Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

John Hayes Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 28th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Lady refers to the policy on family reunion or bringing spouses to this country. The rules, which include a minimum income requirement, are the will of the House. They are what the House has previously decided in legislation, and I think it is fair to have rules on bringing spouses from abroad into this country and on family reunion. That is right, but it is also right that we constantly review the rules to make sure that they continue to be fair at all times.

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

A part of being fair is dealing with matters promptly. When the former Labour Government were in power, about 15,000 people who were here illegally were dealt with every year and returned. That number fell to 5,000. Does my right hon. Friend aim to improve those numbers so that we actually deal, fairly and quickly, with people who are here illegally, rather than detaining them for a very long time in the sort of circumstances that were described earlier?

[Sajid Javid]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. I think that the 5,000 number to which he refers is with respect to foreign national offenders only. When it comes to removing people from this country, or deporting them because they are here illegally, the number is, I think, a lot higher, but his point is important, and we need to make sure that we properly enforce the rules that we have in place.

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

Each of our lives—all lives—is characterised by change and challenge. We attempt to rise to the second and cope with the first. How successful we are in that depends on context, individuals and circumstances. What is absolutely certain is that the familiar touchstones of enduring certainty, by accentuating what we know, affirm our personal sense of belonging and communal notion of identity.

In trying to build a society in which the things that unite us are greater than any which divide us, mass migration proves difficult simply because of its scale and the difference it makes. When communities quickly change beyond or nearly beyond recognition, people find it hard to cope. That was precisely why the people decided to say, as expressed through the referendum, that they wanted no more of free movement, and that was what the Home Secretary and shadow Home Secretary drew the House’s attention to. Of course, that was not the only thing that the referendum was about but, emblematically, what people saw as migration “out of control” became a proxy for not being able to command their own future and not being able to govern themselves.

Free movement has that problem at its heart. The idea that people can come here at will, regardless of need and of what they do when they get here, and can choose where they go and what their life is like thereafter, seemed to be at odds both with immigration policy before, which was based on applications, visas, needs and specificities of various kinds, and with what the people who are here already feel is fair and reasonable.

[Pete Wishart]

The right hon. Gentleman is correct that immigration was the cold beating heart of the case for leaving the European Union—there is no doubt about that. However, he is just making a traditional, right-wing Tory speech on immigration, saying that immigration somehow changes communities and drives down wages. Does he have even a shred of evidence to support all these lazy, right-wing Tory views about immigration? We have never seen any evidence.

[Sir John Hayes]

I do not mind being called a traditional Tory, but I am not so keen on “lazy”. If I am articulating that view and if it reflects a view that is held by many of my constituents and a large number of other people, I am doing the House a service.

[Caroline Lucas]

rose—

[Sir John Hayes]

I will give way in a second.

Trevor Phillips, the founding chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, argued that there is a liberal consensus not to speak about such things. There is what he described—I do not know whether I am being unfair, but perhaps the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) matches this description—as “touchy”, “smug”, “complacent” and “squeamish” unwillingness on the part of bourgeois liberals to address the issue. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is a bourgeois liberal, but I do know that the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) is, and I will happily give way to her.

[Caroline Lucas]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way with the customary courtesy that we all appreciate so much—Hansard could perhaps put “sarcasm” in brackets there. To address his point, of course he needs to respond to his constituents, but would he accept that his constituents may have reflected such a view back to him because of things such as the poster put up by Nigel Farage during the referendum campaign that actually showed Syrian refugees while implying that that was something to do with freedom of movement being out of control? Perhaps he would be doing his constituents more of a service if he based his arguments on evidence, and the evidence, time and again, is that freedom of movement does not reduce wages. We need a Government who are willing to enforce a minimum wage. I wish this Government would do that, but that is not the fault of freedom of movement.

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[Sir John Hayes]

To be clear, I started this contribution by saying that change and challenge were part of every life. Change is inevitable and constant, and advanced societies of course have people coming and going to and from them. Indeed, that has been the case in our country for a long time, but the level and extent of net migration into this country over recent years have been unprecedented. If we look at the numbers, over the past 10 years, roughly speaking in net terms, 250,000 migrants have entered Britain each year.

[Mrs Kemi Badenoch (Saffron Walden) (Con)]

Contrary to what the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) says, as a first-generation immigrant, I know that it is wholly inconsistent to say that immigrants have not changed this country or communities in any way whatsoever. Sometimes there is positive change, and sometimes there is negative change—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman shakes his head in disagreement, but I am merely repeating his words. Does my right hon. Friend agree there are both positive and negative changes, and that we want more of the positive and less of the negative?

