Andrew Selous
Main Page: Andrew Selous (Conservative - South West Bedfordshire)Department Debates - View all Andrew Selous's debates with the Home Office
(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
10. What progress the Government has made in reducing the level of immigration.
Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)
15. What steps she is taking to reduce the level of immigration.
The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I will answer question 10 together with what I profoundly hope is question 15 on the Order Paper.
The Government introduced reforms to economic migration, including a limit, from April this year, and we have begun to implement significant changes to the student visa system. We are also consulting on changes to family migration, to break the link between work and settlement, and on overseas domestic workers. Taken together, those measures present a comprehensive package to tackle abuse and reduce net migration.
Andrew Selous
The Government’s immigration objectives have widespread support across the House and across the country. What is the Minister doing, however, to tackle the links between temporary and permanent migration into this country?
Damian Green
Along with the list I just read out, that is a long-term issue that we are tackling. Our consultation on employment-related settlement, which was published on 9 June, sets out proposals for breaking the link between work and settlement, including making the skilled migrants route, tier 2, a primarily temporary one. One problem that this country has had is that people come here and are not sure whether they are on a permanent or temporary route. That problem does not affect most countries’ immigration systems, and we are determined to drive it out from our country’s system as well.
Mrs May
As the right hon. Lady knows, chief constables will be making decisions about particular local operations that they wish to undertake, but the Government are giving much greater power to the police to deal with serious organised crime through the creation, in due course, of the national crime agency. We touch far too few organised crime groups in the UK. Organised crime costs this country £30 billion to £40 billion a year. The NCA will help to tackle that.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
Following this weekend’s utterly despicable revelations of the way in which 24 of my constituents have been kept as slaves, some for 15 years, may I wholeheartedly commend the robust action of Bedfordshire police in bringing that to light and putting it right? Will the Government please pay particular attention to the issue of internal trafficking in the United Kingdom, given that 17 of those 24 slaves were British citizens?
Damian Green
I am sure the whole House will share my hon. Friend’s disgust at something that came as a shock to many of us. He is right. What we saw was effective police action, co-ordinated in many ways by the Serious Organised Crime Agency. As he knows, the new national crime agency will have among its functions co-ordinating activity against trafficking, both domestic and international, which will give us a much more effective way of combating such particularly vile crime.