Legal and Illegal Migration: Suspension

Carla Denyer Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)]

I am grateful to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I usually say how pleased I am to speak in a debate, but I have to admit that I am conflicted about being here today because I could not disagree more strongly with the petition’s demands. And yet, the thousands who have signed it have rightly identified that we face deep challenges in this country, and that people are being badly let down and are struggling. Those who have signed the petition want answers. They want politicians like us to take bold, decisive action that will genuinely change people’s lives for the better. Let me be very clear: stopping migration is not the answer to that problem—in fact, it is the opposite. But we do nobody any favours by pretending that the problems are not there.

The petition captures a view of migration that I fundamentally disagree with, but the view is clearly widespread, so I want to directly address the many people who have signed the petition and all those who feel frustrated, left behind and ignored. I want to give another view of the problems that we face as a country and give people another way forward—one that is determined to change things for the better, that is positive in the face of negativity, and that resolutely stands up to those spreading misinformation and prejudice from wherever it comes.

I will start with the positive. I am proud to represent Bristol Central, which is apparently the most pro-immigration constituency in the country. I know that that feeling is not universal across the UK, so I want to explain why I and so many of my constituents feel that way. The truth is that migration is good for this country. People come from across the world because they want to be part of our communities. They do vital work, as has been discussed, in our hospitals, schools and GP surgeries. They care for our children and our grandparents. They start businesses and create jobs. They pay tax and give to charity.

If we look at Spain, we see that, last year, its economy grew by five times the eurozone average and more than the US. Why? Because by welcoming immigration, its Government boosted demand in the economy and filled their labour shortages. Economic growth is not the best measure of the benefit to citizens, and I will come to that in a moment, but to pretend that migration is a problem and not an opportunity does a disservice to people who have grown up here and people who have chosen to make the UK their home.

The Government’s economics watchdog tells us that higher migration leads to lower Government deficits and debt. Instead of grasping the huge opportunity presented by people moving here to be part of our communities and contribute to our economy, the Government are subjecting immigrants to harsh arbitrary visa restrictions, forcing many to leave their families behind—one man’s economic dependence is another man’s children—and pushing many into jobs, such as in the care sector, where they are at risk of very poor treatment because they are under threat of deportation at any time.

A lot of people feel very protective of this country, and so do I. We should want to protect this country, our home, and a place where so many incredible things have been invented and created. We have such a strong culture, with inventions from the electric motor and penicillin to the first ever website—although arguably that has had some cons as well as pros. The UK is a wonderfully creative culture and economy. It has the most beautiful countryside and the most talented people. We should be proud and protective of this country, and I want to be, but who are we protecting this country against? Who does it need protecting from?

I agree with the petitioners when they say that

“we can’t even look after the people we have here at the moment”,

but why is that? It is absolutely true that people and powers in this country are making life harder for a lot of Brits—they are making it harder for families to feed their children, pay the bills, get a doctor’s appointment, get on the housing ladder, or even get a council house. But that is not the people who have moved to the UK from elsewhere; it is big corporations paying poverty wages and then taking their profits out of the country. It is energy companies hiking their bills time and again while polluting our environment, and water companies making us pay for the privilege of having sewage pumped into our waterways.

[Sir John Hayes]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Carla Denyer]

I will make a little more progress. It is the landlords who own hundreds of properties putting up the rent every few months, out of all proportion to incomes, so that people pay more and more of their wage packet each month. It is the big developers prioritising profit by building luxury developments rather than the affordable homes that we need. It is years and years of deliberate underfunding by Governments that have brought our public services to their knees.

None of this is inevitable. If the Government choose, they could raise the minimum wage so that it is genuinely enough to live on. They could take action on spiralling bills, put an end to rip-off rents and build the affordable housing we so desperately need. But some rich and powerful people have an interest in keeping rents high, or allowing public services to be sold off to the highest bidder, or letting the rich get richer while the rest of us struggle. Rather than answering difficult questions about why this economy has been designed in a way that benefits them, it is easier for them to point the finger at migrants.