[Sir John Hayes]

I do agree, and part of that is about scale. Part of that is about the absorption of new peoples, about building the kind of common sense of identity that I called for, and about ensuring that what we share is more important than that which divides us, as I also said a few moments ago. If we are to build that kind of social cohesion and that civil harmony, it is important to recognise, as my hon. Friend says, the consequences of immigration, where they are both positive and less so. Many communities across Britain felt at the time of the referendum—using that as an expression—that some of the changes were not positive. That is partly because free movement tended to bring people to particular communities in the east of England, including in my county of Lincolnshire, and other similar places, so that the number of people who came was not spread out evenly. People were often concentrated in small towns that changed very radically very rapidly, and it is the extent of that change that causes some of the concerns that I have attempted to amplify.

[Brendan O’Hara]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that those of us in areas that have had a positive experience of immigration should continue to have the right to have that experience? Will he therefore back our call to devolve immigration to the Scottish Government so that we can continue to have that positive experience of immigration?

[Sir John Hayes]

I take the view that this is our sovereign Parliament, that Home Office policy should be made here, and that the Government govern for the whole of our kingdom. That may seem a bit unconventional to Scottish nationalist eyes, but it is certainly my view. As I recall, it was also the view of the majority of Scots when their opinion was tested in a referendum, so let us move on from the idea of devolving this policy.

As I said, the figures speak for themselves. There have been unprecedented levels of mass net migration for a decade. Of course, the fact that most of those migrants came from outside the EU goes back to the point made quite persuasively by the shadow Home Secretary, which is that this debate must be contextualised. We need to talk about migration as a whole, rather than simply immigration from the EU. Nevertheless, in the views of many, free movement became a totem for the kind of lack of control of our destiny and our borders that the EU embodies.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

What I did not do in my speech was to set out alternative ways of addressing some of the concerns that the right hon. Gentleman is raising, such as by investing in public services in communities where there has been migration and in integration strategies, and through proper labour market enforcement of standards and wages. Those are ways of addressing community concerns without the whole country having to cut off its nose to spite its face by ending the free movement of people.

[Sir John Hayes]

The hon. Gentleman is right that growing the population significantly creates great pressures on health, housing, roads and schools. He is right that public services struggle to respond to population growth of the kind that I have outlined, and it is time that we had what was described earlier as a grown-up debate about population growth, and its effect on the provision of public services and how they are funded.

However, the point that I really want to make is that the Government have only partly responded to that public call for tougher action. Returning to the figures that I quoted earlier when I challenged the Home Secretary, the number of failed asylum seekers removed from this country has fallen from 16,000 in 2005 to just 5,000—despite what the Home Secretary said, that figure does not include the returns of foreign criminals, although I understand that he made a genuine mistake in that respect—and the number of overstayers returned has dropped from 31,000 per annum to about 21,000 per annum. We are perpetually failing to deal with such matters as effectively and efficiently as we ought to, and that is actually rather unfair to the individuals concerned, because they sometimes end up in unacceptable conditions, whether in housing, in detention centres or wherever. It is actually fairer to deal with these things quickly, as previous Governments clearly did to a greater extent—I do not say that with any great relish.

It is also important to understand what this new White Paper is likely to lead to. There is a real risk that the focus on low-skilled migrants, and certainly on the one-year limit, may mask immigration figures. There is an argument for seasonal workers. The seasonal agricultural workers scheme is to be welcomed, and we should extend it to horticulture, but those workers tend to go home. They do not settle and they are not migrants; they are people who simply come to work.

Let us build an immigration system that is fair and that reflects public understanding of the need to build communities that cohere. And let us build a shared sense of Britishness; that should be at the heart of what the Government do.

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[Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)]

It is a great privilege to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), and I warmed to many of the points she was making. It is long overdue that we address the issue of indefinite detention.

I very much welcome this Bill as an important step in taking back control of our borders as we leave the EU. It is important that we deliver on this promise we made to the British people. Unfortunately, too many Members of this House seem to be reneging on promises they made to the British people at the last election. It is essential that we deliver on this promise to end the free movement of people and take back control of our own immigration policy. Beyond this Bill, which is just one step in that process, leaving the EU provides us with a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reset our immigration policy.

