Immigration Bill

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I want to make more progress.

Dealing with migrants is not new for the NHS. There is already a framework for charging other countries. The NHS must enforce it and recover the cost of treating foreign nationals from foreign Governments, and all of us in government will work with it to make the system work.

The Government also want to ensure that illegal immigrants cannot hide in private rented housing. We are already working with councils to tackle rogue landlords who provide beds in sheds and illegal, overcrowded accommodation. Under the Bill, we will go further and have the necessary powers to deal with rogue landlords who rent homes to illegal migrants.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

Is the Secretary of State able to quantify the number of foreign nationals treated by the NHS who are not entitled to free care and who came here solely and deliberately to get free health care?

[Mrs May]

I suggest that the hon. Lady look at the audit conducted by the national health service that was released today. It makes it absolutely clear that we are talking potentially about several hundred millions of pounds across the NHS when we consider the number of people who come here and are able to use the service without contributing, who come here as health tourists and who come here and use the service when they should not be able to do so. That is why the Bill is absolutely right.

I say to Opposition Members who say that somehow it is wrong to ask people who come to this country to contribute, that it is only fair to the millions of hard-working people who pay into the NHS through their taxes that somebody who comes here to live for a period of time should be asked to contribute. It is only fair also to ensure that when people come here to use the NHS, or use it when they are here and their Government should be paying, that we actually recoup that money.

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[Mrs May]

If the hon. Gentleman looks at Hansard, he will see the answer I gave to the hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk). I said that net migration has come down by a third from its peak in 2010. That figure is absolutely correct, because in September 2010 the figure was 255,000 and the latest figure, therefore, is a fall of 31%.

[Ms Abbott]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

I hope it is a point of order rather than a point of frustration. I shall discover which.

[Ms Abbott]

Is it in order for the Secretary of State to suggest that anyone in this House thinks that people who are not legally eligible for NHS care should not have to pay when all I am doing is querying her scare statistics?

[Mr Speaker]

People are free to suggest what they like. These are matters of debate. Of one thing I am sure, having known the hon. Lady for 16 years: she requires no protection from me or, for the most part, I think, from anyone.

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[Ms Abbott]

Is my right hon. Friend aware of how concerned GPs are, including the Royal College of General Practitioners, that they might find themselves acting as immigration officers? They feel that that would be contrary to the oath they take to serve and to heal.

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right. Doctors have concerns about whether the proposals are workable in practice—the practical bureaucracy attached to the proposals—and the implications for public health. We think it is sensible to have better co-ordination between hospitals on, for example, cost recovery through the E111 system, but for any proposals it is important that the Government listen to GPs’ concerns.

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[Mr Syms]

I agree with my hon. Friend. With the tightening up of measures on employers taking on workers, the measure to which he refers is one of a series to provide barriers so that we find people who are not here legally.

[Ms Abbott]

The hon. Gentleman says that the measures on landlords should pose no difficulty for people who already live here. When my parents first came to this country, landlords would routinely tell prospective black tenants that the room was gone. Does not the legislation bring us back to the situation in which people, rather than go through the rigmarole, will see a black face and say, “The room is gone”?

[Mr Syms]

I understand the hon. Lady’s concerns because of her family history, but the reality is that people who are legitimately here have many protections. All the Government are saying is that, if someone wants to rent a property, they should have a passport. For simple, sensible reasons such as getting credit, most people need some kind of documentation, so the problem will not be insurmountable.

On the NHS, I welcome the health surcharge. Nothing annoys my constituents more than the feeling that resources that should be devoted to their care are being used by people who do not have a right to them. All hon. Members know that the NHS has not followed its policy of collecting money. The easiest thing to do is say that someone does not come from abroad and collect the money as if they were British citizens. The Government’s measures are sensible.

As our constituents feel so strongly, we must have a firm but fair immigration policy. If they do not believe the Government take immigration seriously, the only people who benefit are extremists. We know that many people have extreme views on immigration.

