Draft Immigration Skills Charge (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2022 General Committees

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

I will be brief. It would be remiss of me not to point out that we would not have labour and skills shortages, and would not have to be constantly tinkering with immigration rules, if we were still in the single market. I often hear Members on the Government Benches say, “Stop going on about it; you are living in the past.” Of course, that is not the case for Scotland: we plan to be back in the single market. [Interruption.] Is that a “Hear, hear”? I welcome the support.

[Mrs Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

Give them the euro. That will go down well.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I have no idea what the hon. Lady is talking about.

[Mrs Wheeler]

Well, you can’t have the pound, can you?

[Anne McLaughlin]

Is that acceptable, Ms Fovargue?

[The Chair]

Is the hon. Lady seeking to intervene?

[Mrs Wheeler]

indicated dissent.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I will try to be courteous. I will support the regulations, but I do not support the skills charge. As we discussed last week in Westminster Hall, there are massive shortages in heavy goods vehicle drivers, food processing workers, nurses and doctors. The health services of all four nations have significant problems, including bed-blocking: people who could go home are unable to, because of the shortage of social care workers. We have a shortage of workers in hospitals. I cannot support any barrier to getting people over here to fill those shortages, but I support a reduction in those barriers, as with the exemptions in the regulations. I would just like those exemptions to go a bit further.

There is one last thing, to which I would appreciate a positive response from the Minister. In this House, we constantly hear negatives about migrants in general and migrant workers: “There are too many of them; we need fewer of them.” Of course, I completely support putting more into training and upskilling people who are already here, but our health service would collapse without migrant workers. We cannot just dispense with them once we have trained everybody up. I invite the Minister to say something positive about migrant workers and the contribution that they make to the United Kingdom’s economy. I invite her to acknowledge—as I think she is doing by saying that we need to train people here—how necessary they are to our economy.

[Shailesh Vara]

I note the hon. Lady’s comments about migrants coming to this country. However, does she agree that we must deplore the way that thousands of them come to this country—by using people smugglers, who risk lives?

[Anne McLaughlin]

I did not know that we were allowed to go off on a tangent. This is getting into an argument about how people come to this country. We are talking about migrant workers; asylum seekers are not allowed to work.

[Shailesh Vara]

On a point of order, Ms Fovargue. I was simply taking up an issue that the hon. Member for Glasgow North East raised. If I am out of order, presumably she is as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Order. Can we move back to the discussion, please?

[Anne McLaughlin]

I am in the governing party’s bad books today, somehow; I do not know what I have done. Would I say that vile people smugglers should be stopped from treating people in the way that they do? Absolutely. Will the Government’s plan to stop them work? Absolutely not. They are victimising people who are already victims of people smugglers. There is more to do on that, but we are talking about migrant workers. Asylum seekers, for some unknown reason, are not allowed to work. We need workers and they need work, but we do not let them work. I again invite the Minister to say something positive about migrant workers.