As we do that, it is vital that we are able to have a grown-up, mature and constructive debate about immigration. We have to avoid the polarisation that too often takes place, where people are either labelled as being for free movement and immigration, or against it and seeing it as a bad thing, because the reality is that it can be both good and bad. It is clear to me that, on balance, immigration has been good for our country. It is a very positive thing for our country, and we have heard many hon. Members make the point about the benefits of immigration to our economy. It has also been good for our nation in the wider context and has largely contributed to our being the richly diverse nation that the UK is today. But we also need to acknowledge that for some communities immigration has been a mixed blessing. If we do not listen to and acknowledge the legitimate concerns of communities who have seen the negative impacts of free movement affect them, we do the positive case for immigration a disservice.

There are some parts of our country and some communities where people feel that uncontrolled immigration has had a largely negative impact on their communities. It has brought about sudden change to the make-up, culture, nature and identity of those communities, and they see that as something that has been taken away from them. Although we should not be shy, as I have not been, in speaking up for the benefits that immigration has brought to our country, neither should we avoid addressing the challenges it has also created in some cases.

[Sir John Hayes]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the public concerns about mass migration. In every poll taken, about 75% of people think immigration should be reduced and are concerned about the growth in population to 70 million over the next few years. Indeed, many think the Government should be going much further than reducing free movement and should be cutting immigration per se.

[Steve Double]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his intervention, as he makes the good point that many UK residents believe that migration has to be brought under control and that the numbers need to be reduced. In leaving the EU, we have that once-in-a-generation opportunity to reset our immigration policy and manage it in a way that is right for our nation.

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[Mrs Badenoch]

No, I am not interested in joining any nationalist party, but I thank the hon. Gentleman whose constituency I forget for inviting me to join. The fact is that if we are to have a calm debate about immigration, what we need are facts and figures, not smug self-righteousness, which is all that we get from those on the Opposition Benches.

I will continue on the topic of free movement, which is what this Bill is about. We all have different constituency experiences, which will have an impact on this discussion. I have had many positive discussions with Conservative Members. For instance, my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Colin Clark) talked about positive impacts in relation to immigration in his constituency. I listened to my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) talk about some of the difficulties that his constituency has had. We have both positive and negative experiences.

What creates the problem is when Members on the Opposition Benches, and perhaps some on these Benches, feel that only they have the best intentions and that anyone else who speaks with concerns is speaking from xenophobia and racism. That is absolutely wrong. We cannot think the very best of ourselves and the worst of anyone else who is not in our party, or who is not sitting on our side of the House. I am very, very willing, even as an immigrant, to hear arguments against immigration, because I know that immigration is a global issue. It is not a UK issue. Every single country in the world is talking about it. It is completely crazy for us to have this discussion as if it were a UK-only issue, or even an EU-only issue, and believe that no one else has the experience to be able to speak on it.

From the perspective of my constituency, immigration has, perhaps, an indirect effect. The north of my constituency has a huge biotech and pharmaceutical industry, and many of the arguments that people make there are very, very similar to those that have been made by SNP Members and by my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon and others, about the need to ensure that we continue to have a strong relationship with the EU—that is something that I support. Speaking as someone who was a former London Assembly member, I have also seen how immigration has an indirect effect on those of us outside London. My Essex constituency has seen a huge rise in house prices and house building, which is having an effect on its population in a very significant and profound way. It is not because loads of immigrants are coming to take on our jobs, but because lots of people who migrate to London raise prices and take up housing there, causing a push-out effect on other parts of the country, which we do not get the resources to deal with. As was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Luke Graham), who is no longer in his place, we should be looking at trying to reduce the impact of negative consequences on places such as Saffron Walden and Uttlesford District Council.

[Sir John Hayes]

The point that my hon. Friend is making, and her willingness to tackle what Trevor Phillips described as the “liberal delusion” about the problems of mass migration, are important in respect of housing, because immigration is the single biggest driver of housing demand.

[Mrs Badenoch]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. We need to look at what is actually happening and to think of an immigration system that will work for the very north of our country as well as for the very south. There will not be a one-size-fits-all approach. I am very willing to listen to arguments from Opposition Members about how much they need it, but they also need to extend the same courtesy and not pretend that everyone on this side of the House, including people like me who grew up in Nigeria, are racist. That is completely mad.

