Immigration Bill

Debate between Gerald Kaufman and Andy Burnham

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary made her notorious speech in Manchester just a few minutes from my constituency. Had she come down the road, she would have seen tens of thousands of people who came under the contemptuous label she uttered this afternoon: “these people”. “These people”, of whom there are tens of thousands in my constituency, originate from south Asia, east and west Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere. We are a city of diversity and integration, and the two go together.

The hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) referred to Romanians. Recently in my constituency, an organisation has been set up by people of Romanian origin to integrate further into this country. Next Saturday in my constituency, we will be celebrating Nigerian independence day. This is a country of diversity that ever since the Romans has had people of overseas origin becoming part of its functioning. The Bill attacks them. It is an attack on anybody who is not what might be referred to as a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant.

I got a letter from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs about a constituent who had been asked to clarify his Christian name. To anyone of any intelligence, the man was a Muslim. That kind of approach happens under this Government: it has never happened before, even under previous Conservative Governments. The Bill creates a new subterranean, pseudo police force to carry out Government policy without being members of the Government’s staff.

Landlords have been recruited, whether they want to be or not—the National Landlords Association has issued a document expressing considerable resentment—to impose a law that they had no say in creating. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees says that landlords are less likely to rent to those with foreign accents or names, or those who do not possess a British passport. That is my parents. They never learned to speak English fluently; they never got British passports —yet they were part of this country and part of a community. Landlords and bank staff are being turned into Government agents. Under this Bill, we have a new bail system that has nothing to do with judges or magistrates and nothing to do with the law—except the law created by this Government.

The national health service wants to bring people from India to be nurses in Manchester, but they cannot get the certificates because the process is so opaque. People coming here as refugees are scared stiff for their lives—something that, thank God, we in this country are not—and are subjected to all kinds of interrogation.

[Andy Burnham]

As well as providing him with a little more time, I would like my right hon. Friend to consider the effect on his constituency and mine of the changes to the immigration rules that the Government want to introduce with respect to earnings. This could force a lot of nurses currently working in the NHS to leave the country. Nurse training has been cut and the NHS is over-reliant on agency staff; now the Government are about to force thousands of nurses to go back. Does he agree with me that we need a rethink and a change of heart on this issue?

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

When I go, as I no doubt shortly shall, for my flu jab, the person who gives it to me would not be regarded by many people who support this Bill as British, but services are being provided for people in this country. The work situation is going to be made more difficult, with potential employees afraid that they will be prosecuted for recruiting people illegally.

I do not know whether the Home Secretary went to any of the many wonderful Asian restaurants when she was in Manchester. My constituency has a “curry mile”, which is one of the best places to go to in the whole of the world for an overseas diet. I wonder how many of them will be under suspicion by the Home Office trying to decide, minutiae by minutiae, whether people are the “right kind” of British, who seem to be the only kind of British that they want to welcome into this country.

As the TUC says, huge poverty will be created by this Government. The children of asylum seekers will live in houses for which the amount of money being made available is £30 and a little bit more. I am proud of this country; I love this country. I do not know, however, whether the Government who are introducing this Bill love the country that Britain really is rather than the country into which they would like to transform it.