Immigration

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Field]

I am immensely grateful for that intervention. Although I intended to stress that point, I did not wish to labour it. I do not think that there is any disagreement between Members, who, while seeing the advantages of immigration, consider that the argument is essentially about numbers, but who do not wish to control those numbers in a way that would harm any economic recovery. If I ever manage to make progress, I shall say more about that.

I think that the electorate managed to convey to us during the three or so weeks of the general election campaign that their concern extended beyond that which had previously been expressed in the House. In their view, the numbers debate was about the growth of population. We see that all around us. According to the most recent data from the Government, 25% of all babies—50% in London—are now born to women who were not themselves born here. There are regular reports of overcrowding in maternity units. In a number of areas, there is real pressure on many primary schools. At a time when our waiting list for housing is growing, 40% of new households consist of immigrants.

As the hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) just said, we must not shoot ourselves in the foot, or, even worse, in the head, by calling for further controls and restrictions that would result in an impairment of the necessary recovery on which many of our constituents depend. The Mayor of London is always the most interesting of political characters in the country, but in this context he has held a position, changed his position, and then changed it again. I hope that he will shortly change it for the fourth time, and take a more rounded view of the issue.

The statement issued by the Mayor for today’s debate has three misleading comments—I will not call them longitudinal inexactitudes. First, it is not true that the figure for the number of people coming here last year would suit the Government’s cap. The 2009 figure for net migration is 196,000. If that is a cap, it may be one that the Mayor of London wishes to wear, but it is not one that I would encourage the Government to wear.

Secondly, the Mayor said that if we restrict immigration, there is a danger that our gross national product will fall. That is based on years when the economy was thriving and growing at a record rate. It is impossible to interpret past data in that way when a huge number of our constituents are unemployed—not long-term unemployed but recently unemployed, and anxious to return to work. Any restriction in the numbers might well help them rather than impeding the growth of GDP.

Thirdly, it is wrong to say that 80% of students leave within five years. It is true that 80% are lost in the system within five years, but we have absolutely no idea whether they leave or not.

The Government recently asked the Migration Advisory Committee to report both on the cap and on how, in the longer term, they could best achieve their goal of reducing the net migration figure, which currently stands at hundreds of thousands, to tens of thousands. It is with pleasure that I record my gratitude—as, I am sure, will other speakers—to David Metcalf, whom I knew long before I came to the House of Commons, for the distinguished and intelligent way in which he has chaired the committee, and for his willingness to engage in debate. I know that he has appeared before the Committee chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East, but his door is open to others who wish to talk to him about this issue.

The report published by the MAC just before we began our debate is helpful. David Metcalf says that the Government are proceeding in the right direction, and suggests that the reduction should be split—20% among those coming here to work and 80% among non-economic migrants. I think we should debate that. We might ask, for instance, whether we should increase the proportion of non-economic migrants within the cap. He did not say—because he did not have the authority to do so—how important it is to take the heat out of the debate. Perhaps we can move the debate on, by being more relaxed about people coming here to work while also being more concerned about that becoming a route which automatically leads to citizenship.

In the spirit of a constructive debate, may I suggest four ways in which the Government might seek to meet their coalition pledge to reduce net migration significantly? First, I do not see how the Government can make sense of this debate—on which they have, thank goodness, now embarked—unless they look at student numbers. To June this year, those numbers are up 26% on last year, at 362,000. When I make the plea for the Government to look at this area, I am not talking about what most of us would regard as universities. I am asking the Government to focus on what are clearly bogus colleges that have realised that they can sell courses by implying, “Entry to the UK, and from here you can disappear into the UK labour market.”

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend accept that many of the people who enrol on those courses do so in the belief that they are signing up for a proper education? Does he agree that they are victims of exploitation by these colleges, rather than people trying to suborn our immigration system?

[Mr Field]

I would rephrase that slightly. My hon. Friend makes the absolutely valid point that large numbers of people who want to get on in their lives come here and believe the prospectuses of such colleges, but my worry is that increasingly the news has gone round the traps, so to speak, that such courses are one way in—a bogus route. That is deeply cruel to those who have paid to enrol because they wish to build a more constructive life for themselves by getting an education; I could not agree more about that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Will my right hon. Friend support my campaign to ensure that education in the English language is available in the places from which spouses come? The current proposals are unfair, particularly on women on the Indian subcontinent who are unable to get access to good-quality English language teaching and are therefore doomed to fail the test.

[Mr Field]

I have never underestimated the entrepreneurial skills on the subcontinent, and I am disappointed to hear my hon. Friend report back in those terms. When I crossed swords on this matter with the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East, I thought that in no time English language schools would be established to ensure that people could speak English before arriving. It is very important that that rule is maintained, and I hope the Government will look at the point I have raised.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Brazier]

I believed that the hon. Gentleman was a member of the Committee and I apologise if I am incorrect. I have certainly heard him talk sense on this subject in the past.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I have a brother and a sister, both of whom have migrated to America, and I am rather concerned. When the hon. Gentleman says it is about numbers, whose brother and sister should not be allowed to travel? That is what the question boils down to when we say it is about numbers. Whose relatives are to be debarred from engaging in family visits if we are trying to reduce the carbon footprint of migration?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I think we are straying off the debate somewhat, into climate change and aviation. The debate is on immigration, so perhaps we can focus on that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, for giving me this opportunity to speak in the debate. I had not originally planned to do so because I knew that I would be unable to be here for most of it, although I was here at the beginning. I have been moved to speak, however, by a report of the remarks that the hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) made about my views, which I have now read in Hansard. I would like to take this opportunity to set the record straight before the House.

