Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules (Cm 7944)

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Monday 25th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hylton]

My Lords, successive Governments have declared that they favour families and family life, and I personally have always defended the principle of family reunion for people accepted into this country on a long-term basis. Now we find that this Government are meanly changing the rules to discriminate against accepted refugees and to take away rights that they have enjoyed for many years to bring in their immediate families. The Government should bear in mind that genuine refugees have almost always suffered persecution and may well have suffered additionally through harm in the process of escaping or reaching this country. There is a strong argument for allowing refugees to bring in their next of kin when it is possible. Quite often it may not be possible for a whole variety of reasons.

I support what the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, said about language tests and what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, said about process and lack of consultation, especially on refugees. I urge the Government to pay attention to your Lordships’ recent debate on immigration but, above all, I ask them to have second thoughts on family reunion for refugees.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I share the worries expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, in this area and his concern about where we are heading on this policy. It is not that I share his fundamental opposition to it as a policy, but we seem to be implementing it in a very dogmatic way rather than taking account of the needs of the economy and putting the primacy of economic growth and recovery first. That concerns me very much.

I am also concerned by the particular subject of the noble Lord’s Motion—that we should not have the cap in legislation. As he says, interim solutions can last a long time. We are an interim solution approaching its hundredth year. I find myself in many ways in sympathy with him and will therefore listen to my noble friend on the Front Bench with great interest when she comes to reply.

My particular concern is with the implementation of tier 4. The last figure that I had was that more than 60 pupils at top-ranked independent schools were still stuck abroad at half term because their process is not being completed. It is a common experience for schools of endless difficult bureaucracy and of parents and pupils in tears. There are real problems in recruiting students—and for what known problem created by the independent schools sector or students in it? What is all this expense for at the UK Border Agency and the Home Office? Why are we wasting money on controlling things that do not need to be controlled? In doing so, we are damaging an industry in which we have a great reputation and which, in the wider sense, particularly for further education, brings in several billion pounds a year of earnings to this country.

Why are we beset with extraordinarily idiotic rules, such as the one whereby a qualification has to be approved by Ofqual if we allow someone to come into this country for more than six months to study? That means that we cannot bring people in to study our renowned courses in air traffic control or the safety of oil wells, but we can bring them in to study cake decorating. That is just daft. There are other little things. If someone comes here on a six-month tourist visa and in the middle of it decides that they would like to learn English, they have to go back home to apply to be allowed to return here to do a short course in English. Why? They are here on a tourist visa; they already have a higher status than a student is required to have. Why not make it easy for them? And if they have to prove their ability to speak English, the UK Border Agency does not accept GCSE English as proof of an ability to handle English. There may be good reasons for that—I sometimes have sympathy with that attitude myself—but it seems an extraordinary thing for the Government to do.

I urge my noble friend on the Front Bench to put the economy first. I entirely agree with where we are headed and I am comfortable with that, but I am extremely uncomfortable with the way in which it is being implemented.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I am always impressed by the matter of fact approach demonstrated towards these matters by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and I think it is significant that, when the Government are repeatedly telling us that our future depends on the private sector, we are hearing significant voices within the private sector questioning the whole basis of the cap in immigration policy. Either we want to be able to let things grow, or we do not. Some of the people on whom this is dependent are saying, “Be very careful with what you’re doing in immigration policy”.

My noble friend Lord Hunt referred to the very interesting debate that we had last week, and it would be wrong to repeat it all, but one thing that came out of that debate was the realisation that the pressures of migration are not going to reduce. We must be very careful that we do not slip into a kind of “finger in the dyke” syndrome while the dyke is crumbling. In a world in which we emphasise the importance of market, free movement of capital and goods and having international economic policies that facilitate that and strengthen those processes, there is a gigantic flaw in the market if there is not free movement of people. That will, of course, lead particularly to illegal migration—or so-called illegal migration. We have to be very careful about double standards in that regard. I apologise for referring to a point that I made last week, but we regard someone as a social hero in this country who goes off to find a job elsewhere if his community is faced with economic depression, but when in the international market someone does that, they are regarded as somehow a threat. We use disparaging language about them and call them “economic migrants”. It has become almost a term of disparagement. In fact, they may be heroes, if the international market was looked at in a different way.

That is not all. Climate change may make these pressures that we are looking at seem insignificant by comparison in not very many years’ time, because people will be forced to move in very large numbers. Are we preparing for that? Something that we should all take very seriously is that we cannot solve the issues of migration in the context of national policy alone. It is one area in which effective international policies are absolutely crucial. That starts with the European Union, but extends beyond it into the UN system and the wider international community.

I have one other thing to say about context—and I am glad that my noble friend Lord Hunt referred to it. We must realise that so often the most immediate pressures of migration fall on the communities least prepared for it, which are already struggling in terms of jobs, health and education provision, housing and the rest. If we want success in migration policy, we must look to that social and economic investment where the front line of the issue is really to be found.

I am afraid that there is a certain confusion coming from the Government and from different people within the Government. On the one hand, we are hearing that this will all add up to a way of controlling immigration numbers and, on the other hand, we are hearing that it is all about positive integration and making a success of integration. These two arguments are clearly not synonymous and it would be helpful if the Minister could give an authoritative view on how she sees it and what she believes it is all about in that context.

Like other noble Lords, I am sure, I have received very interesting briefing. Some of it comes from an illuminating document from the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants and the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association. In many ways, the people working in the heat of the situation should have their views reflected in Hansard as they themselves have put them. I shall pick a couple of points from that brief because the people doing this work deserve honest and straightforward answers in the context of the kind of immigration debate that we are having today. The briefing points out that Adrian Blackledge, professor of bilingualism at Birmingham, has noted that,

“there is little evidence that testing English language learners is in itself an effective way to develop linguistic skills. The National Association for Teaching English and other Community Languages to Adults … argue that the UK is the best place for people to learn the English language”.