Immigration Bill

Lord Green of Deddington Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, I would like to address the wider context of this Bill. It comes before us at a time when the whole context of immigration is changing very rapidly. We are indeed a compassionate country, I believe, but we expect our Government to control our borders. Immigration has been a major concern for a very long time, as the noble Lords, Lord Horam and Lord Balfe, both pointed out. Indeed, in calling for a significant reduction in net migration, I have been speaking for 70% of the population, including a majority of the ethnic communities. In recent times, that concern has intensified further. Immigration and asylum have for the past six months been the very top issue of public concern. It is not hard to see why. The public are clearly conscious that the European Union has lost control of its southern borders. As a result, a mixture of refugees and others who in reality are economic migrants are arriving in huge numbers which are already overwhelming any orderly system of reception, let alone control. The Commission itself is expecting an additional 3 million migrants by the end of 2017.

Here in Britain, a moderate level of immigration is of course a natural part of an open economy and an open society, and for my part I have always supported that. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, that major efforts are needed to improve the training of our own workers so that we do not draw in unmanageable levels of migrants. But unfortunately after some fairly strenuous efforts over the past five years, net migration is now running at a third of a million a year. This mass migration will have a huge effect on our population, on our society and on our environment.

Let me take just population. Even if net migration is brought back to the average of the past 10 years, which is roughly a quarter of a million, our population will grow by 2.5 million in the course of this Parliament. That is about two and a half times the population of Birmingham. Can we really cope with that? Let us look a little further ahead. In the next 15 years, the population of the UK would, at that rate of immigration, grow by 8 million. Numbers mean very little to most people, so let me tell noble Lords what 8 million means. It is the populations of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Sheffield, Bradford, Manchester, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Bristol, Cardiff, Newcastle upon Tyne, Belfast, Aberdeen, Leicester, Coventry, Nottingham, Stoke-on-Trent and Portsmouth all added together. Is that remotely sensible, desirable or even feasible?

[Baroness Afshar]

How many people will die during that period in these cities?

[Lord Green of Deddington]

This takes full account of those who will die and those who are born. It brings all three together. Any population projection depends on the birth rate, the death rate and the net migration. Taking all three into account, on 240,000 a year we would get what I have just described. We have to accept that. We have to recognise it and decide whether we will take serious measures to get the numbers down or whether we will build the list of cities that I will not read out again.

There is no doubt that immigration is the main driver of this huge population increase. In the medium term, two-thirds of it will be due to future immigrants and their children, and in long term, of course, all population increase will be due to immigration because our birth rate is below the replacement rate. In these circumstances, the public clearly want immigration brought under control, and rightly so. This will require two elements: reducing admissions where possible; and ensuring departures. Let me take them separately.

The Bill bears mainly on the latter. It is concerned largely with discouraging illegal immigration, whether by those who seek to enter clandestinely or those who have overstayed their visas. As for the clandestines, noble Lords might like to ask themselves why thousands of people—mainly young men—are camped near Paris in pretty dreadful conditions in the hope of getting into Britain. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, spoke eloquently about the conditions in which they find themselves.

Surely it has to be recognised they are not there because they are desperate, as the press so often says. They are already in a safe country and are perfectly at liberty to claim asylum in France. It is only because they believe the conditions in Britain are so much more favourable that they will take considerable personal risk to get here. Indeed so, because they know that if they do get here they can work on the black market—an activity that is not even illegal in this country, as the Mayor of Calais never fails to point out. They also know that if they are discovered they can claim asylum. Indeed, about half of all asylum claims made in Britain are made on discovery, not on arrival. If they succeed in their claims, as about half of them do—

[Baroness Ludford]

I apologise for interrupting and thank the noble Lord for giving way. Does he also accept that there are those who maintain, and I think there is force in these suggestions, that some of the reason for coming to the UK has nothing to do with the factors that he has mentioned? It is obviously the English language, which is the number one language learnt around the world. Also, although we are far from perfect in this country on race relations and integration, the atmosphere for integrating people and welcoming diversity is better in this country than in France.

[Lord Green of Deddington]

Yes, absolutely. There is a lot that we can be proud of in this country, not just our language, culture, the openness of our society and the rule of law. We can be immensely proud of all these things. They are certainly a part of the reason why very large numbers of people want to come here. They also mean that we have to have pretty effective control or else, even as we have now and as have I pointed out, there would be consequences for many people in this country. It is perfectly clear how the public see all this.

The other main category of illegal immigrants are those who arrived legally but overstay their visas. Ministers regularly point out that we must break the link for those who are in reality economic migrants between setting foot in the UK—and indeed in the EU—and remaining indefinitely. Despite that, enforced removals of immigration offenders are running at only about 5,000 a year, so aspects of this Bill are designed to make the removal process more effective, which is certainly necessary. Other aspects are designed to shift the balance so that future migrants will be deterred from overstaying and others already here will decide to go home.

