Immigration Bill

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Commons Chamber

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

It is important that we adopt a moderate tone, as immigration is an issue that can all too easily inflame passions. I agree strongly with the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson). If we do not debate the difficult issues on immigration in this House, we cede the territory to nasty extremist groups and we must never do that. We must be prepared, albeit with our different points of view, to debate and discuss these issues in this House in a measured and reasonable manner, and that is what I hope to do.

If we look back over the 20th century, we see that for much of that time the numbers migrating into and emigrating from the United Kingdom were roughly in balance. From the 1960s to the early 1990s, the number of emigrants was actually often greater than the number of immigrants—a net population decline. What has happened in the past two decades? Immigration has exceeded emigration by more than 100,000 every year since 1998—a significant historical departure from the 20th century and many periods before then. It is important for us to recognise that.

Turning to the Bill, I am in complete agreement with the need to speed up the removal of illegal immigrants who have absolutely no further basis to stay in the United Kingdom. That is important, both for the credibility of the immigration system and for the people themselves. It is no life at all to live in a type of limbo not knowing one’s status, or, if one does know one’s status, carrying on being in the United Kingdom when one cannot really make a life or plan for the future. If someone has no basis to stay in this country, it is right for them to return voluntarily to their home country or, if necessary, be forcibly deported by the Government. I know that the Government will take greater steps in this area: frankly, the delays are often too long. As the Home Secretary said in her opening speech, we need swift enforcement. That is very important.

I agree with the point made in an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley), who mentioned the original predictions about immigration from the A8 European Union countries—13,000 was the original figure, I think, but the reality was many hundreds of thousands, and people lost confidence in the Government’s ability to predict immigration numbers. I welcome what the Home Secretary said about dealing with the pull factors regarding Romanian and Bulgarian immigration, which will become an issue from the start of next year.

One measure in the Bill will deal with people accessing the national health service when they have no right to do so. Many of my constituents come to me and say, “We have a national health service, not a world health service.” Last January, the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Local Medical Committee—the group that represents GPs in my area—wrote to the Immigration Minister. I will quote briefly from that letter to show the type of issues they were begging the Minister to deal with, and to which he has now provided an answer.

“One very typical recent case is where a local Pakistani-born resident, registered with a Luton GP, had his parents, visiting on a six months visitor’s visa, staying with him. Both parents have a number of on-going chronic illnesses that include diabetes and coronary heart disease; they had arrived in the country with far too few tablets to cover the duration of their stay. Because they have moved in with their son, who was well known to the GP concerned, the GP not only felt that she had an ethical duty to provide further care and medication for the parents, but she knew that the doctor/patient relationship with the son would be destroyed if she refused. Another local GP has thousands of patients on his list who entertain friends and relatives from Pakistan, India and other…countries and who come to England for the sole purpose of accessing free health care.”

That comes not from me but from the leader of local GPs in my area, who are asking the Government to take action on this issue. I am glad that the Minister and the Government have responded to that concern; they were right to do so.

Under the previous Government, one of my constituents who was unemployed and looking for work sent me a very angry e-mail. She was angry because during her job search she had come across an advertisement for a picker-packer job on the minimum wage. There was a condition, however, because she—or any applicant—had to speak Polish. At the time I raised the issue in the House with the then Solicitor-General, the former Member for Redcar, and various actions were taken. People agreed that such advertisements were not right, and I would have liked clear action to have been taken to state that such actions were illegal. I think such a condition was absolutely wrong for a minimum wage job—a picker-packer—when there was no requirement to deal with Poland. How can our constituents find work fairly if they have to compete with such issues?

Two years ago, the UK Border Agency mounted a raid on a major factory in my constituency. It found a number of illegal immigrants and that employer was dealt with. Again, our constituents have to deal with such issues daily. They are competing for jobs in the labour market against people who either have no right to be here, or, in some cases, their employers make an utterly unreasonable—and frankly disgraceful—requirement that they should speak a foreign language to do a minimum wage job.

This is about being fair to British jobseekers of all races. That is important as we are all concerned to ensure that our constituents have a fair chance of getting into the labour market.

I support the measures in the Bill on proper checks to ensure that illegal immigrants—people who have no basis of stay in this country—cannot carry on living here. That includes checks involving landlords, banks, the NHS, which I have mentioned, and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency. Most of my constituents would say that the measures are right and express incredulity that they have not been taken before, as my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) said in an intervention on the Home Secretary.

I give the Bill a strong welcome. Many of my constituents raise immigration issues regularly. They want them debated in the House of Commons. They want their views and concerns to be expressed. I believe that the Bill goes some way to restoring faith and credibility in our immigration system, which is very welcome.