Immigration

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, first I welcome this debate and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, both on her initiative in allowing us to debate this very important matter, and also on the quality of her contribution. It has been an impressive and wide-ranging debate and I very much look forward to the Minister’s response. Whether he, as a widely respected and humane internationalist, is looking forward quite so much to responding might be open to doubt. The debate has clearly exposed the illogicality and potential risk to the UK’s interests of the Government’s approach to immigration.

We all recognise that immigration is as challenging an area as is possible for any Government. Over the centuries, this country has experienced wave after wave of migrants, and we have benefited mightily from the commitment and talent of those people. We continue to do so. They have enriched our community, and the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, and other noble Lords gave us some excellent examples of the benefit that migrants have brought to the United Kingdom. However, we must also recognise the pressures that immigration can bring to many of our own communities. That is why the previous Government committed themselves to an immigration system that both promoted and protected British values. We considered that people needed to know that immigration was controlled, that the rules were fair and firm and that there was support for communities that had to deal with change.

As a result of the action that we took, our borders are stronger than ever. The UK Border Agency has police-level power and thousands more immigration officers, and 100 per cent of visas are now biometric. We recognised the pressure that immigration can place on housing and public places in many communities, and we had planned to expand the Migration Impact Fund, paid for by contributions from migrants, to help local areas. We also know that migrants who are fluent in English are more likely to work and find it easier to integrate, so we took action to make the English test harder.

I know that the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, thought that those characteristics summed up a golden nirvana of controlled socialist planning. However, what is certain—as my noble friend Lord Giddens suggested—is that we can clearly see the progress that was made, with the reduction in net migration to the UK in the past year, with applications for asylum having dropped 30 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2009, with asylum claims now being a third of the level that they were in 2002, and with the cost of asylum claims supported by the taxpayer having been cut by half in the past six years.

We introduced the new points system to ensure that we got the migrants that the British economy needs. Our aim was gradually to tighten the criteria in line with the needs of the economy. However, we are very concerned about the arbitrary nature of the cap that the Government have now introduced. I ask the noble Lord to respond, because it appears that the cap is clearly designed to give the impression of new government action on immigration, when in reality the points system that my Government had established was dealing with the problem in a much more sensible way. More than 20 noble Lords have spoken in this debate and identified the fact that the Government have taken away the flexibility of the points-based system and brought about many of the problems that we have heard about in this debate.

The cap is clearly bad for business. Instead of clamping down on illegal immigration, the policy seems to be focusing on a minority of skilled migrants for whom employers can demonstrate a business case. According to the Government’s own forecasting models, a cap will impact on economic growth. If the Prime Minister were to achieve his pledge to bring down net immigration to the level of the 1990s, the estimates that I have seen suggest that output will be hit by as much as 1 per cent and cost the Exchequer £9 billion a year in forgone tax revenues by the end of the Parliament. No wonder we have heard quote after quote this afternoon from businesses and universities about this impact. Imperial College said that immigration changes were of great concern in respect of its ability to recruit and attract leading scientists and researchers to achieve its academic mission.

We have already heard about the London First perspective. There is concern among international companies that are based in London or have substantial operations here, which are operating in global talent markets and need to recruit employees with distinctive and perhaps unique skills and experience from across the globe, but which are inhibited from doing so because of the cap. The central issue for City of London businesses is the nature of the proposed cap on those non-EU workers who are skilled or highly skilled. They say that the arbitrary cap could exclude those individuals who bring tangible benefits to the UK and who do not displace existing British workers. These individuals could be investors, entrepreneurs or key staff of international firms here. My noble friend Lord Turnberg has a strong involvement with the Association of Medical Research Charities, which, in joint evidence with the Wellcome Trust and Universities UK, makes it clear that if we want the UK’s universities and research institutes to remain internationally competitive, continuing access to the best global talent and expertise will be critical. And so on.

The noble Lord, Lord Ryder, made an important point about the pharmaceutical industry. When I had responsibility for the industry, 2 per cent of global turnover in drugs and medicines was in the UK, but it was 10 per cent of global R&D. It is one of our most important and successful industries. It would be mad to put at risk the success of that industry. The noble Lord, Lord Newby, talked about the energy sector, another sector with which I have experience. Again, we have a very strong global centre based in the UK. How can we possibly put that at risk because of this arbitrary cap?

The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, made some mildly critical comments of the way in which the UK Border Agency conducted its affairs, particularly in relation to independent schools. I have no doubt that the agency will wish to look at that. He seemed to suggest that we should let in anyone who was going to an independent school. Given the 20 per cent cut in the budget of the UK Border Agency announced yesterday, perhaps that will have to be its policy in the future.

I hope that when the Minister sums up, he will be able to respond constructively to the debate. We are all aware of the comments of his right honourable friend Mr Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, who noted its impact on UK business only a few weeks ago. He said:

“The brutal fact is that the way the system is currently being applied is very damaging … If we are going to be an open economy”—

which I support strongly—

“thinking globally and acting globally, we have to be flexible in the way that we treat people of this kind”.

Finally, I should just like to inform the more than 20 speakers who have spoken in this debate and called on the Government to change their view that we will be debating on Monday a statutory instrument in my name which calls on the Government to change their policy. We will have an opportunity to put the views of this House to the test.