for us in terms of the importance of institutions and so on.

My second observation is that much of the current debate on immigration is poisoned by the fact that we have a legal culture in our courts which makes it very difficult to deport the small number of people who come here and grossly abuse the system. Every time a judge produces a fatuous ruling—I am not going to get into whether that is the fault of the judge or of the human rights legislation; it is a combination of both—that enables somebody who clearly should be deported to stay in this country, it builds up the far right, the extremists, and helps to build the tensions that it is so important for this country to move away from.

I wish to focus on four key issues relating to numbers and population density: the impact on our green footprint; the impact on housing; the impact on employment; and, finally, universities and English language schools. On the first, when I was the Opposition spokesman on aviation and shipping, I discovered a set of facts that, as far as I know, have not been in the public domain and which left me staggered. The right hon. Gentleman focused, as I shall for most of my speech, on net immigration, but this is a problem not only with immigration, but with emigration. By far the fastest growing category of flights in this country was not business flights, which had peaked when the recession came as socially conscious businesses moved towards video conferencing and so on, or holiday flights, which were still increasing, although not very quickly. The vast majority of the growth in aviation over the few years leading up to the recession was in a third category— the so-called visits to family and friends. The truth is that every time an individual moves here from a distant part of the world, or a British citizen leaves this country to go to all-too-often distant parts of the world, it creates a huge number of flights between family members.

In the last year for which I have seen figures, 32% of all flights from Heathrow reunited families and friends. It was a case of relatives visiting people who had come here, in almost all cases, completely legitimately, and those people living here visiting residents of the countries from which they originated, or of indigenous British people going off to visit granny in Sydney, for instance. We must recognise that the churn of population and the huge turnovers in it are having a huge effect on the growth of aviation. That factor has been left out of the debate.

[Mr Virendra Sharma]

Is the hon. Gentleman advocating that there should be no migration, no travelling and that people should not move from one place to another?

[Mr Brazier]

I have huge respect for the hon. Gentleman’s reputation. He was an active member of the Select Committee on Home Affairs for a long time and participated in a couple of interesting reports on this subject. He knows, of course, that that is not what I am recommending. Like the right hon. Member for Birkenhead, I am trying to say that numbers are critical. The heavy rates of churn that have taken place between countries over the past few years are among the key drivers in greenhouse emissions, but they are also a factor that has notably been left out of this debate.

[Mr Sharma]

I just want to correct the hon. Gentleman. I am neither a member of nor the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee—that is my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz).

[Mr Brazier]

I believed that the hon. Gentleman was a member of the Committee and I apologise if I am incorrect. I have certainly heard him talk sense on this subject in the past.

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[Chris Skidmore]

Absolutely. As individual Members of Parliament we each have a responsibility to our constituents to ensure that we have a fair but firm, and responsible, debate here and in the literature that we put out in our constituencies. I cannot comment on the recent case, but it obviously reflects that.

I talked about the British people, and I want to press this point. We must stand up for the interests of British people who have invested in this country—who have paid their taxes for years and funded our schools, our hospitals and our roads. We must fight on behalf of our constituents who go about their day-to-day business, getting on with their lives, and paying for our local services—indeed, paying for our salaries. That is our duty as legislators in this House and as constituency MPs.

[Mr Virendra Sharma]

The hon. Gentleman will no doubt agree that the migrant community has also contributed effectively for the past many years. I am not talking about general immigration, but people from the south-east Asian countries.

[Chris Skidmore]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point, which the right hon. Member for Birkenhead made very effectively. We are not here to criticise what happened decades before. There are many people who have arrived in this country, paid their taxes and who are British citizens. We are also standing up for and defending their rights when we debate how to control immigration.

It is not bigoted to be genuinely concerned about the future of our nation and its future generation—those young people who are in desperate need of jobs and employment. The hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) raised the issue of business. We need to listen to the voice of business if we are to succeed in bringing about an economic recovery, especially those in international industries who choose Britain as their base. That is why, when a cap is placed on immigration next year, we must be sure that those who are allowed into this country are only those whom this country needs and who have expertise from which we will benefit.

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[Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to take part in this debate, which is important to my constituents and the country as a whole. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) and the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) on securing it.

