Immigration Reforms

Graham Leadbitter Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Graham Leadbitter (Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) on securing this important debate.

Right across my constituency, through the highlands and islands, across Aberdeenshire and right across Scotland, successive Governments continue to fail our communities, our public services and our businesses with immigration policy that bears no scrutiny when it comes to labour requirements. Many Members have talked about the hardships faced by refugees and the impact on their lives, and the humanity or otherwise of our actions. I agree with those sentiments, but I am going to focus on the big impact on employment, and how that impacts the communities in my constituency.

Every day in Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey, there are people with care needs that cannot be fully met and businesses that cannot be staffed, not because of lack of budget, but because of lack of labour. “But,” say some, “there are people in the UK who can do these jobs,” but are there, really? In areas like my constituency, much of which is a two-and-a-half-hour drive north of Perth, which itself is an hour north of Edinburgh and five hours north of London—we are talking about somewhere that is 11-plus hours from here—are we really going to drag people away from their families and friends to do these jobs, when there has been and there could be a willing workforce to do them, contribute to our communities and be part of a constructive, progressive and successful whole? People do come by choice and love the places they move to, but their number does not come close to closing the gap between labour demand and labour availability.

The fact is that before Brexit there was far more labour available to care and hospitality. Sadly, that has disappeared in broken Brexit Britain. Care providers that do have foreign workers under excessively strict working visa rules are often left with the utterly invidious choice of not fulfilling care needs of vulnerable clients, or breaking visa rules on hours worked in order to do so. They are then punished severely simply for the act of caring, which is a disturbingly dystopian situation. Business leaders across Scotland, in Federation of Small Businesses branches and chambers of commerce, point to labour shortages and the stalling of economic growth as a result of current immigration policy.

[Apsana Begum]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Government need urgently—today—to provide clarity on those constituents, perhaps of his and certainly of mine, who came through the European Community association agreement route and have had applications for renewals and other elements paused since November 2025? They are now in complete limbo, although they are eligible as of this month to apply for indefinite leave to remain.

[Graham Leadbitter]

Absolutely. That is just another example of delays in a system that does not work—a system that is not able to process applications or to deal with the legitimate issues that are raised by people within it in a timely and reasonable way. These are people who could be doing jobs, paying taxes and contributing to society, but have restrictions placed on what they can do and how they can live their lives.

Scottish Labour says it supports a more bespoke immigration system for Scotland, which would be great if its own Ministers paid any attention to it. The oppressive and stifling immigration rules that were imposed by the previous Conservative Government and are now being copper clad by, of all people, a Labour Government, are deeply damaging to the highlands, Moray and far beyond. Will the Government take responsibility for the harms that they are inflicting on vulnerable citizens whose care needs cannot be met from our current working population, and on those in the hard-pressed hospitality sector who cannot provide the service they wish or grow their businesses to meet demand due to an immigration policy that utterly fails them?