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[Tim Farron]

I am deeply worried about that. The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point that I am just coming to. The settled status scheme has been rolled out just this month, and with it has come the grotesque sight of families who have built their lives in the UK being forced to register just to carry on with their lives as normal. As the hon. Gentleman has just stated, every glitch in the technology—every moment that the computer says no—will have a devastating effect on people who should feel welcome here. Research estimates that one in 10 EU citizens could fall between the gaps and never be registered at all. People will get the wrong status as a result, which means more problems for them and massive problems for the Home Office years down the line. Mark my word: this is the beginning of a Windrush mark 2.

What will replace freedom of movement? Well, this Bill does not even really tell us. We have to guess, and businesses will have to guess. The Bill is silent on the very issue on which it is supposed to be legislating. It just extends powers to future Governments to do as they please—any future Government with any intentions, without any security or scrutiny from this House. Are we really supposed to trust the Home Office, no matter its future leadership, to do whatever it pleases on this vital matter—the very Department that brought us the Windrush scandal, with British citizens kicked out of their jobs and homes, and even locked up in detention cells, and that brought us the hostile environment of harassing immigrants in their homes, workplaces and even when they went to their local A&E?

[Sir John Hayes]

The hon. Gentleman, with typical straightforwardness, is making a case for the perpetuation of free movement. He believes in freedom of movement from the European Union, but presumably he does not believe in freedom of movement from New Zealand, Canada, Australia or the West Indies, which he has just spoken about. What is it about Europe that is different from those countries that have such historic ties with the United Kingdom?

[Tim Farron]

The right hon. Gentleman does not believe in freedom of movement of any kind whatever. I assume that he is a free-market Conservative. If he believes in the free movement of capital—in fact, if he believes in the free market at all—not to support the free movement of the people who are the backbone of any free market is absolutely ludicrous and does not stack up.

There is nothing in this Bill about Britain’s proud record as a humanitarian leader—nothing on helping people who have been persecuted around the world for who they are, what they believe in or who they love. I would have thought that the Home Office wanted to talk about how Britain is at its best when it looks after people who come to us, ask for our help and seek safety and sanctuary. I remain deeply affected and humbled by meeting parents in refugee camps who took appalling risks to shield their children from horrific danger. Many other Members have seen the same terrible sights, and we know what it means to those people to know that Britain is a safe haven. Yet the Bill is totally silent on this matter. Perhaps the Government do not want much scrutiny of their record on refugees.

Let me tell the House what this Bill could do if it were to follow Britain’s proud humanitarian tradition. It could let people work. At the moment, asylum seekers are barred from working. They cannot even earn to take care of their own families, and that makes it harder to integrate and harder to play a part in their own communities and economies—the very things that help every community to thrive. Let us fix this. If asylum seekers do not get a decision after three months, let us lift this ludicrous ban, and let them work and contribute. The Chancellor might be more interested than the Minister, given that this would bring a net gain to the economy of around £40 million every year. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine), whose Asylum Seekers (Permission to Work) Bill, which is before the House, calls for exactly that.

The Government’s Bill could also ensure that we do not lock people up indefinitely, as has already been mentioned by one or two right hon. and hon. Members. At the moment, immigrants can be detained with no idea of when they might be removed or released. This is unacceptable, unjust and un-British. At the very least, let us set a 28-day deadline on how long someone can be detained.

This Bill could also make sure that families are united, not separated. I have a private Member’s Bill, the Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill, before this House that would reunite refugee children with their parents. The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil), who is sitting in front of me, also has a Bill—the Refugees (Family Reunion) (No. 2) Bill—which has the same aim, but has a greater chance of getting passed. Why have the Government not accepted the proposal offered by either of us?

The failures of this Bill affect the local as well as the global. Last week, this House celebrated, with great gusto, Cumbria Day—a proud day for us all. But it masks a reality, which is that people in my constituency only earn roughly £20,000 pounds a year on average. Yet last year’s immigration White Paper suggests that we ban all migrants who earn less than £30,000 because apparently they will not have sufficient skills. The Government say that this would not have an impact on areas such as mine, but they have refused to say how they reached this conclusion, so let me attempt to draw the Government back into the real world, if that is possible.

The hospitality and tourism industry in Cumbria employs more than 60,000 people. It contributes £3 billion to the economy every year. It contains the Lake district and much of the Yorkshire dales. Outside London, we are Britain’s most popular tourist destination. About 10,000 of this vital industry’s workers in Cumbria are from outside the UK. My constituency has low wages, and it is a disgrace that over 2,000 local children are living in poverty, but it has only 270 people registered as unemployed. There is no untapped pool of local labour waiting to fill the thousands of vacancies this Government will force on our industry. It does not take a genius to work out that if we stop people working in the UK if they are on less than 30 grand, if the average wage in tourism is nowhere near that and if the local workforce is not big enough, we will damage, if not destroy, that industry by imposing these restrictions. It does not take a genius to work that out, which is quite useful given that this Government are singularly lacking in genius.