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[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

It is a convention to say that it is a pleasure to follow the preceding speaker. I shall not go as far as that, but it is probably appropriate for me to follow the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell). He focused on provisions relating to new regulations for private landlords, and I, too, shall focus the substance of my remarks on that aspect of the Bill.

Before I do so, however, I want to make a few general observations about the Bill as a whole, which is a combination of the good, the bad and the ugly. Tightening the law on sham marriages, improving our ability to deal with dodgy immigration advisers, and speeding up the deportation of foreign criminals are good ideas. Addressing the length of time it takes to deal with immigration applications, thereby reducing the number of years in which people have to live in limbo, literally not knowing whether they are coming or going, is a reasonable aspiration. However, I am not convinced that the right checks and balances exist in the new decision making and appeal process outlined in the Bill. It is a complex area. The hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) is right to draw attention to the fact that briefings on this part of the Bill were issued late in the day. The Government cannot be confident that the review that they wish to implement on immigration decisions will be any better or of higher quality than the initial decision-making process in the Home Office. There should be an independent review mechanism for appeals on immigration decisions.

Where the Bill is undoubtedly ugly is in its unworkable and unrealistic proposals to outsource the job of immigration officials to letting agency staff and private landlords up and down the country. Such a change in the law may or may not contribute to creating the Home Secretary’s “hostile environment”, but it undoubtedly risks inflaming racial tensions and smacks of the era in which landlords in the UK put signs above their doors proclaiming “No blacks, no Irish”. I for one do not want to return to those days. I want an immigration system that is firm and fair, and which is in the best interests of everyone in our country. I want a system in which the rules are enforced properly and in a timely fashion. No matter what Ministers say, the immigration arm of the Home Office—the former UK Border Agency—is a total mess. No amount of nasty rhetoric turned into sentences on the statute book will make up for the basic failures in administration, efficiency and competence that have characterised the Home Office for far too long.

I said that I wanted to focus on the Government’s proposals for private landlords. Part 3 introduces a new duty on landlords to check the immigration status of prospective tenants before properties are let, with hefty fines if flats and houses are rented to people without leave to remain. There are already tight rules about who can access homes rented from councils and housing associations. On a superficial level, I suspect that many people would say, “What’s the problem with asking private landlords to do that? It sounds like a good idea.” However, there is a serious problem with the proposals because of the way in which that would work in practice.

I have been a Member of Parliament for three years, and in that time I have dealt with my fair share of immigration cases. When people come to my surgery with reams of paper from the Home Office I sometimes find it difficult to ascertain exactly what their status is. It can be complex and confusing: people do not always fall into neat, defined categories. Sometimes three people in a family have indefinite leave to remain, but one, inexplicably, is still waiting to hear from the Home Office. Sometimes a Home Office decision to refuse an application is overturned by the tribunal, but then there are inordinate delays in sending individuals new documentation to confirm their status. Perhaps all small private landlords and letting agents have an insight or training in the immigration system, or a special link to the Home Office, which I do not have, but I think that is unlikely.

What is going to happen? Let us imagine a busy letting agency in south-east London, where demand for rented property routinely exceeds supply. Two people turn up to rent a flat that has just been put on the market. One is a woman of Nigerian heritage—someone who came to this country as a child, went to school here and now works as a nurse. She has indefinite leave to remain and she has become a British citizen. The other person is also a British citizen—a white woman, a nurse too, but with an English-sounding surname. The admin person in the letting agency is presented with Home Office papers by one, but not the other. They know that if they let to an “illegal immigrant” they might be fined £3,000. They are confused by the papers. They have a stream of people waiting to be seen, and they have other things to do. Which of the two people do they go for? I do not think that I need spell out to hon. Members what might happen in that set of circumstances.

[Ms Abbott]

My hon. Friend makes the case very vividly. Does she agree that even though we deal with immigration paperwork week after week, we find it confusing, so what would it be like for a letting agency, which sees it only rarely?

[Heidi Alexander]

I entirely agree, and I believe that what is proposed will lead to racial profiling in the letting of properties that could end up on a scale reminiscent of the 1950s.