I want to make a couple of points absolutely clear. First, nobody on either side of the House or in our communities supports an open-door policy. As a community activist who served in local government for more than 28 years as an elected official, I can say with full confidence that nobody in this country supports that open-door policy. The second point concerns the fear of being accused of racism, from which this debate has grown. Everybody now wants to have a fair, mature and common-sense debate. I am sure that colleagues feel the same, and do not fear accusations of racism when they speak their minds. I do not think they will be so accused.

I state firmly and clearly that this country has benefited enormously from various waves of immigration over a very long time, and I was glad to hear, in this and previous debates, that everyone agrees. I am glad that nobody has contradicted that statement. My constituency is testament to the benefit of immigration. Over time, it has welcomed immigrants from all over the world—from Wales in the mid-19th century, Ireland at the turn of the century, the West Indies after world war two, and India, Pakistan and other south Asian countries in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. More recently, people from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Somalia and eastern Europe, including a large number of Poles, have joined the area. I am proud to represent such a rich and diverse constituency, with such an excellent record in economic entrepreneurship and business growth.

Before I discuss issues surrounding immigration and economic recovery, I would like to make some further, personal points about immigration. There are certain perceptions about the arranged marriage system. There are Members who feel that everybody who goes through the arranged marriage system uses it to enter a marriage of convenience. I have to say that all marriages are marriages of convenience, and not only for immigration.

I was born in a village called Mandhali, in the state of Punjab in India, and I came to this country 42 years ago, as a young man in an arranged marriage. I began my working life in this country as a bus conductor, and I have worked hard ever since, attending university on a trade union scholarship and eventually becoming a day centre manager for adults with learning disabilities, and entering this House three and a half years ago. My children were born and educated in this country, and along with their families they are now making a significant contribution to the communities where they live.

My experience is not atypical. Many of my contemporaries who arrived in this country at the same time I did took on jobs for which they were overqualified, but over the years they have built up businesses and advanced in their careers. Their children have succeeded in their education and are making major contributions in the professions and businesses of this country. That is the personal story of many of my constituents and many other immigrants to this country over many years, and it is a positive story. The House should not forget that.

I want to address a number of other issues that are relevant to both the country and my constituency. First, on border controls, the previous Government were moving in the right direction with the points-based system, but there were problems with that system and there still are. Restricting the numbers of specialist south Asian chefs to train people in this country is still a problem in my constituency and in many other parts of the country.

[Tom Brake]

I would like to draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to the Federation of Bangladeshi Caterers, whose president runs a restaurant in my constituency and whose approach to the issue is to work with the community in this country to ensure that people who are not in work can acquire the skills to work in their restaurants.

[Mr Sharma]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving that information. Many businesses are trying hard, but that same Bangladeshi restaurant owner or the chef working at that restaurant must have told him that it is not an easy profession to teach. It takes a long time to do a chef’s job properly, starting from an apprenticeship. I am not a chef—I am not a cook in general—but I understand the process that people have to go through, because I have seen it. They need an apprenticeship, but many young people in this country are not taking up the profession. In the face of that disadvantage, restaurant owners have no choice but to recruit people from the Indian subcontinent.

On the other Government policy—a cap on highly skilled migrants—it makes no sense to stop entrepreneurs coming to this country when we desperately need their skills to get us out of recession. I know that the Business Secretary understands that problem, but has he spoken to the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister about it? He should do, and quickly.

I am fully in favour of the UK Border Agency enforcing on businesses a requirement not to employ illegal workers, but I ask that that enforcement is intelligence-led and not disruptive to legitimately operating businesses. Many businesses in my constituency complain about insensitive raids by the UK Border Agency that are fruitless and harmful.

On visas for students from non-EU countries, I welcome the Government’s move to face-to-face interviews for prospective students from south Asia. That is necessary to stop bogus applications, but we must not stop genuine students coming to this country. Colleges in my constituency, such as Ealing, Hammersmith and West London college, are making a tremendous contribution to the London economy with many non-EU students.

In my constituency we have strong business connections with the growing Indian economy. I am glad that the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, and before them the previous Prime Minister, took a significant approach to build and to strengthen the relationship with India. That relationship should not be a one-way route. Investment and people are going not just from here to India; many investors from India are keen to come here and to invest. At present, Indian investors are the largest investors in this country. When we discuss immigration, we must also address those issues.

We act as an economic bridge to that rapidly growing world economic power. We must ensure that our immigration policies do not limit that huge economic opportunity by stopping highly skilled migrants from India working in the UK, or not allowing students from India and south-east Asia to come to this country on working holidays. The economic prize is great, and crucial for economic recovery. I urge the House to seize it.