This Bill is heartless, but more than that, it is witless. We will oppose the Bill tonight. It is an awful Bill, which makes it all the more stunning that Labour’s Front Benchers will not oppose it.

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[Jack Brereton]

No. I want to make some progress.

Freedom of movement did not result in tangible improvements to my constituents’ own quality of life and future prospects, even as it improved the quality of life and future prospects of those who found themselves entitled to move freely here. Free movement in practice worked instead as a mop for clearing up the EU’s chronic unemployment problem, suppressing wages here in exactly the kind of communities that I and other hon. Members were elected to represent.

[Sir John Hayes]

The chairman of the Migration Advisory Committee has made exactly that point—

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

He didn’t.

[Sir John Hayes]

Will the hon. Gentleman listen? The chairman made exactly that point. He said that the policy of free movement tends to perpetuate a low-skill, low-wage economy. That is precisely what we have ended up with, with a consequent displacement of investment in skills, in automation, in technology and in recruitment.

[Jack Brereton]

I totally agree with my right hon. Friend.

Certainly, Stoke-on-Trent South has some of the lowest average wage levels in the country, and we need to continue to build on the work we have been doing in government to ensure people take home more.

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[Caroline Nokes]

I will come to some of the hon. Gentleman’s comments in due course.

At this time, we must be an outward-looking, global nation, and as my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary indicated, over the next 12 months, we will speak to a range of businesses and organisations across the country. The right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington raised the specific issue of Irish citizenship and deportation. Of course, the UK has always had the power to deport or exclude Irish citizens, but in the light of the historical, community and political ties between the UK and Ireland, along with the existence of the common travel area, the approach since 2007 has been to consider Irish citizens for deportation only where a court has recommended deportation in sentencing or where the Secretary of State has concluded that owing to the exceptional circumstances of a case the public interest requires deportation. This approach is to be maintained.

Coming to Back-Bench contributions, it seems fair to kick off with my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), who mentioned football at length. Of course we welcome the contribution made by sports people to the UK. Our current visa arrangements are designed for elite sports people and coaches who are internationally established at the highest level, and whose employment will make a significant contribution to the development of sport. To support the sector, the Home Office works with recognised sports governing bodies to agree on an objective set of criteria against which elite sports people will be assessed. My hon. Friend made clear the importance of the premier league, not only to our society but to our economy, and I am absolutely committed to working alongside the Football Association and the premier league to ensure that that continues.

The hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) spoke about detention, and specifically about indefinite detention. That issue was also raised by the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman). The hon. Gentleman will be aware that 95% of those who are here without immigration leave are in the community, and I am sure that he will welcome the current Yarl’s Wood community pilot scheme. We are working with 12 women who would otherwise be in Yarl’s Wood to ensure that they are being supported. There is, of course, an automatic bail referral requirement for people who have been detained for four months, and we are now piloting a referral after two months. That will provide the judicial oversight for which so many have called.

The right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham spoke passionately about detention. It is seldom that I say this, but I greatly enjoyed the opportunity to appear before her Select Committee, the Joint Committee on Human Rights, a couple of months ago. We had an interesting and challenging discussion about detention, and I hope I convinced her and her Committee that we are thinking very hard about the issue. It is right that we work to make the correct decisions, but detention remains part of our immigration policy. It is important for us to work on the immigration bail pilots and, of course, on detention in the community.

My right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) spoke about the conventional view that we should have one immigration policy for the whole United Kingdom, and I absolutely agreed with what he said.

[Sir John Hayes]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Caroline Nokes]

I am sorry, but I am not going to give way. I am conscious that I am very time-limited.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) made a point very early in the debate about fairness and language, and about the importance of not conflating asylum with immigration routes. She was, of course, absolutely right. I sometimes find it hugely frustrating when people conflate the terms “asylum seeker” and “refugee” and “economic migrant”. I have said before that we must be careful with our language, and the Home Secretary responded to my right hon. Friend’s intervention with an important observation about language and tone.