We are told by Ministers that they will set up a hotline to provide a 48-hour checking service for landlords. It will have to be a Home Office hotline like no other. Confusion, procrastination and obfuscation characterise Home Office hotlines at the moment. Why will this one be any different? How will landlords and letting agents know who is living in a house apart from the individual who signed the tenancy agreement? What happens when someone’s leave to remain expires during their tenancy but they submit an application for renewal that is caught up in intractable delays and administrative chaos? How will the Home Office even know if properties are let privately if the Government refuse to set up a register of private landlords?

Recent migrants often rent a room from a friend of a friend. Sometimes whole families live in one room in a house. There is no tenancy agreement, and they do not go to a letting agent. Anyone would think that these people are going to letting agents on the King’s road to secure their properties, but that is not true: these transactions take place in the shadows of our economy. This policy is unworkable and unrealistic, and it is deeply unpleasant. Last week in London, the headlines were of racial discrimination in the letting of property—people being told that flats and houses were no longer available because of the colour of their skin. Those headlines made me feel ashamed to be a Londoner. Does the Minister really think the proposals will make the situation better? Of course not. They will make it worse—much, much worse.

I have lived in London and in Lewisham for more than 10 years. I love it. It is a bit lively at times, but I am pleased that I live there. I love being able to go to Lewisham market on a Saturday morning and thumb through African fabrics for sale, buy jerk chicken from a van in Catford or go to the beautiful presentations and performances of the local Tamil supplementary school. I am pleased that I do not live in a monocultural place where everyone looks the same, sounds the same and has the same views and life experiences. People generally get on with one another in Lewisham but tensions do exist, often simmering beneath the surface. Some young black men feel that the police do not treat them fairly. Some people tell me of problems in getting work because they have a foreign-sounding surname.

When in May this year the BNP wanted to march from Woolwich to the Islamic centre in Lewisham, it made me feel sick and worried—worried about my home, my neighbours and my community. The Minister may not have to worry about such things in the Forest of Dean, but let me tell him and the Home Secretary that they are playing a dangerous political game which I am not prepared to participate in. I believe our immigration system must be firm in order to be fair. I believe its enforcement needs to be timely, professional and effective. I do not think outsourcing immigration control to private letting agents and landlords is the answer, and I have grave concerns about the impact of this policy on community cohesion in areas such as the one that I represent.

So I go back to what I said at the beginning. I have not talked about the things that I think are positive in the Bill. There are some things which I believe should happen and which I can support, but because of what I have explained in the past 10 minutes, I cannot support the Bill tonight, but neither will I oppose it.

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[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I am glad to be able to speak about the Bill. I have taken an interest in immigration policy for very many years, first as an administrative trainee in the Home Office, and secondly as somebody who year on year is in the top 10 of MPs processing immigration casework. I have also, of course, taken an interest because I represent a constituency with very many immigrants from all over the world, and, finally, because I am the child of immigrants. I say from my knowledge and experience of the immigration system that it is bedevilled by poor administration and rushed and incoherent legislation, motivated by short-term political advantage—and I do not except the Labour party from that. I am afraid that this Bill is more of the same.

I say right at the beginning that there are many details in the Bill that I agree with—which is not surprising, because some of it merely puts into legislation matters that were regulations under the Labour Administration—but I deplore the rhetoric and I deplore the political direction of travel. I remind the House that immigration as an issue has been freighted with emotion since the days of Enoch Powell, and since those days immigration has been a synonym for black, Asian and foreign-looking people—for “the other”. Any Member of the House who pretends that immigrant, immigration and anti-immigrant rhetoric does not have that underlying narrative in British politics is being naive.

If people do not believe me, I urge them to read the report of the royal commission on alien immigration in 1903 and the subsequent Aliens Act 1905, which deal with exactly the ideas that those on the Government Front Bench are trying to push forward today. What people say about east European migrants today is what was said about east African migrants in the ’60s, what was said about west Indian migrants, what was said about Jewish migrants to the east end after the first world war, and what was said about Irish migrants in the 19th century: driving down wages; living in terrible housing conditions; assaulting our women. It is always the same narrative, which should be a clue to the House that it is always the same issue.

