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

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 22nd July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the only market the Conservative Party is not in favour of is the labour market. In opening this debate, the Minister talked about the referendum and the December election. A number of seats surrounding my city of Sheffield have gone Conservative. I think those voters would be astonished to find that while the numbers from Europe have literally fallen like a stone, the numbers from the rest of the world, as cited by the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, have rocketed. The changing culture that that will bring in due course might bring pause for thought to the Conservative Party.

I want to concentrate briefly on the contradictions between skilling our own people and this Bill. As has been said, we should of course skill people and do everything possible to ensure that we transform their life chances and the ladder of learning through life. The more people learn and the higher the skill they obtain, the less likely they are to work in those industries and services which are absolutely crucial to our survival.

There are 120,000 vacancies in adult residential care and a turnover rate of 30%. It is estimated that about a quarter of a million people of overseas origin work in adult care services. The Government will probably be saved temporarily by the aftermath of the Covid virus, because people will be desperate to take a job—any job. However, as they skill, they will find that those from overseas will not take the jobs that they are leaving but the jobs that they are seeking—that is, as managers or owners of residential care services. This can be replicated right across the sector.

We deprecate young people going to higher education, as the Secretary of State and his higher education Minister did recently, and suggest that it would be better if they took other jobs. We also imply that those with little skills should take up the jobs previously occupied by migrants who then educated themselves and contributed to the economy.

There is not time to go into the disparaging of the Labour Government by the noble Lord, Lord Lilley. I am very happy to take him on in future, inside and outside the House, on the statistics he quoted, the attitude he displayed and the real importance of understanding the contradictions and difficulties of managing migration policy at the same time as transforming the life chances of those already here.