Migration Policy and the Economy

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Ind)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Harper]

I give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke).

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. This is a big issue in his constituency of Dover, one of the gateway parts of our country.

It is perfectly right for us to look at what people can pay; we have rules in Britain about paying the national living wage. However, research done by the Bank of England in its staff working paper, “The impact of immigration on occupational wages: evidence from Britain”, concludes that although there is not an impact at the higher end of the skills spectrum,

“in the semi/unskilled services sector…a 10 percentage point rise in the proportion of immigrants is associated with a 2 percent reduction in pay.”

I do not want to overstate it, but there is certainly some evidence that at the bottom end of the labour market, there is an impact on pay. It is also a question of the availability of labour and saying to employers that they need to think about smarter ways of working, not just assume that they can access an unlimited supply of labour.

[James Cartlidge]

My right hon. Friend is making a very good speech. On the point of productivity, which he was discussing when my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) and I simultaneously attempted to intervene on him, he will no doubt be as concerned as I am that the productivity figures we have just seen show a heavy concentration of higher productivity in London and the south-east. That suggests to me that the area that has had the highest level of migration and has the highest migration-derived population actually does have high productivity. We have to think about that.

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. The literature shows that many factors contribute to productivity. To digress for the moment on the regional aspect, which is not too far from the main topic, the strongest action the Government should take is to continue to invest in infrastructure across the United Kingdom, particularly transport infrastructure. One of the reasons for the focus of our former colleague George Osborne, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the northern powerhouse was that if we improved the transport infrastructure to join up the northern cities of England so that people could commute much more quickly between them, we would effectively create a group of cities that together would be globally competitive and would make a real difference to the productivity not just of their region, but of the United Kingdom. Ensuring that we invest in all parts of the United Kingdom and not just in London and the south-east is a valuable point.

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[Mr Harper]

That may well be true, but of course in the referendum on Scottish independence, when Scotland was asked whether it wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom, it clearly said that it did, and in the EU referendum the United Kingdom, which Scotland is part of, decided that it wanted to leave the European Union, and the single market and free movement of people. The hon. and learned Lady is absolutely right that I am citing an opinion poll; it is an opinion poll that is not only consistent with the result of the EU referendum, but shows very considerable support for the proposition that I am setting out, so I think that my proposition would command widespread consensus.

[James Cartlidge]

My right hon. Friend is very kind to give way to me a second time. There is one key point I want to raise, because I am not sure whether he will come to it. Were we to bring in such visas or such a system, would he expect that we, our children or whoever would then be subject to similar visas, should we want to visit France or Germany, or work or study in those countries?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes some interesting points. He mushed together several things, including visiting and working. I cannot see any reason why, once we have left the European Union, we would require people coming from the EU for visits—people coming on holiday or for travel—to have visas or vice versa. For example, we do not require visas from citizens of the United States of America coming to Britain on holiday or for visits. It is perfectly reasonable to have rules about people coming to work in Britain, and it would not be unreasonable for European Union countries to have similar rules. We could hardly complain if such rules were reciprocal, but to require visas for visits would not be sensible.

The final point I want to make is about the views of business. It is certainly true—I read the paper that the CBI produced ahead of the debate—that businesses, particularly larger businesses, are basically saying, “We want to carry on importing labour as we do already”, but I think we should push back a little. It is not surprising that businesses want to carry on doing things as they are, with unlimited supplies of inexpensive labour, but we should remind businesses that they should not only do what is in their economic interest, but what is in the economic interest of our country. We should challenge businesses to think about those who are already here and ensure they invest in them and improve their skills. We should also challenge businesses a little about whether they are investing enough in their capital, in the technology available to their business and in their productivity before we automatically say, “Let us just import people from overseas.”

