Immigration

Lord Field of Birkenhead Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House calls on Her Majesty’s Government to act on the overwhelming public concern about the present scale of immigration by taking firm measures to reduce immigration without excluding those individuals who are genuinely essential to economic recovery, on which so much else depends.

It is with pleasure that I move the motion tabled in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames)—[Interruption.] I will move so that my hon. Friends can continue their conversation by themselves, Mr Speaker. I apologise for the absence of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex, but I think that he informed Front Benchers that he is attending a family funeral in Scotland today. The good news is that I am able to thank my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel)—who is in her place as usual, gracing this place as she does the Backbench Business Committee—and her colleagues for choosing this debate today.

I shall briefly say something about the cross-party group on balanced migration before I outline some of the themes I would like to touch on in the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex established the group in September 2008, with the clear intent of bringing into the House the debate on immigration that was going on in the country at large, but to which the House wished to appear deaf, to a large extent. We already have a number of distinguished supporters across Parliament, including a former Speaker, Lady Boothroyd, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, a former Leader of the Opposition, a former field marshal and several former Cabinet members. Perhaps more importantly, there is growing support in this House and the other Chamber for a clear and dispassionate discussion of this issue. Above all, we have the support of the electorate, who have been unfailing in their wish that immigration be debated carefully and without rancour in this Chamber.

When we first established the cross-party group, I was, needless to say, accused of being racist in wanting to raise the topic. It is therefore with pleasure that I put on record the fact that two previous Home Secretaries—my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) and my noble Friend Lord Reid—stamped on that absurd suggestion and welcomed a more rational debate in this place and beyond the walls of this Chamber.

I shall briefly summarise the group’s aims. They are to stop the population of this country being grown by immigration, and, secondly, to support the forces within the House and, now, the Government to move towards a balance between the number of people coming into the country and the number of people leaving it. Thirdly, given the concern about people coming here to work and about population growth, we would like the Government seriously to consider breaking the link between people coming here to work and almost automatically getting the right to citizenship. That is largely the route by which the population is being grown at present. If the Government were to take that action, they would certainly convince the electorate that they were delivering the coalition’s pledge. They might also get a bit more breathing space in which to find effective ways of reducing the numbers wishing to come here to work.

The themes that I want to touch on include the progress that has been made in recent years on this topic. I also want to look at some of the special pleading that has been going on, and I shall cite the position of the Mayor of London in that regard. I want to look at the immediate steps that the Government could further take to reduce the numbers coming here to work, at a time when we have not a rising but a very significant number of constituents who are unemployed.

I also want to broaden the debate by saying that, in the longer run, we cannot make sense of addressing the question of reducing the numbers coming here to work unless we are prepared to link that debate with the debates on welfare reform and education.

Finally, I want to touch on the electorate’s anxiety about this whole area and to voice their views about the nature of place and national identity, which they might well want to change but until recently they have had no ability to influence the debate.

Let me provide a progress report on how the debate is changing. Indeed, the Backbench Business Committee granting this day’s debate is itself a sign of that change. No Member will have memories of this issue being debated on the Floor of the House. We would have to go back to past Members, long since dead, to find people who participated in such a debate. Of course, we have had debates in Westminster Hall, but not in the main Chamber, where the principal debates take place. Today’s debate provides a really good sign of how the political climate is changing. We are grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire, who chairs the Backbench Business Committee, for this opportunity.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing this debate and on raising the issue sensitively and responsibly. I would like to challenge one of the assertions in his opening comments—the idea that this nation’s population is rising. Scotland is experiencing structural depopulation, and I would like him to acknowledge that. If he does, does he not think the best way to address it would be to give some of the UK nations the devolution of these powers, as in Australia, so that we can address the demographic issues of our population?

[Mr Field]

I was too good-mannered to touch on that topic. We have open borders in this country, so it is interesting to note that those coming here largely to work do not wish to go to Scotland. We may grieve that fact, but it is an open market and people seem to be expressing a preference. We may deplore it, and if one were a resident in London, one might wish that many coming here to work took a different view. The plain fact is that they do not, and I cannot believe that changing the devolution settlement would affect the balance of immigration between the constituent countries of the UK.