It is not always easy to stand up and tell the truth when we are swimming against the tide of what people across the country are being told day in, day out by public figures, newspaper headlines and posts on X. It is not easy to challenge the perceptions that have become the mainstream, but we have to, because as long as we chase false solutions to our problems and ignore the real sources of those problems, the things we care about—how much money we have in our pocket, whether we have a safe, warm, secure home, a roof over our head, and public services—will not improve.

I am going to have to turn to the negative for a moment. There is a serious problem of racism in this country, and especially in debates around immigration. That is not to say that everyone who has concerns about immigration is racist, though I fully expect that I may have my speech characterised as such. But we need to be honest about the fact that racism is thriving in this country. Like a hideous parasite, it feeds off people’s fear and suffering and is nurtured by politicians and media outlets that benefit from finding someone else to blame.

Last summer in Southport, we saw a horrific attack against children that scared us all. Such horrors make us angry, and rightfully so. But just as unacceptable and scary is what happened next and how that anger was deliberately misdirected towards totally innocent people: towards black and brown families minding their own business, who are no more responsible for the behaviour of one young man who happens to be the son of immigrants than I am responsible for the behaviour of all other left-handers. The despicable scenes we saw in the riots are a chilling snapshot and reminder of what is happening in this country and of what I am here to speak against: a spiral of misdirected blame, anger and fear that fixes nothing, helps nobody and harms many.

When the Minister responds, I ask him not to focus only on the perhaps easier, but not entirely honest, answer of being tough on migration, but to meet the petitioners with sincerity about the challenges we face and how we can really tackle them. To quote the petitioners one last time:

“We believe we can’t even look after the people we have here at the moment.”

They are right. Successive Governments have failed the people in this country. They have failed to provide jobs with fair wages, affordable housing, affordable energy, access to healthcare—I could go on. Rather than solutions, millionaire politicians and millionaire media moguls have inundated our phones, TVs and newspapers with images and messages depicting immigrants as the source of all our problems.

People are struggling. They are worried about not being able to pay their bills, about not getting paid enough and about their safety. An overwhelming tide of loud voices is telling them who to blame. That does not ease their worry or stop their struggling; it capitalises on their anger for political gain at the expense of some of the most hard-working and, sometimes, vulnerable people in this country.

It is a story as old as time to blame the stranger, the newcomer, the one who looks different. No one ever beat that story by accepting the narrative or overcame it by validating it. People’s feelings about being let down are valid, but the direction in which they are being pointed is not. It is the responsibility of all of us in this House, and especially of the Government, to be truthful, confront the real issues and not let people’s pain be channelled into hatred.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Tice]

The point is that life expectancy has grown and the pension age is growing because we are healthier. That is a great thing. People enjoy work—work is a great thing. However, the real point is that there are some 5 million-plus people not of retirement age who we need to get back into the workplace. We want a world-leading benefit system that looks after the genuinely vulnerable and sick as well as the genuinely unemployed who are looking for work. I would have thought that we could all agree on that.

Let us look at what really did work well: back in the ’80s and early ’90s, net inward migration was about 30,000 to 50,000 a year on average—in some years, there was a little bit of net emigration. It was working well. People came to work and integrated—and guess what? Our economy was growing at 2.5% to 3.5% a year. Everybody was getting better off. We had real per-person wage growth, above the rate of inflation, of some 2.5% per annum in the 1990s.

We now have no GDP growth but significant population growth through inward migration, so we are all getting poorer per person. That is one of the challenges that we all face. If we know that the system worked back then, maybe we should be willing to learn the lessons of history. That was a time when there was no immigration debate, interestingly. Until about the early 2000s, immigration was not an issue because it was working well, with numbers that could be sensibly absorbed. People were getting richer—and that is a good thing.

My view is that we are not short of people, and the anxiety of those who signed the petition is that population growth is too great. We cannot cope with our existing population, and there is a need for pause—perhaps a policy of net zero immigration: one in, one out. About 400,000 people leave the UK every year; we could welcome a similar number in—that will ebb and flow—as long as they are highly skilled and highly qualified where we have shortages, while we train our own people.

Back in the ’80s, the interesting thing was that our healthcare system, the NHS, was working very well—

[Carla Denyer]

It was funded very well as well.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

Order. Through the Chair, please.