The Home Secretary has commissioned the Migration Advisory Committee to look at the businesses that depend on EU nationals in their workforce, and that work will be helpful. It will enable us to identify those businesses that are using that labour, particularly at the unskilled end of the spectrum, and it will enable the Government to work with those businesses, particularly over the two-year transition period or implementation period that we have said there will be once we have left the European Union, during which people from the EU will still be able to come here. In that period we will be able to work with business to ensure that they can make the changes they need to make ahead of not having access to the unskilled labour that I talk about in my proposition.

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[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

I am thrice blessed—to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Hosie; to follow the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), who made some excellent points; and for the first time to attend a debate to which my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) will respond as Minister. We congratulate her as the first member of our intake in 2015 to have a red box. I am sure she will do the Home Office proud.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) on securing the debate. I mean that sincerely, because it is extraordinary how immigration featured so prominently in the referendum campaign but has been barely debated in Parliament since, so I very much welcome this debate. I did not know what the essence of his argument would be, but I have to say I fundamentally disagree with one point that is extremely important and we need to reflect upon it: the point about discrimination and the two different systems that I think will eventually become far more important than perhaps many people realise.

My right hon. Friend is right to say we have a discriminatory system. In fact, the official Leave campaign vowed to end that system. Under our system a person can enter the country to work as an unskilled migrant only from the EU; it is illegal to do so from outside the EU. Tier 3, a form of non-EU migration, is closed and has been for many years. In a written answer, Jacqui Smith said it was because we get sufficient unskilled labour from the EU. The key word is “unskilled”. Some 75% of people who come from the EU to work in this country would not be able to enter under the non-EU high-skilled migrant route. That tells us that the vast majority of EU migrants are doing jobs whereby they would not even be able to get into the country were we to reform the system as suggested. The problem is that the jobs are not menial and unskilled.

I will give the example of a firm in my constituency. Challs, based in Hadleigh, is a chemical manufacturer that exports around the world. It is ambitious, but its owner has said there is a real problem: he has key members of staff who are EEA nationals who are classed as unskilled under the non-EU system, but they are not unskilled and his company depends on them and he would not be able to recruit replacements; it is simply not feasible. We have a significant issue here. I campaigned to remain, but I think the referendum result was driven—quite legitimately—by a concern about unsustainable levels of migration. To honour the referendum result, it is necessary not only to bring about control of immigration, but to reduce the numbers to a sustainable level in the long term.

We have to remember that in the last quarter non-EU net migration was 50,000 higher than EU net migration. If we have a single non-discriminatory system—the same system for EU and non-EU—it is mathematically impossible that non-EU migration will do anything other than rise, perhaps significantly. On the streets of Clacton and other places where the people voted leave in overwhelming numbers, if we had said that a direct result of leaving the EU will be a significant rise in non-EU migration, they would have been shocked and appalled. That is a democratic point that we have to consider. I am a strong supporter of immigration, but it has to be controlled. Consider the people from eastern Europe and the impact they have had: they had a century of brutalisation, but we set them free in 1989; they came into the single market that Mrs Thatcher created and they have worked their socks off in this country.

How do our recycling centres keep going? Almost entirely from east European labour. This is the key point. Would we fill jobs? It is not about what skills are available. It is simply whether we have people available to do those jobs, and people with the will to do those jobs. I agree strongly with my right hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston that we have to train our own workforce to fill those positions, but it will take time. I remember representatives of the hospitality sector coming to speak to the Work and Pensions Committee when I was on it before the election. They said they supported a greater proportion of workers coming from the UK, but there would need to be a transition.

When I stay overnight in the Park Plaza, I do not see a single British member of staff. They are all from Europe and they work their socks off. They might be unskilled and low paid, but we and our economy depend on them. We have to move away from that dependency, which has become damaging. That is the reality of the position we are in now, so we must be very cautious before equalising the system. In my view, for what it is worth, were we to maintain some form of membership of the EEA and have some form of emergency brake on European migration, such as Liechtenstein has through the European Free Trade Association, and were we maintain the division we have where we are strict on non-EU numbers, we might get a better system, because instead of the Migration Advisory Committee determining the number of people coming into the country, it would be a different system altogether called the free market, which I support. We should be very cautious before changing that.