I remind Government Members who think that they can get away with all this anti-immigrant rhetoric and not pay an electoral price that the Republicans in the United States thought that. They went to town with anti- Hispanic, illegal migrant rhetoric; they thought that anti-illegal immigrant rhetoric was a huge vote winner. But at the election they found that perfectly legal migrants ran, not walked, away from Republicans. Not just Hispanic migrants but Chinese, Japanese, Indian migrants—every migrant community—voted in unprecedented numbers for the Democrats, in what was a difficult election for them in many ways, because when people of immigrant descent hear that anti-illegal immigrant rhetoric they think, “Actually, they are talking about me, my dad, my mum, my auntie, the people on the landing.” Government Members should not think that they can continue down this anti-illegal immigrant path and not pay a price with the votes of the children and grandchildren of migrants. The danger with the Bill is not just that it will create the hostile environment for illegal immigrants that the Home Secretary was boasting of, but that it will tend to create a hostile environment for all of us of immigrant descent and our children.

I know as much about the UK Border Agency and abuse of the system as anyone. I worked in the Home Office and I knew about Croydon. People say that the Government inherited a shambolic immigration department from the Labour party, but as long as I have known the immigration department it has been dysfunctional and shambolic, and there are systemic reasons for that. It was always seen as an outpost of the Home Office in Whitehall and no one wanted to work there, so it was allowed to remain in a welter of administrative confusion. I bow to no one in my knowledge and my disapproval of the chaos, unfairness, inefficiency and poor administration of the immigration department. I also know—this has not been mentioned—of the abuses practised on my constituents by so-called immigration advisers. People talk about abuses of the system, but they are often triggered not by people who are simply looking for a better life for their family but by a class of so-called immigration advisers who systematically rip them off. My constituents come to me years later and I have to try to pick up the pieces of a case that was mishandled right from the beginning by people motivated only by profit.

I agree with what my long-standing friend and colleague, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), said about administrative problems, and I give him every credit for his work on the matter over the years. I also agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) said about people who are left in limbo, even though they are here legally, because the UKBA has not sent them their paperwork. There are systemic problems with the UKBA, but that does not justify trying to turn doctors and landlords into immigration officers on wheels. We need to deal with what is wrong with the administration before we ask untrained people to pursue matters that the Government and a state agency should deal with.

I want to say a word about what people hear on the doorstep, which keeps coming up in this debate. I hear about that from Government Members, and I am afraid that I hear about it from some hon. Friends. First, let us kill the myth that Labour had an open-door policy on migration. I have an office with filing cabinets stacked full of files about the thousands of cases that I dealt with year on year under a Labour Government. There was the issue of the miscalculation of the number of people coming from the eastern European accession countries—no one denies that—but if there was an open door, why did so many of my constituents have to wait years and years, divided from their family, to bring their children in? There was no open door. Far from apologising, the Labour party should make that point more clearly and more often.

What do we hear on the doorstep? I can believe that Members hear people complaining about immigrants. I have the children of West Indians complaining to me about eastern European migrants. However, in an economic downturn people always complain about the other, and want to blame the other for their economic circumstances. Of course we as politicians should deal with the underlying issues when people complain, whether about a lack of housing or job insecurity, but we must not allow public policy to be driven by people who are frightened of the changes they see around them, of economic insecurity and of the fact that the so-called upturn is not helping their living standards. We are now in danger of passing yet another ill thought-out Bill to go on the pile that has been heaped up since the 1960s.

Let us not forget that much of what we hear on the doorstep about immigration is simply not based on fact. It may be easy to say to people, “Oh, yes, you’re so right, we’re going to have fewer of them; we’re going to do this; we’re going to do that”, but politicians should deal with the facts first rather than pander all the time to urban myth, which leads to a downward spiral of rhetoric.