[Pete Wishart]

It happens in Australia—a nation where immigration powers have been devolved to the individual states to address the very issues that we have in Scotland. Surely if it works in Australia, it could work in the UK. The right hon. Gentleman is quite right that people do not choose to go to Scotland, so let us give them extra points in the points-based system to encourage them to think about coming to Scotland. There are solutions, so surely we should acknowledge them and try to implement them. [Interruption.]

[Mr Field]

My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who chairs the Home Affairs Select Committee, laughed, as I did, at that suggestion, but I think it is a rather good one. I shall touch on the Migration Advisory Committee report later. The Government might wish to refer to it; it would solve some of our difficulties. It is an intriguing idea and I hope that it will be developed in the debate.

We were talking about how the debate has changed. Perhaps the best way of showing that is to look at the stance of the Institute for Public Policy Research. In the past, no organisation was more adamant that we should have open borders and less prepared to consider the downside of such a policy. It is very significant that, this week, the IPPR has moved into the mainstream of the debate by saying that this country benefits from immigration—I doubt whether anyone would wish to express a contrary view in this House, which is important on account of our teaching role in the country at large—but that the debate is about the numbers, not about the principle.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that during my 23 years in this House and during his time here, there has been a shift in the tone of the debate. There is agreement that immigration has to be controlled, but can we be clear that we are talking about non-EU immigration? Does he accept that we cannot do anything about 80% of the people who come into this country?

[Mr Field]

A number of hon. Members might wish to catch your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker, to dispute that fact. Just as some might wish to stretch your tolerance, Mr. Deputy Speaker, by going down the road of the devolution settlement, others might want to open up the issue of the European settlement. The numbers coming here to work from the European Union represent a minority. I do not dispute the fact that this is an important issue, but it is not one of the dimension my right hon. Friend describes. I see in his place the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier), who might want to deal with the issue later.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Before ending his speech, will the right hon. Gentleman deal with arranged marriages? Does he agree that people who want to marry and settle here must do so on the basis that they are of mature years, that they speak English and that they want to marry an English person because of a settled romantic attachment, not as a pawn in marriage negotiations?

[Mr Field]

I wish that the hon. Gentleman had put the full stop a little earlier in his intervention. I do not think it is for the Government to lay down the emotional or other circumstances in which people should marry. Given the success rate of marriages based on emotion, I do not think this country is in any position to lay down the rule that arranged marriages are a bad thing! I have not seen the figures, but I doubt whether we come off better in that respect. I will touch on the point later, as it is one area where I hope the Government will give us more idea about what they are thinking.

[Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)]

I disagree with the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh). I came to this country 42 years ago for an arranged marriage. I am still married to the same lady and still have my children, who are contributing to this country’s welfare.

[Mr Field]

I could not agree more. That is a valuable intervention. I would hope that in those 40-odd years, the sense of the community has developed. Although I think we should not put our sticky fingers into issues such as whether arranged marriages are suitable, quite a large number of people here are, in a sense, in the arranged marriage market. Much of the tension might dissipate if there were more arranged marriages from communities in this country rather than between people brought in from the Indian sub-continent. Unless those people have the ability to speak English, they might find that they are not treated in this country as we would wish them to be treated.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I always listen to the right hon. Gentleman with the greatest respect. I understand that he has concentrated his remarks on the factor of numbers, but will he also say something about the attitudes of the people who come into this country in the hope of finding a better life? My grandparents were immigrants and wanted to come here because they preferred life as they imagined it here and wanted to be part of this country. Is not the real problem not so much one of numbers, but of people coming here who do not like and might even hate the methods we have of governing ourselves and living in this country? What can we do about that?

[Mr Field]

The issue is about numbers and I do not want people to move away from it, because that is where the growing sense of agreement across the Chamber and in the country at large now lies. I would have put the intervention the other way round, if I had dared to make it. I would have asked why this country has had a political elite that has paid so little attention to our open borders for so long that they did not think it suitable to suggest that people coming here should develop a primary sense of loyalty to this country. I do not think we are in any position to moan when we were so careless that we did not have the confidence to lay down what citizenship in this country was about. I am against anyone trying to turn the debate against those who came here under those conditions by saying that we do not approve of their behaviour. Not only new arrivals but others, including many people in my constituency, feel disaffected, and of course we need to find ways of affirming their citizenship.