The Committee stage will be the time for detail. What is clear is that major pull factors are addressed, some of which the noble Baroness referred to. The task must be to reduce the overall scale of net migration to a level that the public can tolerate and, better still, support. We have the opportunity in considering this Bill to contribute to that essential objective.

[Baroness Janke (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate. Coming rather at the end, I feel that quite a few of the points I would have mentioned have already been well made. In following the noble Lord, Lord Green, I think that the essential thing for us with this Bill is his point about reducing admissions and ensuring departures.

From the speeches that we have heard today, so far we are unconvinced. If we talk about cutting asylum support, we have already heard how desperate it is for so many people. Certainly, in my city, I know many people are living on food bags. They do not get proper advice. Volunteers give them clothes. They cannot get English language lessons. They do not eat properly. That is on the limited support that they get already. If we withdraw that support, it will make these people very much more miserable. It will impact badly on their children. All the evidence that we have says that in thinking about what is best for their families and their children, parents—even people in such desperate situations—do not choose to return. What happens instead is that they go underground. They become destitute. They live on what means they can. We have already heard in the debate that local authorities will have great difficulty carrying out safeguarding duties. We have already heard about all the missing children and the fears that people have about them being part of trafficking schemes.

We have heard stories from individuals on how they have been forced to enter criminality to support themselves and their families, yet they have still not wished to return to their own countries. They have not wished to do so because they are terrified of what they would go back to. There has been great discussion about economic migrants and refugees, and in my view we are still not clear where the line lies. It is easy to talk in terms of economic migrants and people seeking a better life when that hides the fact that people are fleeing war, desperate circumstances, torture and possibly death. On the criteria that we had from the noble Lord, Lord Green, making people more miserable does not apparently cause them to return to their own country. On the figures that we have been given, it apparently does not deter them from wanting to come here although they are in desperate situations at the moment.

Having spoken to people in my city, the words they use about the Bill are destitution—we have heard about that—and division, when they talk about communities. What they mean by that is that all the work that has been done by community groups for many years in trying to bring communities together, so that they understand cultures, value each other and have mutual self-respect, will be undermined if we have these new offences which encourage communities to turn on themselves and encourage people to report on their neighbours and tell the police about what they believe to be offences, which may not be in the end.

It is even an offence to work in the Bill: we are creating a new offence that people may not work. We on this side believe that asylum seekers should be able to work. There are also things like illegal driving. Again, these are criminalised circumstances which not only undermine the well-being of communities but set individuals and groups against each other.

Another point that people make to me about this Bill is on discrimination. Many noble Lords have already referred to the right to rent scheme, which makes it an offence for landlords to rent accommodation to illegal immigrants in this country. All the evidence we have read on the Home Office pilot implies that this will make an acceptable situation of discrimination. Like the noble Lord, Lord Alton, I grew up in Liverpool and can remember the days when we saw signs saying, “No blacks, no Irish, no dogs”. Yet we are now promoting a situation which will encourage discrimination and play to some people’s very worst instincts.

Everybody should have the chance to experience justice. When people are asked what is great about the British, one thing they mention is the sense of fair play and justice. I do not believe there is anything in the Bill which supports that view.

This Bill will need to be discussed at great length and there will be great disagreement about some of its measures. I accept that the whole issue of immigration, and the circumstances it raises, are considerations of key importance to many people in this country—I do not deny that for one moment. However, if we say there are not enough schools, houses or space in this country, we have to substantiate that. Successive Governments in this country have failed to build affordable houses, so we cannot lay that at the door of migrants. We have cutbacks in local services which mean that local authorities have been unable to expand school places. Again, we cannot lay that at the door of migrants. If the whole issue of space, facilities and accommodation was looked at in a rational way and with a will to provide and expand proper facilities for people, these arguments would not stand up.

[Lord Green of Deddington]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. Nobody is blaming migrants for the scale of building that is necessary. What has happened is that successive Governments have completely failed to focus on the scale of immigration and the impact that would have on population and housing. That is what has to change and that is why I focus so much on population.

[Baroness Janke]

As a former councillor having faced some of these difficulties, I point out that rises in population are due not just to migration and that local authorities have been unable to respond to them because of the systematic centralisation of government and the cutbacks that have been inflicted on local authorities. If we were to embrace the issue of providing more facilities and better infrastructure and try to answer the needs of our country, some of these arguments would simply not apply. I hope to play a part in considering this Bill as it goes through Committee and thank noble Lords for their attention.