Brexit: UK-EU Movement of People (EUC Report)

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I join in the appreciation of—even acclamation for—this report from the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, and her colleagues. It is a very difficult subject and I congratulate them on producing it.

An earlier contributor to the debate said that it is obvious that the scale of immigration must be reduced. That is complete nonsense: nothing is obvious about the whole process of Brexit. I voted for Brexit but I did not vote to stop the free movement of EU nationals or to stop migration to Britain. That was not my aim. I probably voted for the £350 million to go back to the NHS, although that is not looking likely at the moment with this Government. I say that to demonstrate that, although millions of people voted to exit the EU, you cannot make assumptions about the things that they believed at the time. There simply was not a proper debate and everybody probably had their own view of what it meant to exit the EU.

I think that EU migration and wider immigration has been fantastic for Britain. It has brought us new ideas, new energy, dynamism and perhaps even a bit of cultural understanding of other nations. Whether migration is to or from this country, it is a very healthy thing for us as a nation to have. To me, Britain is an outward-facing, warm, welcoming and kind country to people. Some come here to work, some come as tourists, some are fleeing famine and wars—wars that we might have been instrumental in waging—and perhaps some are fleeing climate change disasters to which we have contributed. As a nation which consumes a huge amount of resources, we have a duty to people who flee here when their resources are reduced because of our greed.

YouGov polling today has shown that 69% of people support free movement within the EU. That is mainly because they want reciprocal relations, but 69% of people think that free movement within the EU is a good thing, and we have to keep that in mind when we think of the movement of people generally.

We have to recognise that immigration can change our communities. It can be very frightening and have quite a strong impact on some communities. It is the Government’s job to keep us secure and safe, to explain the situation to communities, and to help immigrants or migrants to assimilate, to join in and to have a secure lifestyle here. However, the Government are doing the opposite. They have suggested that the lack of GPs or school places can be blamed on immigration. That is scandalous and irresponsible, as well as blatantly untrue. If you meet a migrant in the NHS, they are much more likely to be treating you than to be ahead of you in the queue. The head of NHS England said today that he will recruit more than 2,000 GPs from abroad to meet the NHS’s staffing targets. Therefore, clearly the NHS sees the value of migration and immigration.

The lies about immigration mean that the real problems facing our communities are not solved. The grinding poverty that many communities face is simply swept aside because this other issue predominates. Instead, we have scapegoating and tough-sounding rhetoric. We have to make our immigration system fairer and more humane. We have to end immigration detention, scrap the minimum income rules for visas and make family reunion easier.

I and, I know, a lot of other people were extremely embarrassed that the Government did not immediately give EU nationals the right to remain. It made us look very mean. It is something that we will have to agree to in any case, so why not do it out of generosity of spirit rather than be forced into it? These people have made their lives here in good faith, and allowing those lives to be turned upside down, with many people leaving, is irresponsible of our Government. They have used these people as bargaining chips, which is a very unpleasant thing for them to have done.

I am not sure where we are on the Tory aim of introducing a cap of 100,000 on the number of immigrants. I know that the Tories have tried to achieve this quite often. I try to stay up with the news but politics is fast moving at the moment and I do not know where we are on that. However, such a cap would be arbitrary and very damaging to our society. We need movement of people—that is healthy. The cap is based on the premise that migrants are damaging to our economy but that simply is not true. They are damaging neither to our economy nor to our society.

The noble Lord, Lord Judd, gave us some cautionary words about evidence. I am now going to cite some facts, which many people do very selectively; I am going to do the same. A third of doctors are foreign born. There are 55,000 EU nationals in the English NHS alone. On international students, stricter rules could cost our economy £2 billion, and counting them as immigrants is absolutely wrong. These people pay a lot of money for their education and one hopes that they will always have a kind view of our country. We have heard previous speakers talking about agriculture, financial services, construction, farming and universities, but other areas to bear in mind are hospitality, catering and social care. Combined, those employed in all those sectors make up 34% of all EU nationals currently working in the UK. Furthermore, net migration to the UK dropped to 273,000 in the year to September, which was down nearly 50,000 compared with the previous year.

I find it hard to believe that the Government of the country that I live in and work so hard for have been so inept at handling this whole issue. They have not just handled it badly but lied about the impact of migrants and immigrants on our society and economy. We do not hear enough about the benefits that migrants bring. It seems to me that that is the Government’s job and they are not doing it at the moment. The whole anti-immigrant narrative has been very nasty and difficult to challenge. Many in this House have challenged it but, sadly, the Government have not picked up on that. I think that the UK will be much worse off without the free movement of people.

Finally, clearly this House will have an opportunity in the future to take the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill and amend it for the better. We have it in our power—we have enough experts in this House—to make sure that it is a better Bill than the one the Government have produced. I think that we should join together across parties and vote down the worst aspects of the Bill. I very much hope that this House will demonstrate to the Government that they simply cannot pass legislation that is so cruel and inappropriate.