[Dr Lewis]

I will not try the House’s patience for too long, but I must tell the right hon. Gentleman, with respect, that I cannot quite accept what he has said. It is not necessarily the responsibility of the receiving country to lay down in advance something as basic as the fact that someone who moves to a country must have some respect and regard for the norms, customs and standards of that country. People who come here knowing what this country is like, and then proceed to dislike it and try to undermine its ways, have a degree of responsibility themselves. It cannot all be put down to the conditions on which they were admitted.

[Mr Field]

The hon. Gentleman changed his line during his intervention. He ended his intervention by saying that such people could not be wholly responsible, whereas he said at the beginning that they were wholly responsible. I do not think that we should duck the political failure of this place and of successive Governments who have not had their wits about them, and have not recognised that a country is in a new ballgame when it opens its doors to mass immigration. We were negligent, and that applies to both sides of the House of Commons.

Let me emphasise that I do not want the debate to turn against people on whom we placed no duties when they came here. We did not bother to teach the meaning of citizenship to people who have been based here for generations, including many in my constituency. The hon. Gentleman has touched on what is, in fact, a much wider question.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Field]

I fear that interventions may take up the entire time allotted for the debate, but I am happy to give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Mr Brazier]

I am sorry, but I am so filled with admiration for the right hon. Gentleman that, while endorsing what he has said, I would go a little further. Surely the key point is that the political elite across the board had lost confidence in the very British institutions that we should have been supporting and identifying as beacons for newcomers to the country.

[Mr Field]

I think it is worse than that. I think that those people had lost confidence in their role as politicians. They had lost sight of the fact that the issue was one that should be dealt with, and ideas about national identity, citizenship and protecting the country fell away from what should have been their main charge.

As you may remember, Mr Deputy Speaker, about 10 minutes ago I was talking about the progress that had been made. The fact that we can now raise points such as this in a friendly way without disputing others’ motives is a sign of the extent to which we, as a group of parliamentarians, have progressed. As for the progress being made in the public debate, let us consider some of the public statements that have been made since the Government announced a temporary cap on the number of people coming here to work. In its submission to the Government, the City of London said that the Government had every right to pursue their policy, but expressed concern about the way in which it might work in practice. The City certainly does not think that the Government should not discuss this topic, or that they should ignore what the electorate were saying during the election, but it would like to enter into detailed conversations.

We have all recently experienced what our electorates think, and none of us enters the Chamber now without being fully aware of the way in which voters in each of our constituencies view the issue of immigration.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

I refer the House to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the City of London and other global businesses feel some concern about the way in which the policy is applied? Will he say a little about that? While we agree with the moves that he has been sponsoring, we need to ensure that British business is globally competitive.

[Mr Field]

I am immensely grateful for that intervention. Although I intended to stress that point, I did not wish to labour it. I do not think that there is any disagreement between Members, who, while seeing the advantages of immigration, consider that the argument is essentially about numbers, but who do not wish to control those numbers in a way that would harm any economic recovery. If I ever manage to make progress, I shall say more about that.

I think that the electorate managed to convey to us during the three or so weeks of the general election campaign that their concern extended beyond that which had previously been expressed in the House. In their view, the numbers debate was about the growth of population. We see that all around us. According to the most recent data from the Government, 25% of all babies—50% in London—are now born to women who were not themselves born here. There are regular reports of overcrowding in maternity units. In a number of areas, there is real pressure on many primary schools. At a time when our waiting list for housing is growing, 40% of new households consist of immigrants.

As the hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) just said, we must not shoot ourselves in the foot, or, even worse, in the head, by calling for further controls and restrictions that would result in an impairment of the necessary recovery on which many of our constituents depend. The Mayor of London is always the most interesting of political characters in the country, but in this context he has held a position, changed his position, and then changed it again. I hope that he will shortly change it for the fourth time, and take a more rounded view of the issue.

The statement issued by the Mayor for today’s debate has three misleading comments—I will not call them longitudinal inexactitudes. First, it is not true that the figure for the number of people coming here last year would suit the Government’s cap. The 2009 figure for net migration is 196,000. If that is a cap, it may be one that the Mayor of London wishes to wear, but it is not one that I would encourage the Government to wear.

Secondly, the Mayor said that if we restrict immigration, there is a danger that our gross national product will fall. That is based on years when the economy was thriving and growing at a record rate. It is impossible to interpret past data in that way when a huge number of our constituents are unemployed—not long-term unemployed but recently unemployed, and anxious to return to work. Any restriction in the numbers might well help them rather than impeding the growth of GDP.