I want to start by informing the House about the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion that I made remarks as a Minister that immigration officers deserved to be called by a four-letter word. They were not made by me when I was a Minister. I made the remarks that he is referring to when I was a Back Bencher, and I never suggested that that label should be given to the class of immigration officers. I pointed out, in response to a question, that it is a fact that large numbers of people—not some, but large numbers—seek to cheat the immigration system, which hardens immigration officers. Inevitably, that leads to a kind of cynicism, which means that they cannot necessarily give each case a completely fresh and individual look. I argued at the time for proper training to ensure that immigration officers did not make that kind of mistake in future. Obviously, it is unfair on the genuine that they should be disadvantaged because of those who are not genuine. I am glad to set the matter straight. If one wants to look at evidence about the degree of cynicism in some immigration officers—as I say, I do not believe that this is universally true by any means—the book “Refusal Shoes” is full of the most shocking anecdotes.

I want to speak briefly about the general issue of immigration. I am pleased to debate it. My right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) will know that I am not one of those who has ever been backward on this subject; I have never been worried about debating immigration.

I am hugely proud to represent one of the most productive towns in this country. One reason why it is such a productive and successful town is that thousands of people have come from countries all over the world to build their future in Slough, which has offered them work. I was so proud just a week ago to sit in a school prom and watch 850 Slough children singing about how people from different countries had contributed so much to the town that they live in and love. This was a celebration of the multiculturalism that is without doubt one of the reasons for the wealth of Slough. It is one reason why, according to the chief executive of Slough borough council, there are more headquarters of European companies in our town than in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland put together. That is why we should celebrate the economic prosperity that migrants bring to Britain. I am glad to do that.

We know that migration offers and brings much. The hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) put it rather well when he said that we need to work to make the best of it and make the consequences of multiculturalism worth celebrating. I will find it depressing if that is not done. The last Labour Government introduced the migration impacts fund as a mechanism to help to achieve that. I profoundly regret the huge cut to Slough borough council’s budget that has resulted from the abolition of that fund.

I did not originally expect to participate in the debate because I was hoping to attend the Westminster Hall debate about houses in multiple occupation. One point of investing resources from the migration impacts fund in Slough was to ensure that migrants in the town did not have to live in sheds—and I mean sheds in people’s back gardens. Government funding enabled the council to inspect HMOs and occupied sheds. It was used successfully to prosecute a landlord who had put a shower on the stairs of a house in multiple occupation in the expectation that people could somehow walk past it. Now we have lost the resources to carry on doing such things, which is much to be regretted.

[Robert Halfon]

As I have said, I apologise for not giving the hon. Lady advance notice of my comments. I was not aware that I should have done, and I will make sure that I do in any future instances. However, all I did was publicly to quote from what the BBC said. I accept that you were a former Minister, but in being a former Minister, you actually give more prescience to your remarks—

[Robert Halfon]

I apologise again, Mr Speaker. However, what the hon. Lady said, as reported by the BBC, is one reason why immigration officers are viewed as “s***s”—because some people decide that if one is like that, all of them are like that. She made no attempt to distinguish between them, and by her remarks she has tarred every immigration officer with the same brush.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Actually, I did not say “some”, I said “large numbers”. That is one of the corrections that I have just inserted in Hansard. Unlike some of the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues who have only read the blog that he wrote about the subject rather than the original BBC article, he knows that the original BBC article makes it entirely clear that I was asked about the negative attitude of some border officials by a questioner who implied that it was universal. I corrected her, suggesting that that was not a universal belief.

I cannot take responsibility for the words that the BBC put in its report. If the hon. Gentleman reads the BBC article that he claims to have in his hand, he will see that when I gave the reason for the fact that some officials acted in this way, I used the phrase “large numbers”. Every time he has quoted from it, he has referred to “some”, rather than to “large numbers”, which was the phrase that I used.

I do not want to bore the House with quibbles about the details, but the words that I have used are accurate, and I regret to say that the words that the hon. Gentleman used—inadvertently, I am sure—are not. I think it important for the House to know my views.

We need to invest in helping communities to deal with the consequences of migration. If we fail to do that, we may create the tensions and vulnerabilities in our communities that we in Slough have experienced in the past. The competition between people of different races and origins poses a risk to our peaceful, multicultural co-existence, which was genuinely reflected by those 850 children from Slough singing in the Albert Hall. The risk is that it will not continue to be a positive attitude, but will create such a source of stress in communities that it could turn into tension and violence between individual communities. No one in the House would like to see that outcome.

[Robert Halfon]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) implied that I have misled the House. I am quoting directly from the BBC article. The part that is in quotation marks reads as follows:

“One of the reasons immigration officers are”

s***s—

“is actually because some people cheat and they decide everyone is like that”.

It is a direct quotation, and that is all that I wish to say about the matter.