I am well aware that there are strong and passionate views about immigration on both sides of the House. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) for saying, quite rightly, that we needed to have a mature and constructive debate, but he was also right to draw attention to issues in certain sectors of the economy. With that in mind, we are having a year of engagement on the White Paper, talking to representatives of different industries. My hon. Friend referred to agricultural workers in particular, but also mentioned the hospitality and tourism industry, which is so important to his constituency.

My hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mrs Badenoch) spoke about migration from a non-EU perspective, and said that it was a global issue. She is absolutely right, and in the discussions that I have had with EU representatives—and, indeed, in my discussions last week with French representatives in Calais—they were keen to emphasise that migration could not be seen in isolation. We must look at the root challenges, and work together. When we leave the EU, we will continue to work with our friends and neighbours on the other side of the channel.

The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) said that we were making immigration policy with the slash of a pen, but he was far from correct. I would argue that he was whipping up scare stories when he tried to convey the message that the Government had said that EU citizens were not welcome. That directly contradicted the messages given in the House time and again by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, and indeed by me. We want our EU neighbours, friends and colleagues to stay, and we have not only made the settled status scheme as straightforward as possible, but—as the right hon. Gentleman will now know—have made it free.

The right hon. Gentleman also spoke about asylum seekers having the right to work, and went so far as to suggest that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer was more interested in the subject than I was. I would like to reassure him that just this morning I had a meeting with Stephen Hale from Refugee Action on this subject, and indeed on 24 October last year my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman) held a debate on this subject in Westminster Hall, to which he did not contribute.

It is important that we look at the NHS, and several Members, including the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), spoke about NHS workers—nurses and care workers—and it is important that we continue to work with the Department of Health and Social Care to make sure there are sufficient routes into the NHS for those who contribute so much. I am very conscious that there are now 4,000 more EU workers working in our NHS than in 2016, and the hon. Lady will remember that last summer we lifted doctors and nurses out of the tier 2 cap threshold.

The hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) spoke about Refugee Action. She will know that I have a great deal of time and respect for her and the issues she has raised, and I hope very much to continue learning from her and the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green); they often come as a tag team to give me a very hard time, but they do so with such charm and determination that I am sure we will continue to engage effectively with them. In the same way, through our engagement process we will continue to listen to businesses large and small, sectors like the universities, the National Farmers Union, the Royal College of Nursing and the CBI, which we have been doing to date, because of course the conversation on immigration has not simply started over the course of the last few weeks, but has been going for well over a year.

The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil)—he knew I would get to him eventually—has spoken at length about voodoo politics. I have tried to take a positive out of something that everyone has said, and, given the headache I took tablets for earlier, I am sure he had his pins stuck into a voodoo doll of me. To add a little bit of levity, however, he would like to hold up Switzerland as an example of how individual cantons can run their own immigration policies, and indeed they can, but I gently draw his attention to the case of Nancy Holten, a vegan anti-cowbell campaigner who twice had her application for a Swiss passport refused by a referendum—we all know how keen we are on those in this place—and I am far from convinced that that is an effective immigration policy.

I am running out of time, but I would like to mention the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), who spoke so movingly about his father-in-law the late Sir Reginald Eyre. As for the words of a Whip ringing in our ears, “There’s a vote; don’t you dare”, well, apparently Her Majesty’s Opposition have decided that there is a whip and they do dare.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) has on many occasions had fairly brutal conversations with me and has raised some very important cases, which I will continue to work with her on; she does not shy away from tackling the difficult. She raised the issue of Henry VIII powers and the immigration rules. Of course, historically since the Immigration Act 1971 the immigration rules have been used to firm up immigration policy by Governments of all parties, and we will undoubtedly continue to do so, but if anybody thinks these do not get scrutinised, I would point them to the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald), who always gives me a very hard time whenever immigration rules make it to a debate in Delegated Legislation Committee.

I fear that I have reached the end of my comments. I welcome the remarks about Rabbie Burns—a little bit of Scottish poetry always goes down well—and I reinforce the message that this has to be an immigration policy for the whole United Kingdom. We have set out powers that will enable us to make amendments to primary and secondary legislation, but that is crucial in ensuring that we align the treatment of EU and non-EU nationals and that UK law can operate effectively.

Let me conclude by thanking the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) for raising the tone of the debate. She spoke carefully and thoughtfully, and that makes a huge difference. We want an immigration system that works for the whole UK and we will be continuing the engagement. We will also phase in that system, recognising the importance of giving individuals, business and, indeed, Government, the time to adapt. I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time.