Thirdly, it is wrong to say that 80% of students leave within five years. It is true that 80% are lost in the system within five years, but we have absolutely no idea whether they leave or not.

The Government recently asked the Migration Advisory Committee to report both on the cap and on how, in the longer term, they could best achieve their goal of reducing the net migration figure, which currently stands at hundreds of thousands, to tens of thousands. It is with pleasure that I record my gratitude—as, I am sure, will other speakers—to David Metcalf, whom I knew long before I came to the House of Commons, for the distinguished and intelligent way in which he has chaired the committee, and for his willingness to engage in debate. I know that he has appeared before the Committee chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East, but his door is open to others who wish to talk to him about this issue.

The report published by the MAC just before we began our debate is helpful. David Metcalf says that the Government are proceeding in the right direction, and suggests that the reduction should be split—20% among those coming here to work and 80% among non-economic migrants. I think we should debate that. We might ask, for instance, whether we should increase the proportion of non-economic migrants within the cap. He did not say—because he did not have the authority to do so—how important it is to take the heat out of the debate. Perhaps we can move the debate on, by being more relaxed about people coming here to work while also being more concerned about that becoming a route which automatically leads to citizenship.

In the spirit of a constructive debate, may I suggest four ways in which the Government might seek to meet their coalition pledge to reduce net migration significantly? First, I do not see how the Government can make sense of this debate—on which they have, thank goodness, now embarked—unless they look at student numbers. To June this year, those numbers are up 26% on last year, at 362,000. When I make the plea for the Government to look at this area, I am not talking about what most of us would regard as universities. I am asking the Government to focus on what are clearly bogus colleges that have realised that they can sell courses by implying, “Entry to the UK, and from here you can disappear into the UK labour market.”

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend accept that many of the people who enrol on those courses do so in the belief that they are signing up for a proper education? Does he agree that they are victims of exploitation by these colleges, rather than people trying to suborn our immigration system?

[Mr Field]

I would rephrase that slightly. My hon. Friend makes the absolutely valid point that large numbers of people who want to get on in their lives come here and believe the prospectuses of such colleges, but my worry is that increasingly the news has gone round the traps, so to speak, that such courses are one way in—a bogus route. That is deeply cruel to those who have paid to enrol because they wish to build a more constructive life for themselves by getting an education; I could not agree more about that.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. Following on from the previous intervention, I personally know someone who went to one of these English language schools with the intention of getting a proper grounding in the English language, but when she wanted her certificate, she was threatened—unless she gave extra money she would not get her certificate. That institution had all the qualification documents hanging on the wall saying that it was regulated and licensed by the Home Office, so is the real issue not how these organisations are licensed and regulated?

[Mr Field]

May I cap that helpful intervention? In order to satisfy the Home Office, constituents of mine wished to pay more, because all they wanted were the certificates for the courses they had undertaken. I hope the Minister will comment on this issue, if not today then on another occasion. I share the concern expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart). The last two constituents who came to me about this point had paid the full sum and were willing to shovel out even more money, but the wretched college would not produce certificates of the relevant qualifications.

Secondly, I hope that the Government will look at tier 1. Under the existing points system, people can come here and look for work—I assume the details of the MAC report will not suggest otherwise. That they can do so is totally unsatisfactory given our current unemployment level, and I would like the Government to close that route immediately.

I also want the Government to look at intra-company transfers. The Prime Minister has recently been making statements on this issue. May I delicately suggest that he could dig himself out of the hole he has dug himself into by raising the sum of money required for a person on an intra-company transfer from the low £20,000s to about £50,000? That would sort out the problem of those who are using such transfers as a way of importing IT workers. It would also offer some hope to those of our constituents who are unemployed IT workers and who would love the chance to bid for some of those jobs.

I also hope the Government will close the post-study route. Those who come to this country to study for degrees are given two years after graduation to search for work. That is wonderful if the economy is booming and there are difficulties in recruiting people to posts, but we now have an unemployment rate among recent graduates of 9% or 10%. It seems totally appropriate that at this time—not for ever—that route should be closed. In reading for the debate, I was shocked to discover that 600 institutions in this country award degrees. That is a highly significant route into the British labour market.

The hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) made the point that the Government need to look at the marriage route. I do not in any way want to clamp down on genuine marriages, but if we implement the English test and other measures effectively we will find that the numbers presenting themselves to immigrate will fall substantially.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Will my right hon. Friend support my campaign to ensure that education in the English language is available in the places from which spouses come? The current proposals are unfair, particularly on women on the Indian subcontinent who are unable to get access to good-quality English language teaching and are therefore doomed to fail the test.

[Mr Field]

I have never underestimated the entrepreneurial skills on the subcontinent, and I am disappointed to hear my hon. Friend report back in those terms. When I crossed swords on this matter with the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East, I thought that in no time English language schools would be established to ensure that people could speak English before arriving. It is very important that that rule is maintained, and I hope the Government will look at the point I have raised.

[Mr Leigh]

People are terrified about speaking out on this very sensitive issue, but it is not widely appreciated that it is better for the bride or groom in an arranged marriage not to be brought from the Indian subcontinent but to come from the community in this country, as that makes learning the language and overcoming cultural differences much less difficult.

[Mr Field]

Yes, I made that point earlier.

[Mr Virendra Sharma]

A person who understands how arranged marriages are organised would not raise these questions. Does my right hon. Friend have any figures for the rate of unsuccessful arranged marriages, and what evidence does he have that bogus marriages are taking place in this country?

[Mr Field]

I do not have figures on that and, as my hon. Friend knows, that is a difficult set of data to get hold of, because those who have come here in an arranged marriage and who cannot speak English will find it difficult to register the fact that they might not be happy with the arrangements that they find here.

In no way do I want to give the impression that the way marriages have commonly been governed in this country comes down from Mount Sinai and is a proven recipe for success. We have only to look at the figures to see that that is not so. We ought to have a little charity when viewing other forms of contract which might well have equal, if not better, rates of success than our own established institutions.

Finally on this area of debate, I want to stress how important it is that the Government address where the electorate are on the issue. In their mind’s eye, they see people coming here to work then automatically getting the right to citizenship. That is the factor which is growing our population and that is the issue that people wish the Government to deal with. The more effectively they do so, the less heat there will be in the number of arrivals in any one year.

I wish to discuss two final things. First, and importantly, we cannot make sense of this debate without thinking about the programmes of Governments past and current on welfare reform and education. Under the stewardship of the previous Government, whom I was proud to support, more than 3 million jobs were created, largely in the private sector, but also in the public sector. Yet the number of men and women of working age claiming benefit during that period, when there was record growth in the economy and jobs, fell from 5.6 million to 5.2 million. So there was clearly a dysfunction between what we said we wanted to do on welfare reform and ensuring that those who benefited from those programmes were actually available for work.

Let us examine the latest figures. I know that the Government might say that they have been elected only recently and thus want to wash their hands of this, but they will not be able to continue to do that. The latest data show that we have had 126,000 new workers and the number of immigrant workers in this country now stands at 3.8 million, which is a record level. That has occurred while the number of British workers in work has fallen by 180,000. Clearly there is something wrong with our education system if we are still producing a large number of people who do not aspire or cannot aspire to the jobs that are so willingly taken by immigrants, who teach many of the host community what we used to mean by “the work ethic”. This is a chilling reminder. It is important for the Government not only to respond today on the numbers front, in which we are all interested, but to see the issue in the much wider context of welfare and educational reform.

We should rejoice in this debate, the nature of it and the number who wish to participate in it. However, until recently most of our electorate felt that we let them down and that an extraordinary change had been occurring in this country over the past 15 years. We had an open borders policy and a large number of people came into our community without our laying down any conditions about how they should perform and what sort of citizens they should be. That is why I am so anxious that nobody uses this debate to clobber people who came here, found that we were not terribly interested in how they got on in their lives and just conducted their lives as they wished, nobody having told them otherwise. There was a growing sense among people who felt part of this country, perhaps over some generations and not many, that the place they thought they were joining or growing up in was changing in a way that disturbed them. That sense of disturbance could have been put to one side had we had a debate.