Turning to the content of the Bill, other Members, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), have dealt with the issue of landlords. Even landlords’ organisations are against the Bill. Richard Lambert, the chief executive officer of the National Landlords Association, has said:

“Existing referencing will pick up immigration issues anyway”.

Gavin Smart of the Chartered Institute of Housing has said that the measures will

“make it much harder for non-British people to access housing even when they have a legal right to live in the UK. Checking immigration status is complicated so landlords may shy away from letting to anyone who appears not to be British.”

That is landlords speaking. The effect of the Bill will be that when people such as my son and the children of some of my colleagues go to see a flat, they will be told that the flat is taken. Landlords will not want to take the chance of letting to someone who “might be” an illegal immigrant. I do not believe Ministers understand how it feels to knock on a door and be told, blatantly wrongly, that the flat or room is taken. That is what will happen as a consequence of the Bill.

Ministers like to give the idea that the problems in accident and emergency and the health service are caused by illegal immigrants. That is quite extraordinary. Even if their figures are true—I believe that they are scare figures based on the assumption that every person who comes here and gets treatment came only for the treatment in the first place—we are still not talking about the systemic reasons for problems in the NHS.

My mother was of that generation of West Indian women who came here in the ’60s to build the health service. Whether people like it or not, without immigrants we would not have an NHS. For as long as I am in this House, I will not allow Members to get up and say without challenge that the NHS’s problems are caused by immigrant workers. I owe that at least to my parents’ generation.

Also, there is already legislation about people who are not legally entitled to NHS health care. Why do the Government not get on with collecting money under that legislation, rather than introducing new legislation to do the same thing? It is because they are trying to make a political point and pander to UKIP voters.

We have already heard that 60% of successful appeals are due to administrative error. Why can we not move towards a more robust system for making decisions, rather than cutting people’s appeal rights, which currently are the only guarantee they have of some kind of recourse against administrative error? There is also the way the Bill would undermine article 8 of the European convention on human rights, the right to family life.

In drawing my remarks to a close, let me say this: it is simply not true that immigrants, illegal or otherwise, are responsible for the current pressures on public services. To say that, or to imply it, is to slight the millions of people of immigrant descent who keep all our public services, not just the health service, going, and they will take it as such.

It is also not true, as some people seek to imply, that immigrants cause low wages. That has been the anti-immigration attack since the 19th century. Immigrants do not cause low wages; predatory employers, insufficient workplace protection and weakened trade unions do that. That was true in the 19th century when people accused the Irish of driving down wages, and it is true today when people make the self-same accusation against the eastern European community.

[Mr Harper]

I just want to draw the hon. Lady’s attention to a quote from the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas), who is now the Labour party’s policy co-ordinator. At the end of 2010, just after the Labour Government had been kicked out of office, he wrote:

“At the macro-economic level, we’ve been using migration to introduce a covert 21st century incomes policy.”

It is people on her side of the House who think that the previous Government used migration to keep down wages, not people on the Government side.

[Ms Abbott]

People on my side of the House say a lot of things, but I do not necessarily agree with them. As Labour Front Benchers have pointed out, the Bill does not address the labour market issues properly.

We have to be honest about what the anti-immigration narrative in British politics has always been about. The Bill has more to do with political advantage, with demonstrating to UKIP supporters that the Government are cracking down on immigrants, as with the racist van, and with Lynton Crosby’s dividing-line politics than it has to do with good administration. I will believe the Government on immigration when they come forward with practical policies to improve the working of the UK Border Agency and when I see them cracking down on the employers who benefit by employing people off the books.

