Population Growth: Impact of Immigration

James Daly Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of immigration on population growth.

It is a delight to speak in this Chamber on a subject which is not a delight; it everything but a delight, as I shall articulate briefly in this important debate. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley.

The greatest Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli—of course, a Conservative, but I suppose that is implicit—said that

“change is inevitable…change…is constant.”

I want to speak about the course, character and consequences of change.

Each of us encounters change in our lives. The ultimate change is death, the first change we enjoy is birth, and those between can be either joys or sorrows, but our capacity to adapt to change is not limitless. The enduring touchstones of familiarity help to give our lives certainty and assurance, and it is vital that we understand that that applies communally and collectively as well as personally. Yet the changes that this country has seen in population growth have been dramatic.

So much of the political debate that we cherish and thrive upon in this place is about change, and yet the Government have made no real measure of the effect of a rapidly growing population and have no mechanism across Government to deal with its consequences. When I first ran for Parliament in 1987—I know there are people in this Chamber thinking, “How can that be possible?” and it is true that I was all but a boy in those days—net migration was just 2,000. Up until the mid-1990s, migration was essentially balanced. We had people leaving the country and people coming, and that is what all advanced countries enjoy, for it is the inevitable consequence of being an advanced economy.

When I was first elected to this House in 1997, 10 years later, net migration was 47,000. Ten years later—10 difficult, and some would say tragic, years under the stewardship of Mr Blair—net migration was 233,000. Under the previous Labour Government, total migration was 3.6 million, and nearly 1 million British citizens emigrated, so net migration topped 2.7 million. The rate of inflow between 1997 and 2010 equated to one migrant arriving every minute. Every year since 1997 bar one—when the world was locked down—net migration was in excess of 100,000, and often by a much bigger margin than that. Indeed, net migration has averaged about 250,000 a year over the past two decades.

The most recent figures published by the Office for National Statistics last month are truly shocking: they heralded record net migration of 606,000.

[James Daly (Bury North) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend find it even more, frankly, antidemocratic that at no point in that whole process since the 1980s have the electorate been asked whether that outcome is what they want?

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[James Daly]

It is important to say, in respect of that, that the reason why that contribution is required is that we have palpably failed to train home-grown people, who could take the same jobs. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we fall into a lazy argument if we simply talk in platitudes, rather than look at the lives and opportunities of our citizens?

[Sir John Hayes]

My hon. Friend encourages me to digress, though within the scope of the matter before us. There is a macroeconomic lesson that needs to be taught to the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility. There is a lazy assumption that increasing population is an automatic good for the economy. It is certainly true that an economy can be grown by those means, but that does not mean per capita growth. It means growth of an altogether cruder kind.

Moreover, the macroeconomic fact is that doing so displaces investment in recruitment, skills and modernising the economy. The economy is stultified in a high-labour mode. Britain’s chance to succeed and prosper in future is as a high-tech, high-skilled economy. Rather than displacing our attention, and subsequently policy and investment, in those skills, by recruiting labour from abroad, we should indeed look closely at the kind of economic future we want to build, and drive policy forward towards that future. My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the myth that pervades the economic debate about migration.

I want to make two more points. One is on the likely future population. Experts estimate that the UK population could grow from 67 million to between 83 million and 87 million by 2046 if current immigration trends continue. Growth to 80 million-plus will result in the need to build between 6 million and 8 million more homes. That is equal to between 15 and 18 more cities the size of Birmingham by 2046. I do not say it lightly or blithely, but this is by far the greatest challenge facing the Government.

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[James Daly (Bury North) (Con)]

Thank you very much indeed for calling me to speak, Mr Paisley.

I did not come here to Westminster Hall to talk about figures. I came here to talk about what I believe is the important factor that has dominated the debate on immigration in Parliament for the last 20 to 30 years: the complete ignoring of vast sections of the population by the people who sit in this House.

The people who sit in this House have often refined their attitude to immigration. Mr Paisley, please forgive me for reading this, but in 1774 Edmund Burke, with whom I normally agree, said:

“Your representative owes you not his industry only but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”

In that speech, Burke also used a phrase that I think should be a flashing red light for all politicians: “his enlightened conscience”. What we have seen in Parliament for the last 20 to 30 years is people who believe they have enlightened consciences and who have made decisions on the basis of their own ideological views, at the expense of their constituents. I have repeated that point continually, and I cannot be the only MP who feels that way.

When I first became involved in politics in Bury in 2010, as all people do who get involved with political parties I travelled around the north of England. Without a shadow of a doubt, at nearly every single door that I knocked on, immigration was the issue raised. It was not a nuanced debate; it was not, “Let’s talk about how many people use the NHS.” It was essentially, “There are too many people coming into this country and we are extremely concerned about it.” That is going back over a decade.

When I was growing up, immigration was something that could not be discussed. “You can’t mention things to do with immigration or race, because you’re almost certainly racist.” There was a chorus of people only too willing to challenge you on that basis.

This Government face a real decision on where they want to go in terms of representing the opinion of the British people and representing constituents such as mine in Bury, as well as those of my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South (Scott Benton) and others. We could decide to take the perfectly intellectually coherent view, which I am sure will be articulated by the Scottish National party and the Labour party, that immigration is a matter of conscience and morality. When morality comes into any debate in this place, I shrink away from it; my morality may well be very different from yours, Mr Paisley, or anybody else’s. Anyone who decides policy on the basis of their own prejudices is to be questioned and thought of as a politician who is not serving their people.

A politician who looks at immigration in the correct way is a politician who takes account not only of the views of their constituents and people in the country but of the practical consequences. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) has set out the practical consequences. In today’s debate in this Chamber, however, especially by Members of other parties, those two things have been ignored.

