EU: Migration

Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

We very much encourage people to come to this country, whether to study or to work. We want to encourage the best and the brightest to come to this country, as well as tourists; there are many people we want to encourage—but there is a difference between that and people who significantly abuse the system in coming here because of benefits.

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

My Lords, following the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Deben, the very useful statistics on the numbers of EU citizens here as opposed to British citizens living in the EU brought forward by my noble friend Lord Lea—it is about exactly the same—and given the statement the other day by the director-general of the CBI, who does not know of a company in this country that is not in some degree dependent on immigration, will the Government agree that free movement of labour, apart from being a most valuable human right, is actually a factor of considerable economic importance in this country?

[Lord Bates]

We totally agree with that. I have to say that the figures that I have are that there are 2.3 million EU nationals living in the UK and 1.4 million British citizens living in the EU. Those are very important for the success of the single market, which has already been referred to. Of course we welcome people who genuinely want to come here to work, study or visit.