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

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 18th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con) [V]]

I welcome the opportunity to speak in these proceedings, as they represent another important step in this Government delivering on what people in Crewe and Nantwich voted for, and that is for us to take back control. That is why the Bill is important. I relish the fact that we are now once again having a full and healthy debate about the details of our immigration policy—not just a yes or no to the freedom of movement. We are having these debates because our Government are once again fully accountable for immigration policy. The Opposition have every right to scrutinise and propose alternative approaches—that is how our democracy functions.

How did we ever think that on such a complicated issue we could simply tick a box saying yes? Deciding who can visit, work in and live in our country is a matter of fundamental importance that should never have been simplified to such an unsophisticated approach as freedom of movement. There are so many different factors that we need to balance—the needs of business in the short and long term; the goal of providing the best possible job opportunities for British citizens; the obligations we have to provide safe refuge to individuals in need; the impact on our housing market; and the effect of large-scale immigration on social cohesion. Those are just a few of the things we have to think about.

All of those factors will ebb and flow in importance over time, and any effective immigration system needs to be able to ebb and flow along with them. Instead, we have had a fixed policy, direct accountability for which sat offshore. A multifactorial issue became a binary one. People were either pro freedom of movement or against it. I am afraid that that did not work, and was never going to work. It became a touchstone issue in relation to our EU membership, because voters could sense it was not right. That is fundamentally why I want freedom of movement abolished. It is policy making on the cheap, decision making without decisions—the multitude of views on all the different ways in which we should change our policy that we will hear in the Chamber today are a testimony to that.

I want to talk about what I think has been a shameless attempt to distort the meaning of the term “low-skilled”—a phrase that has been used cross-party across multiple Governments for many years. The last Labour Home Secretary referred on a number of occasions in this House to the low-skilled, and I cannot believe anybody would ascribe to him any disrespect to those he was referring to in his use of that term. The current shadow Home Secretary has spoken about high-skilled jobs in the House, and I do not imagine that anyone would argue that we can talk about high-skilled jobs without having to acknowledge the existence of low-skilled jobs. I do not in any way seek to diminish the prominence of the current post holder, but in 2014 the previous long-serving shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) asked the then Business Secretary what steps were being taken to address the exploitation of low-skilled workers. In 2018, the right hon. Lady also agreed that it was logical to distinguish between high and low-skilled migrants when making immigration decisions. I find the deliberate attempt to inject disrespect into the current use of that term extremely distasteful, because it is an attempt to gain some short-term political advantage by hurting the feelings of people who at this minute are working hard for this nation. However, perhaps it would do no harm to review our language in this regard so that in future it cannot be exploited.

What do we really mean when we use the term “low-skilled”? What we are actually talking about is how readily a skill can be acquired. The person who cleans a cubicle so that I can see a patient is just as vital a member of the team as I am when it comes to looking after patients. If they were not doing their job, I could not do mine. But we can more readily train someone to do that job than we can train someone to be a doctor or nurse. That is a simple fact. It does not in any way demean the importance of the role or contribution of those whose skills are more easily acquired than others. Opposition Members know that full well, and that is part of the discussion we will have about salaries and how that works when we decide roles and who we want to come here.

When we consider whether we should allow people to come here to live and work, we inevitably prioritise individuals with skillsets that are not readily or easily acquired. That is what we are talking about when we talk about high and low-skilled jobs. Going forward, perhaps we could consider changing our approach to talk about readily acquired and non-readily acquired skills, so that we are saying exactly what we mean and there can be no doubt.

Of course, I expect the Government to look closely at how their policy approach will translate in the real world so that our public services have the staff who are needed and our economy is well resourced. We need to find a way to recognise the important and valuable contribution that immigrant workers have made to the NHS during this crisis, but it is absolutely right that we should grow our home skill base whenever possible. I have felt very uncomfortable with our reliance on the immigration of healthcare professionals to this country over many decades, because we are sometimes taking staff who are desperately needed in their countries of origin, particularly outside the EU. That cannot be right—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Thank you. The hon. Gentleman has exceeded his five minutes.