This is a very difficult issue, and it is confused by all sorts of urban myths, fears and worries. Generally speaking, immigrants are not the most popular group of people in politics today. Not a day goes by when we do not open the tabloid newspapers and read about some immigrant woman living in an eight-bedroom house in Knightsbridge paid for by the British taxpayer. The test for this House is how we deal with difficult subjects and speak up for people who are not necessarily popular or liked and who do not have a voice. By any test, this Bill is about short-term political advantage. It is of no real benefit to Britons, black or white, or would-be immigrants, black or white. Nobody on the Opposition Benches believes that people who are not entitled to NHS care should be able to get it for free, or that we should have a completely open-door immigration policy. We believe in speaking the truth about immigration, because if some people do not do that, we will see a race to the bottom, both in rhetoric and political practice.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), who was right to make the points she made. Lots of urban myths are going round about immigration, notably fanned, dare I say it, by some of the emerging nationalist parties. That makes it all the more important for us to restore confidence in our immigration system. I, too, speak as someone of immigrant descent—in my case, Irish on both sides of my family.

I have always been proud of Britain’s open borders and proud that this country has always been welcoming to people who want to work hard and make the best of themselves and to those who have sought asylum. That is a source of great pride and something that is very British. Having established that record, however, we have been taken for a soft touch by people who have contempt for our laws and liberties and have used them against us. Thankfully, some of them have been removed, but not until after a very long battle.

As the hon. Lady mentioned, there are also the so-called immigration advisers who are exploiting people who want nothing more than to make the best of themselves and make a good living. We can and should do a lot more about those advisers, who, in my experience, take £500 off my constituents and then just send them to see me—nice work if you can get it. The more we can do to expose these thieves’ dubious practices, the better. As I say, they are exploiting people who just want to make the best of themselves, and that is totally unacceptable. There is also exploitation by some pretty nasty organised criminals and gangmasters who take advantage of people by trafficking them into what can only be described as modern-day slavery. It is big business. It is important that we have a legal system controlling our immigration that clamps down on these abuses. We do that by making sure that there is no opportunity for illegal immigration to continue.

I am pleased to see so much in the Bill about tackling sham marriage, which is also big business. My constituency is now very ethnically diverse. There has been quite a significant influx of Nigerians and Ghanaians, in particular. An organised criminal gang recently took advantage of that by targeting a church in Tilbury where sham marriages were being organised for Nigerians because the emergence of a large Nigerian community had made it easy to do that. One of the local priests participated in a sting with the police. He was very brave in taking this on because, as he would articulate, once the licences have been issued, the priest is under an absolute obligation to undertake the marriage. However, having seen the same ill-fitting wedding dress a number of times, he smelled a rat. Having on one occasion recited a list of train stations on the District line and had them recited back to him by the bride and groom, he definitely smelt a rat. It was a very scary concept for him, because this was an organised criminal gang and he felt very intimidated, as did many of the brides. It was clearly a great money-making business. We owe people like Father Tim Codling of Tilbury a great debt of gratitude for participating in that police sting to bring the perpetrators to book. It is estimated that they had organised over 30 sham marriages in that church in Tilbury alone. This is a shining example to everyone involved, showing that we should bring these people to book when these things happen.

Of course Government Members have no problem with people who abide by immigration rules and are here legitimately. However, my position on these matters has hardened since I became a Member of Parliament. I say that because since being elected to this place three and a half years ago I have handled 383 immigration cases, and in half those cases people who had come to see me had broken the immigration rules in some way, so there is real abuse out there.

I would add that the figure of 383 is actually larger in practice, because many of the people involved are repeat customers. As has been said, there are so many opportunities to make appeals and reapply on different grounds that we tend to see the same people over and over again.

The changes made by the Bill will not affect anyone who wants to come here legitimately and work. The changes made to the student visa regime have not made a difference to people who want to come to our good universities, but they are hitting bogus colleges. That is evidence, if needed, that we are on the right track.

The real problem is that we need to tackle overstayers who, frankly, should not be here. Once they have been told that they have no leave to remain, they should not expect to be able to make a fresh application. Many of them have been here for years. When I say to them, “You have no right to work here. How are you supporting yourself?” they reply, “Friends and family”, meaning the same family who are here with them. It is clear that they are earning their money in the black economy. The Bill includes provisions to tackle the work situation and increase the fines for those who employ people illegally, but I also think that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs needs to undertake a bigger task. It is clear that many of the people involved are working in the self-employed sector. We need to clamp down on that black economy and remove their ability to work. This is all about establishing an environment that makes it clear that once someone has been told that they cannot remain here, they should not expect to be able to stay.