However, what really galls my constituents is that something so fundamental as an open borders policy was conducted without any consultation of those on the receiving end: my constituents, those of my hon. Friends and those of Government Members. I am pleased that we are now able to have a rational debate and that all the interventions have been technical ones; none has disputed motives, as in previous attempts to conduct a debate. The debate has moved from one about principle—whether we oppose or wish to continue open borders—to one in which we all agree that it is about numbers and the rate of immigration. For that, I can say on behalf of my constituency, thank God.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Brokenshire)]

I, too, congratulate the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) and the cross-party group on balanced migration on securing the opportunity to discuss a very important issue. We have had thus far, and I am sure we will have for the rest of the debate, a measured discussion, which shows how much the issue has progressed. The nature of today’s contributions has been striking, and I welcome the Opposition’s suggestion that they will act constructively and examine proposals carefully. We will need to see how that progresses, but I hear what the hon. Member for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe) says.

The Government fully recognise that there are, and have been, many economic and cultural benefits from immigration. Under this Government, Britain is, and will remain, open for business, and in today’s globalised economy we will ensure that we continue to attract the brightest and the best so that UK companies remain competitive and economic growth is supported. Several contributors have already highlighted that important point this afternoon.

We must also ensure, however, that migration is properly controlled, and we believe that we can reduce net migration without damaging our economy. We have committed to reduce the number of non-EU migrants, and we will shortly make our proposals, which will form a comprehensive package on all aspects of the immigration system, not only economic migration. This afternoon, I shall outline the challenges that we face and the context in which we will take those decisions.

Britain can continue to benefit from migration, provided it is controlled. That has been the broad tenor of this afternoon’s contributions. We must manage the pace of change in local communities and the pressure on our public services, while ensuring that those who come to work or to study are those who will really benefit from it and who, in turn, will benefit our economy. As well as controlling migration, we also need to secure the border, and that is why the coalition Government are committed to establishing a national crime agency, including a border police command, which will enhance security and improve policing at the border, supporting e-borders, reintroducing exit checks and cracking down on abuse and on human trafficking.

I turn to the central issue of net migration. In August, the Office for National Statistics published the 2009 statistics, which showed an increase in net migration from 163,000 in 2008 to 196,000 in 2009, the figure to which the right hon. Member for Birkenhead referred. That follows the pattern of recent times. Between 1997 and 2009, net migration to Britain totalled more than 2.2 million people, more than twice the population of Birmingham. Such migration is unsustainable in terms of population growth and the consequent pressures on services and community cohesion. We therefore aim to reduce net migration to the levels of the 1990s—tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands, each year by the end of this Parliament.

It has been suggested that we are wrong to focus on net migration figures because they contain the inward and outward flows of British and EU citizens, which we do not control. But, in recent years, those flows have largely cancelled each other out; the issue is that the number of non-EEA migrants arriving is exceeding the number leaving. In 2009, of the net migration of 196,000, about 184,000 were non-EEA migrants. Reducing non-EEA net numbers can therefore reduce net migration overall. That is why the coalition programme states specifically that we will introduce an annual cap on the number of non-EU economic migrants admitted into the UK and that we will introduce new measures to crack down on abuse of the immigration system.

We believe that the points-based system introduced by the previous Government provides a framework, but it evidently does not give us the control that we need to bring the annual net migration figure down to sustainable levels, as the 196,000 figure for net migration in 2009 illustrates. We need an approach that will not only get immigration down to sustainable levels, but protect those businesses and institutions that are vital to our economy. That will not be easy and we will not be able to achieve it by focusing on just one area of the system or on one route into Britain. As the Home Affairs Committee report recently illustrated, we will need to take action on students, families and settlement as well as on people coming here to work.

We are already taking action on the economic routes. As the House knows, interim limits on economic migrants using the highly skilled and skilled migration routes under tiers 1 and 2 of the points-based system were introduced on 19 July. As Members will know, tier 1 is for highly skilled migrants with sufficient skills and expertise to qualify to come here and seek employment, while tier 2 caters for skilled workers who already have a job offer from a sponsoring employer in the UK. The limits were introduced to prevent a surge in applications during our consultation before we introduce our permanent limits in April 2011. They also set a reduction in numbers of 5%—of 1,300—compared with the same period in the previous year. That has been achieved.

We are, of course, aware that employers, businesses, universities and research institutes have raised issues about the operation of the interim limits. I assure the House that we will take account of those concerns in designing the permanent limit. The interim limit on tier 2 is based mainly on past allocations to individual employers, with a reserve pool for new requests. In many cases, though, employers and institutions have not yet used their allocations, and intra-company transfers are excluded from the interim limit to give additional flexibility.

