Immigration
Debate between Chris Bryant and Julian Brazier(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)
What a pleasure it is to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr Godsiff), who made a remarkable speech.
I, too, want to focus on numbers, as the motion does. It is a strange thing that from the early part of the 19th century until past the middle of the last century it was almost universally accepted that overcrowding and over-population was a major driver of poverty. Indeed, in one scheme alone, between 1922 and 1935, more than 400,000 people received Government assistance to emigrate, principally to Canada and Australia. The Office for National Statistics estimated in 2004 that we would have 67 million people by 2031. Six years later, that figure had gone up to 72 million, or 5 million more. Yet there is widespread concern among reputable statistical agencies—I mention the Bank of England as just one that has gone public—that the ONS has lost count. Indeed, if we look at the detailed way in which it calculates the figures—in particular, its assumptions about birth rates, which make no adjustment at all for a changing composition—we find good grounds for thinking that its projections might not be accurate. All are on the same side of the equation—that is, in every case there are grounds for thinking that the ONS’s projections are too low, rather than too high.
There is a further issue, which people are very reluctant to address. I hope nobody is going to accuse me of being a racist—if they do, I am not going to dignify the comment with an answer—but we have to look at the detail and accept two facts. The first is that the phrase “net migration” is misleading. To take the age profile of the people coming in and those going out, it is perfectly absurd in demographic terms to equate pensioners retiring to the sun with young people coming in who have not yet started families.
The second point is that many of those coming in are from areas that have historically had much higher birth rates than the indigenous group. The trend in every country in the world is that birth rates among incoming communities tend to trend towards the national average of the country that they are joining, with one important exception: if those groups do not become absorbed into the wider body. Over the last few years, we have for the first time begun to see the very unsettling picture, to which the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) referred, of some groups not assimilating.
Over the last few weeks, we have rightly felt enormous national pride at the performance of our Olympics team. Nobody needs me to say that the racial mixture—the original ethnic origins—of the people who won all those medals for Britain, and in many cases of those who did very well but did not get medals, covers the full spectrum of people here. What was much less widely discussed, however—and what has started to come out only recently—was a whole string of violent acts by people living round the area against service personnel. Those acts were not only against personnel responsible for guarding the area, but in one case against naval personnel from a visiting ship, to such an extent that I understand that instructions were given out towards the end not to be seen, if possible, in uniform too far from the site.
I mention that not because I would dream for one second of denying the colossal contribution that so many immigrants have made to this country, nor because I am a racist—I am incredibly proud of the fact that my grandfather was a member of the Indian army, the largest volunteer force ever raised in the history of this country and drawn from every conceivable religious background and an awful lot of different racial backgrounds in India—but because we must recognise the important warnings that the right hon. Gentleman gave. We are now starting to attract some groups that do not feel British.
Let me spend the last couple of minutes on a few more statistics that should worry us all. We all believe that every family needs a decent home. I know of no other country, except possibly Japan, where average house prices are seven times earnings despite the recession. House prices here are certainly much higher than in America or Germany, two other prosperous countries where the figures are 4.5 and 4. In London, there is not a single borough left in which one can rent a two-bedroom dwelling for less than 35% of the median earnings, and there are a relatively small number left where the figure is less than a half. We have housing shortages on a scale that is completely unprecedented in the modern era. We have heard a lot of references to infrastructure as well.
I want to end with students. I am proud of the fact that I represent the area with the largest concentration of students in the country, with four universities wholly or partly in my constituency. I am immensely proud of what we do, taking in foreign students, who bring money to this country and provide us with good will. However, the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who speaks for the Opposition, was quite wrong in his intervention on his right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead. I have a copy of that study, “The Migrant Journey”, with the note from the Library confirming that it was a purely paper exercise. Although the study shows that 21% had a reason to stay in the country, together with thousands of dependants, nothing is known about where the other 79% went.
Chris Bryant
I will give way, but I am hesitant as this is a Bach-Bench debate and I do not want to take a vast amount of time.
Mr Brazier
The motion is about numbers. Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that there is a vast difference between people moving from Europe, a largely overcrowded continent, to the emptiest countries in the world, such as Australia, Canada and large parts of south America, and the problems that we face as almost the most congested corner of Europe?