I often wonder what the Labour party thinks when it looks at why Brexit happened and why the Conservatives had such a majority in 2019. I can tell the Opposition that it is because, especially in the north of England, Labour politicians for 40 years ignored their own constituents’ views—not only ignored them but considered them to be racist. That is the basis of the Labour party’s downfall and it is what made Brexit happen. It would be a great tragedy if the Government, under the excellent Minister—I genuinely mean that; he is a great man and a great Minister—do not respond to the issue that people trusted us on.

Going back briefly to the issue of Brexit, I often hear in this House from colleagues who fought titanic battles, and talk about regaining our sovereignty. Brexit was about immigration. We can kid ourselves it was about anything else, but in Blackpool and Bury it was about immigration. That is what shifted the votes in their millions. We never hear about it in this place. We talk in nuanced terms that completely exclude voters from the debate, and then we wonder why the voters look at this place like they do.

The people in this place do not represent the views of the people on the issue of immigration. As Burke said back in 1774, they are people who consider themselves to have an enlightened conscience; they ignore the views of their constituents and would prefer to judge policy by their own perceived morality and judgment—and to hell with the consequences for housing, opportunity and skills. Who are the people who are sacrificed because of the ideology that has gone on in this country for 40 to 50 years? It is the poorest. That is the true shame of the policy, and it must change.

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[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your Chairship, Mr Paisley. I congratulate the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) on securing this vital debate, and thank all hon. Members for their contributions.

That net migration is currently at its highest level on record is beyond question. Historically, the number averaged around 200,000 per year—of course I am not going back as far as the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings did, but instead looking across recent years—while, of course, the figures this year came out at 606,000. It is therefore entirely fair to ask questions about why the number has grown by so much and whether continued growth at such numbers would be sustainable over time.

Debates on this issue can always be contentious, as I think we have just seen, but I hope that we can all agree on the need to have a well-informed discussion based on facts and evidence and driven by an honest assessment of the trade-offs that lie at the heart of this issue. Unfortunately, though, our national conversation on immigration is too often characterised by oversimplification and false binaries. For example, it is clear that a substantial proportion of the public are concerned about the current level of migration overall, and their worries are entirely legitimate given the amount of pressure on our social infrastructure following 13 years of successive Conservative Governments hollowing out our public services and utterly failing to build enough affordable housing. However, it is equally true that we are confronted by a demographic challenge when we consider that the replacement rate—the ratio of births to deaths—has been below 1:1 for the past 50 years. Meanwhile, the dependency ratio—or the number of working people per retiree—has fallen from roughly 15:1 at the time that Lloyd George introduced the first state pension, over 100 years ago, to around 4:1 by the time that this Government came into office in 2010.

Rather than taking a narrow, blinkered, partisan position that dismisses one of those factors in favour of the other, we should see the immigration question through the prism of competing priorities that must be well managed so that we get the balance right and deliver the best possible outcomes for our country. It is also vital that we avoid the temptation to see immigration policy as something that operates in isolation from other policy challenges. Rebuilding our public services and housing infrastructure after 13 years of Tory neglect will be a top priority for the next Labour Government, and we are clear that doing so will also help to build more cohesive community relations.

The competing priorities that underpin immigration policy are perfectly illustrated by the points-based system for skilled workers. Labour supports the points-based system—indeed, we created it in 2008 for non-EU citizens—but it is clear to us that the way in which this Government are managing the system is simply not working, because Ministers have failed to engage with employers and trade unions such that our economy gets the overseas labour it needs while ensuring that those key stakeholders bring forward workforce plans and skills and training strategies that maximise opportunities for our home-grown talent. As a result, for too long employers have seen immigrant labour as a substitute for investing in local workers.

It is also clear that with 7 million people on the NHS waiting list and more than 2 million people on long-term sick leave, we urgently need a Labour Government so that we can implement our new deal for working people, as set out by the Leader of the Opposition along with the shadow Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), and the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth).

I turn now to our broken asylum system. It was this Government who gave us new legislation—the Nationality and Borders Act 2022—that we were told would increase the fairness and efficacy of the asylum system, break the business model of the people-smuggling gangs and remove more easily from the UK those with no right to be here. Well, it is almost one year to the day since that legislation came into force, yet here we are again with new legislation and the same old promises from Ministers, as if none of it had ever happened.

Whereas those on the Conservative Benches offer nothing but platitudes and more broken promises, a Labour Government will act decisively to deliver an immigration system that is fair, affordable, sustainable and, above all, fit for purpose. We will reform the points-based system by ending the disparity between wage rates paid to migrant and non-migrant workers in order to prevent undercutting and abuse, and we will engage with employers and trade unions to deliver workforce plans that strike the right balance between inflows and homegrown talent. Equally, if not more importantly, we will deliver a comprehensive workforce plan to upskill our homegrown workforce and equip the next generation with the skills and knowledge to meet the long-term demands of an ever more interconnected global economy, in which specialist knowledge and skills are at a premium.

As I said earlier, public concern about immigration is focused on a range of issues, including both economy-driven immigration and asylum. However, far from stopping the boats, as is so often promised, the Conservatives “bigger backlog” Bill will deliver nothing more than chaos, inefficiency, unfairness and further costs to taxpayers. We need Labour’s five-point plan to stop the dangerous channel crossings by delivering on tasks based on common sense and quiet diplomacy, rather than chasing headlines and the government-by-gimmick that the Immigration Minister is so fond of.

[James Daly]

May I ask the hon. Gentleman what the plan is?

[Stephen Kinnock]

Yes, of course. I am just checking the time, but—