We have also recently revised the criteria for issuing additional certificates of sponsorship to respond more flexibly to employers’ needs. A particular concern that has been raised, including by my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) this afternoon, is the position of scientists and researchers. We are confident that next year’s limit can be made to operate in a way that ensures that universities and research institutions are not prevented from recruiting top scientists and other workers with key skills.

[Mr Frank Field]

I apologise for not having been here for half an hour of the debate. I had a meeting that I wanted to keep, but I regret not having heard the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe); I shall read it with interest tomorrow.

Net migration is almost 200,000. Surely it is not beyond the wit of man to cater for the legitimate demands expressed in the House today about industry’s legitimate needs while meeting the Government’s target of reducing the numbers to the ’teens of thousands?

[James Brokenshire]

I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. I have made it clear that we want to attract the brightest and the best to this country. We believe that it is possible to introduce limits and take account of the concerns of business and of the scientific institutions to which I referred.

We consulted business and other interested parties extensively on how the limit should work, and more than 3,000 responded. We also asked the Migration Advisory Committee—the well-respected and independent advisory body on migration policy—to consult on what the limit should be, taking into account the economic and social impacts of migration. The MAC report has been published today. I thank David Metcalf and the other members of the committee for their very full and helpful report, which we will continue to study in great detail. We will consider its findings alongside the responses to our own consultation on how the limit should operate, and we will announce how it will work in the near future. I will not comment this afternoon on the detail of the committee’s recommendations, as that would pre-empt the Government’s final announcement, which will be made in due course. However, this is a complex issue, and it is vital that we consider the best and broadest advice, including the responses made to the Home Office’s consultation on economic migration.

I now want to talk about the issue of intra-company transfers, which has been highlighted in the debate. Of course, we want companies to be able to transfer senior managers and specialists to enrich their UK operations. For that reason, the Prime Minister has already indicated that we have heard the concerns of business on this matter. However, in 2009 such transfers accounted for 22,000 migrants out of the 36,500 admitted through the tier 2 route, and about half of those 22,000 were in the IT sector—a point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley). Given the numbers involved, we need to ensure that the ICT route is being used for its original purpose, and not to undercut regular jobs here, particularly in the IT sector. Last week, a study published by the Higher Education Careers Service Unit showed that graduate unemployment was highest among graduates in computer science, out of all the disciplines. We are therefore looking carefully at the rules on ICTs.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

The ruling is that it is common courtesy that before one hon. Member refers to another hon. Member—particularly to that Member’s conduct, which is a matter for debate—the hon. Member who is commenting on the other hon. Member’s conduct should notify them. This is not a matter for the Chair, but it is a matter of common courtesies and how Members are expected to behave.

[Mr Frank Field]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I hope that we are not going to have a long series of points of order.

[Mr Field]

I think that some hon. Members do not know the rule. I was attacked by an hon. Member on my side of the House, and she much regretted that she had not known the rules. It may be a surprise that someone on my side attacked me, but I accepted that no one had told her about the rules of this place.

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[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

The right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) articulated with great clarity and passion the importance of the debate, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore). The right hon. Gentleman clearly explained that this debate is not about bigotry, race or colour, but about the impact of unfettered migration on the economic and social fabric of the UK. Most members of the settled community whose doors I knock on—particularly those in the Indian community who came across in the ’70s—feel passionately about the impact of unfettered migration, because it is the settled community who tend to bear the brunt of the bigotry. As other Members have said, it is important that we should have this debate so that other, extreme parties do not fill that vacuum.

One reason I stood for election to this place was that I used to get rather irritated outside the House at what seemed to be good ideas that sometimes translated into—how shall I put it?—unintended consequences. I want to focus on what I believe to be a perhaps unintended consequence of placing a crude cap on business. I understand and fully support the need to manage migration. Skilled migrants can add to the success of our economy, and I am mindful of the quite proper desire of our Government to maximise employment. I am also conscious of the demographics of my seat, as the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) put it. I have the largest Jewish population of any seat in the UK. I also have large Indian, Muslim and Afro-Caribbean populations, many of whose members are first, second or third-generation immigrants who have gone on to become captains of industry or stalwarts of major charities, contributing hugely to the rich fabric of our society. I am therefore conscious of the contribution that immigration can make to the UK.

