Immigration Rules: Statements of Changes

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, has ploughed a lonely furrow on immigration for many years; not just a lonely furrow but a furrow that many Members of your Lordships’ House think it is quite improper to plough. But outside, in the real world, the issues that lie behind the noble Lord’s prayer and his comments reflect the real concerns of our fellow citizens, as repeated surveys and opinion polls have shown. It is always easiest to run with the crowd and bask in the rumbles of approbation from around your Lordships’ House, but I fear that, from time to time, we have to be prepared to consider inconvenient truths. That is why I am speaking this afternoon in support of the noble Lord.

I have two points to make, the first of which flows from my chairmanship of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and picks up some of the points that other noble Lords have made. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and our sister committee, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, under my noble friend Lord Blencathra, have a number of concerns about the way that secondary legislation is being handled, not just here—I am not trying to get at my noble friend on the Front Bench—but generally in the Government. These are skeleton Bills; they are unduly long and complex regulations; and there are inadequate Explanatory Memoranda and impact assessments. And, as the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, said, these regulations introduce changes that should more properly be introduced in primary legislation, with its higher level of scrutiny.

I am also afraid to say that the statutory instruments that the noble Lord has prayed against have a number of deficiencies in them. We have already heard about the length of HC813 and the range of subjects it covers. We have heard about HC1043, and the fact that the guidance was put on the government website only one hour before the regulations came into effect. We can, do and should argue and discuss immigration and its implications, but not many people around your Lordships’ House would disagree that it is an important subject. As has been pointed out by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark, five and a half months after these came into effect, we have 90 minutes to discuss them and no chance to make any changes—we are to just wave them away after a 90-minute debate. We can and we should do better than that.

My second and final point is entirely personal. Some Members of your Lordships’ House will be aware of my interest in demography—the study of changes in our population, up or down, and the consequent impacts on the lives of all of us. Last year, I published a pamphlet, kindly referred to by my noble friend Lord Horam, entitled Overcrowded Islands?—the question mark is important. I was very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, for giving a plug for the pamphlet at Question Time, on Monday last. I am agnostic about the conclusions, but I argue strongly that we fail to consider the impact of these policies in sufficient depth and over a sufficiently long period into the future. I ask Members of your Lordships’ House not to pigeonhole these remarks as an attack on immigration. I fully recognise that some immigration refreshes and reinvigorates our cultural and economic life, and fulfils some of our moral duties to the world as a whole. But it is about scale and the consequent impact of that scale on the lives of all of us.

The latest ONS projections, adjusted for the pandemic and for Brexit, suggest that by 2040, in the half century since the Blair Government opened up the country to widespread immigration, as referred to by my noble friend Lord Horam, the population will increase by 13 million people, which is just over 20% of the population. Should we be worried about this for ourselves? More importantly, should we be worried about this for those who come after us? We might be worried about risks to our supplies of food and water. We grow only 50% of our food, and the Environment Agency says that by 2035 we shall be running short of water. We might be worried about risks to our ecology; our songbirds have declined by 75% in the last 40 years. We might be worried about risks to our environment; we are currently tarmacking over our countryside at the fastest rate in history. And in our rush to build fast, we are creating identikit housing estates built to low standards, devoid of any vernacular style and, too often, devoid of any sense of community. Do the economic benefits really accrue to us all? Or, as many of us fear, do they accrue to the already better-off and the new arrivals themselves? And good luck to them.

In none of these challenges is population growth the only factor, but it is the most significant factor connecting and linking them all. If the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Green, are realised—and I sincerely hope they are not—the magnitude of all the above challenges will multiply exponentially. That is why the noble Lord has done the House a single service by tabling this regret Motion today.