Limits on Non-EU Economic Migration

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

Let me first address the right hon. Gentleman’s point about the written ministerial statement and my coming to the House. He is absolutely right: I had intended to make a written statement, and the title was indeed placed before the House so that Members could be made aware of it. Over the weekend I spoke to the Government Chief Whip about the possibility of changing that statement into an oral statement, because at the time I felt it more important to come to the House to make an oral statement, which is precisely what I have done. The right hon. Gentleman said, “Will I take this issue seriously?” Government Members have taken Parliament seriously over the past 13 years, so I shall take no lessons from him or any of his colleagues about taking it seriously, given how they bypassed Parliament for 13 years and reduced the House’s powers to hold the Executive to account.

The right hon. Gentleman talked about migration figures, but immigration actually tripled under the Labour Government. It is our desire to get the number down from the hundreds of thousands a year that it has reached under Labour to tens of thousands a year. If he wishes to look at numbers, he should look no further than the past comments of the former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), who said that there was “no obvious upper limit” to immigration. It is this Government who are taking the issue seriously, who promised that they would do something about it and who are taking the action that is necessary.

The right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle made a number of comments about technicalities and the issue of jobs being advertised for four weeks in a jobcentre. Currently, immigrants can come into the country if the resident labour market test or the shortage occupation list requirements are met. We are consulting on whether they should be combined so that a tier 2 migrant is able to come in if both tests are relevant and met. That would be a significant tightening of the current rules.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about the wider social impact, as opposed to the economic impact. He has only to go out and talk to people about the pressure in some areas on public services, hospitals and schools. Another issue that his Government failed to get to grips with over the years is the significant number of unemployed people in this country. Some of those people do not have the necessary skills to get into the jobs that are available, but the job of the Government is to ensure that they do have those skills and to give them the support they need to get into those jobs, rather than simply thinking that the answer is to pull in migrant workers from elsewhere.

The right hon. Gentleman referred to students. If, instead of commenting on the statement he thought I was going to make, he had listened to the statement that I made, he would have heard me say that we would indeed be looking at other immigration routes in due course and bringing further proposals to this House. I recognise that this is one part of the job that we are doing as regards immigration, and other measures will come forward in due course.

The right hon. Gentleman asked why we did not yet have a figure for the annual limit on immigration, despite the fact that this has been a Conservative policy for some time and was in the coalition agreement. I can tell him why not: because we have, for some time, been committed to going out there and consulting those who will be affected—businesses, public service providers and others—about what the limit should be. As I said, the Migration Advisory Committee will be advising the Government and recommending what that annual limit should be. Of course, this is in sharp contrast to the approach of the previous Government, who, in one consultation exercise after another, merely paid lip service to consultation because they had already decided what they were going to do. People then got fed up with being asked to give comments and finding that Government took no notice. We are genuinely consulting people and will be listening to the responses that we get.

[Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that although individual employers may benefit by importing cheap labour, as a nation we will get richer only if our existing employees are enabled and encouraged to acquire skills themselves so that they can produce more, and enrich themselves and the country, rather than have those incentives to acquire skills undermined by the importation of cheap labour from abroad?

[Mrs May]

My right hon. Friend makes an extremely valid point. This is another area where frankly, yet again, the Labour Government failed over the course of 13 years: they failed to ensure that people in this country had the skills necessary to get the jobs that become available. This Government, through our welfare reform proposals and our work programme, will be helping people and giving them much more support to get into the workplace, whereas under the Labour Government economic inactivity in the UK rose significantly. Many migrant workers were being brought in from overseas, and limiting that number will be part of the process of ensuring that we are able to help people to get out of unemployment and into the workplace.