Chris Bryant
It does not feel very congested in the Rhondda, I have to say. Sometimes this debate is conditioned strongly by the problems in the south-east of England. It is also a problem for our economy that we are far more dependent on one area—London and the south-east of England—than many countries in Europe. The more that we can to do shrink the country and extend financial opportunities around the country, the better.
I disagree with the hon. Gentleman’s analysis of Latin America. The biggest and fastest-growing cities in the world are all in Latin America and many parts of it face vast congestion. I just think that he is wrong on those facts.
The vast majority of British people value the presence in British universities of international students. We all see that as a positive for the British economy, because if people study in this country and then go back to their country, they are—we hope—more likely to have a positive experience of this country and to do business with us in the future. That is without mentioning the amount of money that having international students pumps into the British economy.
In addition, the vast majority of people in this country want to protect our reputation for welcoming refugees from oppression, torture, violence and oppressive regimes around the world. Although free movement within the European Union undoubtedly has its problems—that is felt not just in the United Kingdom, but notably at the moment in Spain—it is vital to the free market on which the British economy depends.
Linking immigration to population is not as straightforward as many hon. Members have suggested this afternoon. Those who come to this country often leave. If we changed the number of people coming into the country in some categories, we would lose the bounce effect from the people who leave after a few years.
Immigration
Debate between Chris Bryant and Julian Brazier(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)
It is a huge pleasure and honour to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames), who has spoken out on this issue again and again, including when abuse was heaped on anyone who tried to do so. I also praise my hon. Friend the Minister, who has brought great energy to one of the most difficult briefs in Government. What I am about to say will be pretty bleak, frankly, but not one word of it should be taken as a criticism of the huge amount of energy and intellect that he has brought to his job.
It is curious, looking through one’s postbag, how many of the pressing issues facing Britain today—housing shortages, congestion on roads and public transport, water shortages, pressures on public infrastructure of every kind—derive largely from a single, common factor: population growth, to which my right hon. Friend referred. We are one of the most densely populated countries in the world, with 255 people per square kilometre. During the time of the last Labour Government, immigration policies encouraged an unprecedented influx from EU and non-EU countries, which has boosted populations in some urban areas to near crisis point. Between 1997 and 2009, after deducting the number of those leaving, more than 2 million extra people were recorded as settling in the UK, a surge that is unprecedented. However, for the first time, those figures were calculated without using embarkation records, so the true figure may be much higher. The ONS projections to which my right hon. Friend referred have been upgraded again and again. For example, in 2004 they indicated that by the middle of this century our population would reach 67 million. In just three years that projection was increased to 77 million, and it continues to rise.
I believe we need to look at gross rather than net migration figures, for several reasons. First, many of those leaving are elderly people, looking to spend their retirement abroad in the sun. In contrast, the vast majority of immigrants are young. First-generation immigrants typically have large families compared with indigenous families. There is a further, obvious point, which was well understood in this country until the middle of the last century, which is that because we are basically overcrowded we always used to have more people leaving, precisely to find homes in emptier lands. Today, housing pressures are caused by domestic factors, such as family breakdown, increased longevity and so on, which have led to smaller household sizes, so if we do not have a degree of net emigration, we will have to keep building more and more.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman’s last comment—that the reason many British people have gone around the world and settled elsewhere is because Britain is overcrowded—is factually wrong. The parts of the country from which many people left—Scotland and Wales—are the least crowded. In fact, they mostly went because there were no jobs in this country or, originally, because of religious persecution. It is nothing to do with overcrowding.
Mr Brazier
One can go back quite a long way, into religious persecution and earlier history, but we were very keen to encourage, for example, the Australians to keep an assisted package programme going for nearly two thirds of the last century. Much of that was precisely to reduce overcrowding. There was also a degree of internal re-location—for example, with the setting up of new towns outside London—but we encouraged movement abroad, as well as out of our major cities.
Everybody agrees that previous generations of immigrants have brought huge benefits, in such fields as business, science, sports and the arts. We all have friends from a variety of different communities. My family has particularly benefited from a doctor, without whom two of my sons would not be alive today, who is a recent immigrant. However, few people recognise the sheer impact of population growth on our country today, and I want to focus on two issues: housing and infrastructure.
The most serious social and economic issue facing middle and lower middle-income families in Britain today is the shortage of housing, and not just in the south-east where land is at the highest premium. The huge inflows of population that took place under the last Government are going to require very large releases of land, much of it countryside, even without any further population growth. Our house prices today, despite some fall from the peak during the recession, remain very high by international standards and, crucially, in relation to our falling incomes.
