Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Northover Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 22nd July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover (LD) [V]]

My Lords, it is clear from the Minister’s introduction that she knows how damaging the Bill is. The Government deploy a circular argument. They say they are delivering on the referendum result, and that immigration was a factor in that result, as if members of the Government had not been the ones who helped persuade the British public that leaving the EU was a good idea, and that there were risks of huge increases in immigration if we did not.

We have been clapping for NHS, social care and other essential staff. The Government are belatedly realising how important they are. It is specious for the Government now to say what they are saying about pay in the social care sector when they have not addressed it in funding. What will they say when those helping to underpin, for example, our virtual system, leave? Will they say that they just did not know? There are so many others in so many other sectors, from agriculture to warehouse distribution. We depend on the City of London for the tax revenues required for the NHS and social care, let alone the so-called levelling up of the north. Yet here the City of London is undermined.

We are in the middle of a pandemic, with things likely to get worse this winter. We choose this moment to fail to secure a deal with the EU that keeps us in the customs union and the single market, or any but the most basic of arrangements, further damaging our better businesses. Then we make it worse by introducing this immigration system into an economy which, prior to coronavirus, had record levels of employment. The Bill gives business totally inadequate time to prepare. Why is so much in secondary legislation, which is so difficult to scrutinise? It shows how unprepared the Government are that they are seeking to do it this way. They are beginning to realise the unintended consequences of their system.

The Chancellor said that he was not driven by ideology. He has recognised the support required for our economy. If only his colleagues in the Home Office could be as pragmatic, and spend their time protecting the country from the effects of that referendum. The proposed new system is deeply damaging to Britain, to the British economy and to those whom the Government say they wish to help.