Non-EU Citizens: Income Threshold

Debate between Keir Starmer and Tommy Sheppard

Monday 7th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

I am delighted to speak in this debate, but like my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), I wish the attendance was rather better. I do not want to score any political points, but I do think that a fairly nasty and pernicious little proposal is being put forward and it is incumbent on us all to encourage our colleagues to take this a little more seriously and show more interest in it.

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Tommy Sheppard]

I will of course. Perhaps a meeting is going on that I do not know about.

[Keir Starmer]

I let that comment go the first time, but hon. Members will see on the screen that in the main Chamber at the moment there is a debate on a Home Office Bill, in which very many of my colleagues are down to speak. It is unfortunate that there is a clash, but it is not fair to read into that a lack of interest in this debate. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) has seen the screen and realised that that Bill is now being debated in the main Chamber.

[Tommy Sheppard]

I thank the hon. and learned Gentleman for his point. As I said, I am genuinely not trying to score a political point. I am simply saying that we need to encourage colleagues to take more interest in this debate, this subject and this proposal in particular.

Since my election to the House, I have discovered that this is a place rich in irony, and I have been overloaded with it today. I have come to this debate from Portcullis House, where I was at an exhibition of scientists, engineers and technologists, who are trying to show Parliament pioneering work in which they are involved. I met three young people working at Edinburgh University on doctorates. One was from England, one from Italy and one from the United States of America. I am fairly confident that if this little proposal goes through, we will have to say to Laura Underwood, who is pioneering clean water technology at the University of Edinburgh, that if she is successful in discovering something new in that technology, she will not be welcome to stay in this country and realise that and get a job to develop it unless she is earning more than £35,000 a year, which in a first-time job, when someone has just graduated, is pretty near impossible. If some people in the House get their way and we manage to pull out of and turn our backs on the European Union, down the line we would have to say something similar to Enrico Anderlini, who is working on developing new forms of wave technology—that he would not be welcome here as an Italian unless he was earning £35,000 a year, which for a young 20-something is pretty hard to do. It is very ironic indeed that I should come from that gathering to discuss a policy that seems to be set up to put a major hurdle in front of such people.

I am here today because more than 1,000 of my constituents have signed this petition and because many people have written to me, giving examples of what the proposal will mean for them as individuals. I think—I welcome some of the comments so far—that we need to change the whole way in which we debate immigration in this country and we need to start in this Chamber by setting the pace and setting an example of how that should be done. Immigration is undeniably a good thing for our economy; it is a good thing for our communities, and it is a good thing for humanity and the individuals who are involved in that process. If we had not had immigration or migration over the centuries, this world would be a much more miserable and unliveable place than it is today, so I would be glad if we could at least try to couch the debate in positive terms.

I note the statistic that has been thrown up in the debate that net migration—this is seen as a horrible thing—was about one third of a million people last year. I thought to myself on the train down this morning, “Well, how much is that really?” It is about one in every 200 people in the United Kingdom, so in a town of, say, 20,000 people, it would mean that 100 people have come over the last year to live in that place. I cannot square that statistic with the thoughts in some people’s minds about our being overrun by alien hordes or alien cultures and the country’s being swamped by migrants. That is clearly ludicrous, so we could at least get a sense of perspective.

I understand that in some communities, among some of our citizens, there is deep apprehension about migration. I understand in particular that many of the people who are living at the margins of society and who feel themselves to have very little are susceptible to the argument that says, “You can’t afford to be generous to people from elsewhere in the world. You need to be hard-faced about this and turn your backs on these people.” I do not agree with that approach, but I can understand why some people will develop it. It concerns me that we have politicians who want to manipulate that prejudice and who, rather than confronting with evidence the assumptions on which it is based, pander to it and try to use it for political capital. That is all of us going to hell in a handcart if we do not pull back from that general direction.

Although I can understand that type of feeling when it comes to whether we should take tens of thousands of refugees fleeing warzones in the third world, I cannot for one minute understand that when it comes to the question of tier 2 visas. Tier 2 visas, let us remind ourselves, are given to people who are coming to work here in a job that has already been advertised locally and that no one living in the area wants to take, so how that can be described as anything other than a positive benefit and contribution to our economy and our community, I do not know.

I want to question—the Minister will perhaps answer this—the rationale, the logic, behind saying that people have to earn a certain amount of money, a certain salary, to be able to come here, but a different amount of money, a different salary, to be able to stay here. That seems ludicrous; and the £35,000 a year figure is arbitrary. I need to hear the justification for it, because it certainly does not work in my constituency—in my city. It takes no account whatever of regional variations within the United Kingdom in employment and in salaries. Whereas there might be places in the middle of London where £35,000 is regarded as some sort of miserly salary, I can tell hon. Members that it is regarded as a very good salary indeed in my constituency. If we set that as the limit, all that will do is further imbalance the UK economy towards London and the south-east and those areas that are already sucking the lifeblood out of it, so I would caution people when thinking about trying to manipulate migration to this country so that it favours London and the south-east rather than the rest of the country.

The proposal also demonstrates no recognition of different industries. A constituent wrote to me and said, “This seems to indicate that the Secretary of State has a value system behind this—that they view some jobs as more important than others and that if someone is working in banking or finance and earning a good salary, they are regarded as inherently more valuable and someone we would want more than someone who is working in a lower-paid job in our public services or in the arts and creative industries.”

I want to make the point in particular about the arts and creative industries. This issue is particularly relevant to a city such as Edinburgh, a metropolitan, bustling city with people from all over the world, doing all sorts of exciting things and fuelling our great festivals. Many people in this Chamber will have attended those festivals and enjoyed them. That is partly because it is a welcoming place to come and we do not say to people, “To practise the arts here, you have to be in a job earning £35,000 a year, or you can’t do it.” As soon as we begin to do that, not only will that culture begin to ebb away and things will get that much duller, less creative and less exciting as a result, but other cities, in other countries, will directly benefit from that because people will go elsewhere.

Of all the petitions that I have ever seen come to this House, this one is the most eminently reasonable. If we read what the petitioners want, we see that they are not saying, “Oh, throw out the Government’s immigration policy.” They are not even saying, “Overturn and throw out the concept of having to reach a salary threshold before people can get indefinite leave to remain.” They are saying, “Press the pause button. Take a look at this again, and wait to get some evidence in particular about whether a different limit should apply to different industries.” I cannot for the life of me see anything more reasonable than that, and I think that not only should we consider it, as we do in these debates in Westminster Hall; I hope that the Minister will say that the Government will consider it to the extent that they will think again and go away and amend this policy.