As the Prime Minister pointed out the other day, the average age of first-time buyers has risen to 37. Many families are now burdened for much longer than ever before with heavy mortgages, so adults have to work longer hours and for more years in an attempt to service those mortgages. An OECD survey showed a few years ago that a higher proportion of people in this country feel they are working more hours than are good for their family life than people in any other major country in the developed world.
Shelter paints an equally bleak picture of the rental market. More than half of local authorities in England have a median private rent for a two-bedroom house that costs more than 35% of median take-home pay. Families are forced to cut their spending on essentials—food, heating or whatever—to pay the cost of rent or the mortgage.
The Government have set out plans to revive building, which was at an all-time low at the end of the last Government, but that will have the knock-on effect of causing huge problems for infrastructure. The Environment Agency, for example, estimates that 5 million people live in flood-risk areas in England and Wales, and as climate change accelerates, that number will no doubt rise. Yet in a county such as mine—Kent—the majority of all land that does not fall into a protected category is now on floodplains, so much of the building we are going to have to provide to cope with our existing population, including the rise caused by the bulge in immigration, will have to be built on precious protected land or else more communities will have to be exposed to the dangers of flooding.
Water supplies in many parts of the country are under strain, too. In fact, our national average per capita is now lower than that of Spain and Portugal. As more water is abstracted from aquifers and rivers, the flow in rivers falls, killing wildlife and scarring the countryside.
Immigration is putting considerable pressure on our schools, too. A report by London Councils stated that on current projections, London is 18,000 places short. It is not just London. Between 1998 and 2010, the proportion of children in primary schools in England for whom English is not the first language very nearly doubled to 16%, and in inner London native English-speaking children are in the minority. The noble Lord Knight, until recently a Labour Education Minister, admitted that
“undoubtedly there can be problems”
in schools with large numbers of non-English speakers. That is massively to understate the handicap suffered by all the other children in those schools.
The number of arrivals from overseas registering with a GP has increased dramatically. One of the hardest hit NHS specialties has been midwifery, as birth rates have risen most sharply in areas where numbers of immigrants are high. When Labour came to power in 1997, one baby in eight was born to a foreign-born mother. That has now risen to one in four.
My hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration has put it well: the real questions are how Britain can benefit most from immigration and what controls do we need to maximise those benefits and minimise the strains. The last Labour Government—we still have not had an answer from the shadow Minister as to whether he believes immigration is too high—maintained that immigration was good for Britain and the British economy as a whole since immigrants boosted GDP. Of course it is true that on average immigrants pay more tax than they receive in benefits or consume in public services. Many, especially the kind of immigrants who came through in generations before Labour opened the borders, make a gigantic contribution, but taking an average disguises the bottom end of the spectrum.
Many of those who arrived in Britain under the last Government, particularly from the Asian subcontinent, were unskilled and joined often insular communities in which incomes were already low and in some cases the unemployment rate was near to 50%. Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities, for example, were those most likely to enter the UK through the family route after the primary purpose rule was dropped.
Baroness Flather, the first Asian woman to receive a peerage, caused outrage when she made a brave speech in the House of Lords. She said:
“The minority communities in this country, particularly the Pakistanis and the Bangladeshis, have a very large number of children and the attraction is the large number of benefits that follow the child.”
She went on to say:
“Nobody likes to accept that or to talk about it because it is supposed to be very politically incorrect.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 13 September 2011; Vol. 730, c. 706.]
Of course it is true here as in countries all over the world that the trend is for birth rates in ethnic groups that integrate to go towards the national average. The problem, as the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) has pointed out, is that under the last Government we grew significant numbers of communities where there was no integration and no trend in birth rates or anything else towards the national norm. The whole economic argument has largely ignored the costs to the overburdened public purse in infrastructure and the loss of quality of life to the population, as overcrowding worsens.
There are powerful voices that welcome continued heavy immigration. Big business benefits from the arrival of large numbers of people willing to work, since they drive down the cost of labour at the expense of the living standards of the indigenous workforce; and the wives of the better-off are able to get help in the home at a fraction of a living wage for local people, but then they and their families are not usually struggling to pay their mortgages and watching their children’s education being destroyed in schools with dozens of languages.