The issue of bank accounts is important. A gentleman from Ghana came to see me after receiving his third rejection and said, “I can’t possibly leave. I’ve got a mortgage.” He took that mortgage out at his own risk. He knew he had no entitlement to stay here and he cannot expect to be able to overstay his welcome. I welcome the fact that the Bill’s measures on bank accounts will actually protect people like him.

Some of the concerns that have been raised about housing are legitimate, but we should also be looking at social housing. I know of at least two cases where people who were already subletting a council house made a tidy profit out of subletting it to people who were here illegally. We can add that to the list of abuses inflicted on our immigrant population.

The issue of health provision has been well rehearsed. Although it is fair to say that there are already restrictions on the ability to access health provision, the fact is that often our health service does not pursue those who should pay. More than anything else, we need to give a clear message to all health providers that from here on in we expect them to do that.

On social landlords, we need to be aware of the ingenuity that people will employ to try to get access to housing. Some people take an elastic approach to the law and make up good tales in order to get such access. In one particular case, a lady who was an overstayer came to see me and said she was a victim of domestic violence. She was put in a women’s refuge, which she subsequently left because she alleged that she had been abused there. I asked her why she did not report it to the police, but I did not get a satisfactory answer. The local authority gave her access to a flat, because she had three children under 10. I was more than a little surprised when I got a call four months later from another lady who claimed she was being harassed and abused by her landlady, who happened to be the lady in question. We are dealing with people who have an elastic interpretation of the law and who will not abide by it. We need to be vigilant with regard to all access to public services.

As I have said, I represent a constituency that is very ethnically diverse. Perhaps the most vocal critics of the current immigration regime are migrants themselves. We all recognise the hard work and values that the people who came here in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s brought. As the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) said, they are keeping our national health service and our other public services going. It is that group of people more than any other that resents the behaviour that we are witnessing. We should not let anyone suggest that this is about race. We are pandering to the nationalist parties if we let people think that.

[Ms Abbott]

It is my experience that the last but one immigrant group always slags off the latest one. Whether it is West Indians, East Africans or eastern Europeans, it is almost a rite of passage. They do it because they are insecure. The fact that we hear the children of immigrants complaining about more recent immigrants speaks to their insecurity, rather than proving that their critique is based on fact.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

The hon. Lady makes a good point. She observed in her speech that such messages surface when people feel more economically insecure, so we should expect to start hearing them at times of economic difficulty. Where she and I part company is that I think that we need to reassure the public that we do not have an open-door immigration policy and that we will take measures to control immigration. Unless we are seen to be doing that, the situation will fester and the only beneficiaries will be the nationalist parties.

On that basis, I do not think that there is anything to object to in the Bill. The British public would expect us to do many of the things that are in it. For most law- abiding people, including immigrants, nothing in the Bill should cause them any disadvantage. I wholeheartedly recommend the Bill to the House.

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[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

I listened to the remarks from the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) about an apartheid society and South African pass laws, and was disappointed that he did not give the Minister the opportunity to intervene on that point. He also said that his grandfather was Irish, and I think the past three speeches from Opposition Members have had that theme, and I would like to reply.

The hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) referred to anti-immigrant and anti-Irish policy, and the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) said that any Member of the House who had an Irish background would understand and have experience of the points he made. My mother is Irish. She came to this country in the early 1960s, just like the mother of the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, to help in the NHS. She became a nurse, trained here, developed a career and raised her family. I do not believe that she has ever had the experience of feeling discriminated against, or felt the prejudice that has been described. Many Irish people over many generations have come to this country and had nothing but welcome.

[Ms Abbott]

I was talking initially about the very common attitudes, cartoons, rhetoric and political attacks that were applied to the Irish in the 19th century. That was my point.