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[Mr Lilley]

Absolutely. I was coming on to that issue, which requires intelligent debate and recognition that it is not a matter of “all or nothing”. The absurd idea that we should allow anybody who can be labelled a skilled worker to come here is wrong.

[Mr Virendra Sharma]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Lilley]

In a moment, as I want to finish answering the point that was raised.

I am not suggesting that certain categories of skilled workers could not be used during a temporary shortage while domestic employees were being trained, or that there could not be a skills transfer when the skills that were required could not, by their very nature, be acquired domestically or through training. We have traditionally allowed companies to import workers for the purposes of skills transfers when the skills concerned are company-specific.

Let us say that IBM is setting up a factory here. It has an IBM way of doing things. Initially, it will need to bring in the IBM accountant to show British accountants how to run the accounts and the financial system. Those running the production line may have to bring in IBM production engineers to train British engineers in their ways of doing things. It is not possible to buy such company-specific skills on the market; they must be imported temporarily. However, because the people who have transferred the skills invariably return, the transfer does not result in net migration. That is very different from allowing cheap skills into this country.

In a blog that is influential in the IT industry—here I declare an interest—the author of the Holway report constantly hammers home the fact that we are moving slowly towards circumstances in which fewer and fewer entry-level jobs are available in the industry. Last year 9,000 skilled IT workers were brought into the country by a handful of companies under the intra-company transfer scheme. That is not transferring skills from a company to domestic residents; it is importing cheap labour. However, we allow it, although as a result the IT sector has one of the highest rates of unemployment in industry. The Government must think seriously about the issue, and must not form policy on the basis of slogans such as “Skilled work is good” and “Open border to skilled workers”. That is not good in the long run if it means that fewer of those who are already here acquire skills, experience and expertise.

[Mr Lilley]

My hon. Friend’s intervention prompts a number of questions. For instance, why do we not train people?

For a while I was chairman of a small German company as a result of a merger, and the first thing that we did was bring in British employees to train its employees. It is considered automatic: every company, even a small company with only 200 employees, trains people. Sadly, that culture does not exist in this country. All that we think of doing is importing people from abroad, or possibly stealing them from our competitors down the road. At least if we steal them from our competitors down the road, we have to bid up the salaries for the particular skill involved. We encourage more people to acquire that skill, and as a result increase the number of people with such skills in our economy. However, the idea that we should assume passively that this country alone in the world cannot train people to acquire skills that semi-developed countries seem to be able to train their people to acquire strikes me as a defeatism that is sad and deplorable.

I hope we will recognise that there are some skills that we should allow into the country: entrepreneurial skills, for example, I rather doubt whether entrepreneurship can be taught. Some people are natural entrepreneurs while others are not. That is fair enough: if someone has proven success as an entrepreneur abroad, we should let him in, with some of the capital that he has acquired. Only a small number of people will be involved, however. That is not mass immigration. It will generate a lot of jobs and it is a sensible thing to do, so let us do it. However, we must distinguish between those sorts of skills and the sorts of skills we can enable the existing population of all ethnic origins to acquire, so that the well-being of those already here improves.

[Mr Virendra Sharma]

First, let me say that I take the recent sedentary comment of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) as a compliment, rather than something negative. The right hon. Gentleman agrees that there is a skills gap within the work force at present, and to fill that gap we need workers coming from overseas because we cannot train people here overnight or in a short period. We need to address both ends of this issue by filling the gaps now from overseas while training the work force here for the future.

[Mr Lilley]

Yes, and that would imply the following policy: if a company says, “No one in this country yet has expertise in—”[Interruption.] Yes, in electric cars, as the hon. Member for Burnley (Gordon Birtwistle) suggests. I do not know whether that is the case, but if it is we might have to introduce that expertise from overseas in the short term, but the understanding should be that that is in order to transfer the expertise to the domestic population, rather than because we have given up on the domestic population ever learning the skills to make electric cars. It should be short-term immigration, not long-term immigration.

[Mr Sharma]

I do not think that anybody is advocating that the work force here should not be trained. However, there is a skills gap in the work force and we need to fill it otherwise we will suffer economically.

[Mr Lilley]

Yes, but above all we need to fill it by training people up. That is what countries that grow and prosper do, and we have got to learn to do it too.