Immigration and Asylum

Bob Seely Excerpts

1st reading
Wednesday 22nd May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision for the annual approval by the House of Commons of maximum numbers in respect of immigration and asylum; to provide that asylum may only be granted to individuals identified as refugees by the UN Refugee Agency, other than in specified circumstances; and for connected purposes.

I am delighted to be bringing in this Bill. The British people want Parliament and their representatives to get to grips with immigration, both illegal and legal. That is a widespread conviction held by constituents across parties and across regions. According to YouGov, 64% of voters think immigration has been too high over the last 10 years, and only 6% believe it has been too low. On the Island, according to my most recent survey of 2,000 constituents, it is the second most important issue after the NHS. My Bill helps to reinforce parliamentary sovereignty, encourages transparency in decision making and focuses responsibility on Members of Parliament, and in doing so helps to restore faith in Government and in Parliament.

We have made a considerable success of immigration in the past 50 years, in the post-war period, and there is an accepted case that moderate migration is a good thing for our country. I am hugely proud to be English and British, but I am half-immigrant myself; I do not necessarily think of myself often in those terms, but my mum ended up in Dresden in a displaced persons camp after world war two. For two centuries, her ancestors came from the Russian empire. They were a mix of German and, as I understand it, Polish and Ukrainian ancestry and farmed near Zhitomir, 60 miles west of Kyiv. The other half of me is solidly English.

Wherever we come from, however, there is a shared sense that migration should be moderate and controlled. This Government are doing more than any other in recent years; we hear today that the removals of illegal people are up 25%. The Rwanda scheme is due to start later this year, whatever people think of it, and we have growing numbers of return agreements with other nations, but I think we need something more permanent, because all of that requires political will.

For me, the only way that ultimately we will solve this issue and give our voters and our constituents confidence in it is for Parliament to take responsibility on itself to set annual legal limits for legal migration, including for asylum. The only way MPs will be serious about this issue is if we have to look our constituents in the eye and explain our actions. There will be no hiding behind quangos or behind agencies.

My Bill would require the Government to present a figure or range of figures to Parliament. MPs would have access to the same data, so that we and the British people could see what each figure would deliver in terms of costs and benefits and what the effect would be on housing, on public services, on the economy and on social cohesion. It is extraordinary that the debate has happened thus far without reference to many of those important issues, as if somehow immigration can be debated without talking about housing, education or healthcare provision.

Either way, at the end of the day, MPs will own that figure and they will have to explain it to their constituents. That is called democracy, and in my mind it is a good thing. If there are emergencies, such as Hong Kong or Ukraine, Ministers can come back and ask for a waiver for specific numbers, in line with our international obligations. The critical point here is that I am not stipulating a figure or plucking one out of thin air. This is the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, which I would have thought we should all as parliamentarians want to support.

In theory, the Labour party could say, “We want 1 million-plus a year on migration.” The Lib Dems—they are meant to be here to oppose this Bill, but they are so concerned about it that I cannot see a single one of them here to speak in opposition—or the SNP, who are here in force, could suggest 2 million. In theory, Parliament can decide what it wants; this Bill is about giving power back to Parliament.

For me, this debate touches on wider issues about parliamentarians passing their powers and responsibilities to others. In scandal after scandal, we see experts failing and politicians effectively having to cover for them, whether it is the Post Office scandal or the contaminated blood scandal. The answer is not less power to Parliament, or more quangos or experts; it is more debate, more scrutiny and more transparency, so that people can see what is happening in their name, and they can test and judge the people who make those decisions.

Granted, if there were a Conservative Government, the practical outcome of my Bill would be to lower legal migration from its current levels to something—dare I say it—in line with our manifesto commitments. However, it would also allow greater thought on what our nation wants and needs. My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O'Brien) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), in their excellent Centre for Policy Studies report, demolished many of the lazy arguments about migration, such as that it is automatically associated with economic growth—arguably, the era of mass migration has seen slower economic growth per capita. We know it exacerbates pressure on social and other housing and health services. By historical standards, our build rate is pretty healthy at the moment, but it is dwarfed because of the high net migration.

My Bill would force us to think whether we really need to grant visas for jobs British people could do with encouragement or higher wages. One of the great ironies of this debate is that large-scale immigration comes at the price of suppressing wages of some of the poorest people in this country. One would have thought that the SNP, the Lib Dems and the Labour party, who profess to care for working people, would consider some of those arguments. Rather than hoovering up computer programmers, doctors, dentists and care workers from other countries, why not train up some more ourselves?

My Bill would also make civil servants think more carefully about getting the numbers correct. The Department of Health and Social Care forecast that 6,000 people would use the health and social care visa route. In fact, 146,000 people did last year, with 203,000 dependants—a population one and a half times the size of Portsmouth. We need to think about the impact of the decisions we are making when civil servants are getting the numbers so phenomenally, dramatically wrong.

I would like to touch briefly on asylum as well. We have granted asylum to nearly half a million people since 2015—an extraordinary number. There are nine safe and legal routes into this country; there were 10 at the time, because that included Syria. However, to prevent a pull factor and to ensure that people have confidence that refugees are refugees, I would like this Bill to have all refugees coming via United Nations programmes.

I do not think that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees behaved particularly well on the Rwanda ruling, but it is still the only global body that looks after refugees. My plan would see our country take only bona fide UN-approved refugees that come from genuinely war-torn areas. Again, that would strengthen people’s confidence in the system and give the added benefit of cutting back on our own asylum system, which, I am sad to say, is increasingly unfit for purpose. What sane system gives 50% of people from Albania asylum when they come from a safe European country? It is simply not credible.

My Bill enhances democracy, accountability and transparency—that is certainly its intention. I am grateful that SNP Members have turned up, and I wish the Liberals had—apparently they were also going to speak against the motion—but I say respectfully to those who oppose the Bill that they are opposing parliamentary scrutiny, opposing the handing back of powers to Members of Parliament and opposing transparency, and they are setting themselves against the will of the people of Scotland and Britain. We need more transparency in our national decision making; we need to question civil servants and experts more, not less; and we need greater scrutiny and a bigger role for Parliament to allow MPs and the public a level of scrutiny that enables good government. That is the purpose of the Bill: to give Parliament the power to set migration numbers.

The British people want a fair but robust immigration system. They are right. My new law would deliver that and ensure that we, Members of Parliament, are answerable to our people.