I want like to raise a number of concerns affecting a major employer in my constituency, Pentland Brands. Many hon. Members will say, “Who?”, but it is a major exporter in the UK, producing apparel and shoes, and brands that dominate the high street. Pentland Brands is a successful global company that we should encourage, rather than hamper its ambition to tap into the global market. The right hon. Member for Leicester East suggested that we have a window of opportunity before the statement, perhaps next week, and Ministers should amend the policy before it comes to the House.

On the specific issues that concern the company, the proposed rules seem to have created an inability to hire graduates from across the world, and I shall give two examples of that. Every year, the chief executive of the company seeks to employ an executive assistant who is a high-calibre graduate from a market that he wants to develop. During the past year, he has had two executive assistants: one from India, and one from China. They may well have technical skills that the chief executive could find in the UK, but they bring the nuance of the political, social and economic structures of those markets that the company is trying to break into.

A home-grown graduate, with the best will in the world, will simply not have those skills. Being able to speak Mandarin, Cantonese or Gujarati is not the same as understanding how the markets work and how to open doors—the subtlety of trading in a global economy. Will the Minister consider how to adapt the cap so that it is not a cork that stops all economic migration, but is flexible and allows specific skills to be recruited, even if those skills, superficially, can be met internally? The Prime Minister went to India and China because he recognised that we must tap into those two economies if the UK economy is to pull out of recession and remain a powerhouse in the world economy. Will the Minister look carefully at companies that seek to recruit graduates to help them to tap into developing markets?

It is not just the nuances of language and structures that matter, but specific skills. Commentators have talked rather crudely about why we import IT specialists. I shall give an example of how we could go seriously wrong. IT skills qualify, I believe, under tier 2, not tier 1. The company in my constituency is a specialist manufacturer of sports footwear. Sri Lanka is the world leader in developing the software that allows the design and manufacture of sports footwear. Not surprisingly, the company wanted to recruit IT specialists from Sri Lanka to help to develop its products, which provide huge export benefits for this country. The proposed rules suggest that the company could not do that.

These jobs do not involve low-paid IT skills; they command salaries in excess of £80,000 a year. The people involved are not tier 1 economic migrants who end up delivering pizzas. They have skills that a global company needs if it is to continue to attract business.

[Mr Frank Field]

I draw the Minister’s attention to what the hon. Gentleman just said; I am sure that he was listening carefully. There are no objections if the salary range is at that level, but there is an objection, certainly from me if no one else, to intra-company transfers when salaries are a quarter of that amount.

[Mike Freer]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comment. The company is not looking for an intra-company transfer, and that is exactly the problem. If it cannot recruit a Chinese national or an Indian national, it will have to recruit them in an offshore company, or not at all. Either way, we are hampering the expansion of a good UK company, and that cannot be the purpose of the cap.

The other issue is that if we continue to recruit offshore highly skilled technical migrants who are essential to UK companies, we may benefit from the exports of the UK company, but we will lose the benefit that that small number of highly skilled economic migrants bring to the economy through their personal taxation and spending.

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[Mr Frank Field]

Does the hon. Gentleman not know that the opposite also happens? Jobcentres have reported to me that companies have gone through such a procedure and accidentally found the person they are going to appoint.

[David Mowat]

I am sure that is true, but I do not think it undermines the point I am making. Two wrongs do not make a right.

Finally, I want to consider why we are in this situation in the first place. Nine out of every 10 non-EU immigrants coming into the country are given work permits. That means that, on the face of it, they have a skill or a talent that we do not have here. Why do we not have it? I contend that one of the reasons is that over the last decade and a half we have completely failed to equip our work force with the skills needed for them, and for us as a country, to prosper in the decade of advanced manufacturing, STEM-type activities, and all that goes with that.

Some 30 years ago, I studied engineering at university. Last year, five times as many people graduated than when I graduated, but there were fewer engineering graduates from UK universities. That is a large part of the reason why so many organisations need to go abroad to find staff, and therefore cause some of these issues in the first place. I had an exchange with my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden on this during his excellent speech. Of course we have to put pressure on organisations and companies to train people better, and of course it is an easy option just to go abroad to hire the graduates companies need, but there is a chicken-and-egg situation here; we have to do both. Unfortunately, over the last decade and a half, we have not.

I thank the right hon. Member for Birkenhead for securing the debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House calls on Her Majesty’s Government to act on the overwhelming public concern about the present scale of immigration by taking firm measures to reduce immigration without excluding those individuals who are genuinely essential to economic recovery, on which so much else depends.