Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill (First sitting)

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 12th February 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Alison McGovern]

Q What would you like the retirement age to be raised to—something like 70 or 75?

Lord Green: You can do various calculations on that. I do not have them in my head. I think that so long as we live longer and healthier, there is perfectly good reason to raise the retirement age.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

Q I want to follow on the back of Ms McGovern’s question. You did speak of humans as being shipped in and shipped out, as if they were canned goods rather than actual human beings. That leads me to a point you raised in the oral evidence session for the previous Immigration Bill, when you described asylum seekers, and victims of exploitation and traffickers, as “these people”. Would you agree that this sort of careless and dehumanising terminology has fuelled much of the anti-immigrant rhetoric in the UK, and has perhaps even led to Brexit itself?

Lord Green: No, I think that is completely irrelevant, frankly. I hope that this is a meeting in which I can speak to you clearly and simply. If I was making some public speech, I would use different words. This is not a public speech, I hope.

[Gavin Newlands]

Q It may not be a public speech, but it is very much on the record, and I have to say that that is not very helpful. In terms of the Bill itself and border enforcement, I think that during evidence on the previous Immigration Bill—this was in late 2015—you said that something around £750 million a year was being spent, which you described as absolute peanuts. Do you think that the Border Force and the Home Office are adequately resourced to deal with the post-Brexit migration system?

Lord Green: No, I don’t think they are.

[Gavin Newlands]

Q Would you care to elaborate on how much more should be spent or is required?

Lord Green: The first thing is to restore the cuts that have been made, but I think they will probably need more than that, because they will have a new situation to deal with. But I am not an expert on the administration of the Home Office.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q Do you have any thoughts on how the settlement scheme has been set up for EU nationals who are already there? Do you anticipate any difficulties in making sure that as close as possible to 100% have applied for settled status by the deadline?

Lord Green: There are bound to be problems. You are talking about literally millions of people, most of whom have good English, but not all. There is certainly a possibility—a probability—that by the time the deadline comes, there will be people who have not registered. I listened to what the previous witness said about that.

We will need to be careful that we do not accidentally find that a large number of people have rights that they are not aware of—have rights through their parents that they are not aware of, as one of the Committee members put it. There is a risk there, but that is administration and I am sure that the Home Office will do its best.