Immigration Rules: Statements of Changes

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, it is not evident from my accent, unlike that of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that I was only a few months out of Ireland when I was born. So, I was almost an immigrant, and my father most certainly was.

My first point goes back to that made by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, and others: what is Parliament for when we are debating things that are so far past? I understood not only that we were taking back control but that the function of the British Parliament was to debate major changes in law and practice before they came into operation. That has most certainly not happened. I ask the Minister to take back to her department —and to her Government, because this is not just a Home Office matter—the way we feel we are being treated. We are being treated not as legislators but as rubber stamps, and that is not acceptable.

In my long career in politics I have never known debates on immigration to be either clear or popular. They are not clear because people get confused between asylum seekers, illegal immigrants and legal migrants, and they are seldom without emotion because people project their fears on to others, and the others are often those migrant communities. People feel threatened. I noticed, when I was in the Labour Party many years ago, how threatened many working-class Labour supporters felt by migration. We should not get away from that. One of the problems that the Labour Party has now—if the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, as its sole representative on earth, does not mind me saying so—is that many people at that level feel that there are some subjects they can no longer talk about within the political framework, and I am afraid that will have to change.

I draw attention to the huge number—I believe my noble friend Lord Horam referred to this—of doctors and nurses that we strip out of the third world. We let them be trained there and then we bring them into this country. Of course, they do valuable work but they do it away from the communities in which they grew up, which are often far less well-endowed than us. Any approach to immigration needs to be accompanied by an expansion of training places for those skilled migrants that we are pulling in, particularly from the third world.

I turn to the 2016 vote and what came out of it. People got completely confused. When I was canvassing for Remain in Cambridge, I was stopped by someone who was very angry with me and said: “Look, we don’t want these Nigerians here.” That was a total misunderstanding of what it was all about.

Now, without a second thought, we have signed up for something like 5 million citizens from Hong Kong to come and live here. There has been no debate about it. We have various prognostications as to what we want in the way of new housing, but no one mentions where 5 million new citizens are going to go. Will it be like Canada, where Vancouver has become a south-east Asian city? It could well, but we need a debate about it.

We also need a debate about illegal migrants and asylum seekers and the difference between the two. As the Minister will know, I have asked on numerous occasions how come we cannot stop boats crossing the Channel. How come it is apparently not an offence to illegally enter the country? People suddenly appear here and, frankly, it is worth taking the chance, but it should not be worth it. That is something we need to tighten up on because there is a world of difference between people-smuggling and immigrants and migrants coming into the country and leaving. On balance, I tend to be closer to the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, than to the noble Lord, Lord Green: the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, has outlined the advance and contribution made by migrant communities, and it is enormous.

The biggest attraction of the United Kingdom is the English language. Wherever you go in the world, if people know a handful of words outside their own language, they will be in English. We are seen as a magnet because we have a reputation for being a free, decent and incorrupt country. We should not sacrifice freedom, decency or our lack of corruption, so we have to make a policy and a framework that will work within that, and that will encourage genuine migrants but crack down on the illegal businesses that are flourishing.