Immigration

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

I shall briefly address two issues, tier 1 workers and intra-company transfers, and following your guidance, Mr Deputy Speaker, will give climate change and air travel a wide berth.

It is already clear that the Government’s cap, as originally formulated, does not fit, and once again a headline-grabbing policy that went down very well with the tabloid press has turned out to be far from straightforward. As many Governments have found in the past and will no doubt find in the future, ill-thought-out policies have a habit of unravelling, and the cap is a perfect example. To be fair, some members of the Government, in particular the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, made it clear some time ago that the cap would be unworkable and dangerous to business in its original form. He said:

“A lot of damage is being done to British industry”

and the quota was wrongly fixed.

Unfortunately, those warnings went unheeded, and only yesterday—at the eleventh hour—did the Prime Minister lay the ground for a muddled retreat. How far that retreat will go remains unclear, but recent announcements suggest that some areas are finally being looked at. The problem is that the Government just do not want to admit that their policy is wrong, and badly wrong. I am sure that many hon. Members will have been lobbied by local businesses that are concerned about how the policy—in respect of tier 1 workers, in particular—will impact on them.

The popular press would like us to believe that workers who come to the UK are largely unskilled and easily replaceable with unemployed UK workers—presumably ending unemployment overnight. If only the situation were so straightforward, because the truth is very different. Tier 1 workers, in particular, are important, highly skilled individuals who are key to the well-being and growth of many businesses.

Many employers tell me that, despite advertising vacancies nationally as well as locally, they are unable to recruit people with the required skills. Indeed, in some cases, despite advertising nationally, they have not received any applications at all. I shall cite one example that illustrates the issue perfectly. Comtek is a high-end, knowledge-based company located on Deeside, and Mr Sheibani, who owns the company, wrote to me saying that he has found it impossible to recruit well-trained, qualified and skilled engineers. He said:

“We have been trying very hard to recruit engineers locally and from other parts of the UK. The vast majority of highly skilled people are reluctant to relocate. In July and September this year we did a presentation to 20 skilled telecoms engineers in Belfast who were about to be made redundant from their jobs. We offered all of them employment in Deeside with exactly the same salary as they were getting from their bankrupt employer plus free accommodation. None of them were prepared to move.”

He went on:

“In contrast Tier One skilled workers are very mobile and prepared to relocate, they are resourceful and enthusiastic”.

But Mr Sheibani’s key point was that

“for every tier 1 engineer we recruit we employ four trainee technicians or apprentices from the locality.”

He has made it very clear that, if he were unable to recruit those tier 1 workers, he would be unable to expand his business in the UK. Comtek’s work force has doubled in recent years, and the company pays many millions of pounds into the UK economy, but he would not be able to employ those local apprentices who, after training, attain the required skills.

By chance, just across the road from Comtek is the Toyota engine plant on Deeside. On that site and at Toyota’s car assembly plant in Burnaston, Derbyshire, the firm directly employs more than 3,500 people. It invests more than £1.85 billion and exports more than 85% of its production, and I am sure we all want to encourage such companies to grow and invest further in the UK. Toyota uses a small number of ICTs, mainly from Japan, who are vital to technology transfer and the development and implementation of new products.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Like the hon. Gentleman, we all want this country to accept the brightest and the best, but he has not referred to the fact that 29% of tier 1 entrants have been found to be working in jobs such as pizza deliverers or security guards. Will he comment on where tier 1 has gone wrong?

[Mark Tami]

I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point that, in some aspects, tier 1 has gone wrong, but we should not put the whole thing in the bin and say, “We are going to introduce a blanket ban at some point when we reach some quota that is made up as we go along.” I accept that there are problems, but I am discussing a company that directly employs and pays such workers; they do not come to this country to look for work.

ICTs are not a substitute for trained local employees. In fact, they are quite the reverse, because the vast majority of ICTs are trainers themselves who train local employees. They have helped Toyota to improve the productivity of its UK plants, which have become some of the company’s leading plants throughout the world. I am sure that we all applaud that. The ICTs are paid by Toyota; they pay taxes locally and pay money into the local economy; and they have helped to create and maintain many thousands of jobs, as well as to help our export efforts.

I asked a question in Business, Innovation and Skills questions today, because, although I welcome the statement about ICTs, I know there is still a feeling that, given the levels being discussed, the policy is being made up as we go along. We have to clear up the situation as quickly as possible, because many companies are worried about exactly how it will work. Toyota employs 3,500 people in the UK, but throughout the entire business it employs on average only 50 ICTs each year.

I am concerned, because those ICTs are key workers, and if we say to Toyota and other companies, “At some point, you will not be able to site the key workers who do that very important work,” we will affect their decisions about whether to invest more money. I accept that it is probably a marginal decision, but if it is a close call, those companies might start to think, “Should we put our money here or somewhere else?” Somewhere else might mean somewhere prepared to make those guarantees.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

I start by thanking the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) for arranging this debate and the Backbench Business Committee for allowing it. For the first time, as Members of Parliament, we can have an open and frank discussion about the levels of immigration in this country, and that is long overdue.

During the general election and long before, the high levels of immigration allowed by the previous Government were—and they remain—one of the biggest issues for my constituents in Kingswood. Yet, as has been mentioned in the excellent contributions so far in this debate, people have been afraid to discuss this crucial issue, which, happily, we are now beginning to address. Why is that? It is because people have been concerned about being viewed as intolerant—as bigots, even—if they raise the issue of immigration publicly. We all know that Britain is not a bigoted nation. The British people are not and have never been bigots.

It is not bigoted to be genuinely concerned about how our local schools might cope with increasing school rolls or about how teachers can keep discipline with several different languages being spoken in the classroom. It is not bigoted to be genuinely concerned about the pressures being placed on the NHS by population expansion and how local hospital services will cope with the increased demands placed on them. Nor is it bigoted to be genuinely concerned about how all our local services—our infrastructure—might be able to cope with an increased population.

As the right hon. Member for Birkenhead illustrated well, that is where the heart of the debate lies. How can we as a nation cope with the additional pressures that mass immigration might bring? It is clear to me that we can no longer cope in the current financial circumstances.

[Andrew Selous]

I agree with every word that my hon. Friend has said, but will he add to the list of good reasons for having this debate? If the mainstream parties do not debate this issue in a sensible and moderate manner, we feed the extremists. If our constituents do not see us discussing the issue sensibly, they will go to the extreme parties that we all dislike.