Immigration Bill

Debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Andrew Turner

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker—at last I can make my contribution.

I want to begin by complimenting a number of hon. Members on their absolutely excellent speeches, especially the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), who brought an amazing level of humanity and intelligence to the debate; my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), as well as my good friends, the hon. Members for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott); and my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), whom I congratulate on the way in which she made the case on housing and the contribution that migrant communities make to this country.

We are debating the Bill at amazing speed. The programme motion is ludicrous, and the lack of any pre-legislative scrutiny whatsoever is breathtaking. It seems to me a negation of our duty as parliamentarians not to have the proper opportunity to examine the Bill—but then, of course, we never were going to be able to examine this Bill, because it is all about dog-whistle politics and appealing to a particularly low common denominator now being promoted by the Daily Mail and other newspapers.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

No. I am going to make my speech.

I would like the House to consider for a moment the general narrative that is current in this country and across Europe—a narrative condemning people who are migrants and condemning people who try to survive in Europe, and at the same time expressing deep concern when 200 were drowned off the coast of Italy in the tragedy of Lampedusa, along with the 20,000 others who have died trying to cross the Mediterranean in the past 20 years, as well as those who have drowned trying to get to the Canary islands or to Greece. Yes, some of those were economic migrants and some were asylum seekers. Yes, some were trying to escape from human rights abuses in Eritrea, Sudan and many other countries, and we express concern at what happened.

We need to think about why people seek to move in order to survive. Do not we, as a powerful industrial country, have some responsibility not just for the economic situation that this country faces but, through our contributions to the European Union, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation, and to the general agreement on tariffs and to trade and other organisations, for the sense of economic imbalance around the world?

We should be a little more sanguine about immigration and emigration. During the 1950s and 1960s, which, it is always apocryphally told, were a time of mass migration into Britain, the figures show—they are helpfully put together in the House of Commons Library briefing—net migration from Britain during the whole of that period. A very large number of British people went to live elsewhere and made their contributions and their lives in other countries. They did it for economic reasons and sent money home. Indeed, at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries, there was a regular migration of more than 100,000 people a year from Britain, mainly to the United States, Canada and Australia, but to other places as well. Migration—