Migration

Lord Pearson of Rannoch Excerpts

Monday 6th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)]

My Lords—

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

My Lords, on this occasion the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, just pips the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, who knows how generous I am to him on many occasions.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

The issues of migration are not national or European but are essentially intercontinental. The tragedies developing in the Mediterranean off the coast of Libya merely underline that fact.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, what did the Government mean when they said in their £9 million propaganda leaflet that if we stay in the EU we will “keep our own border controls”? If that is true, why cannot they fulfil the Prime Minister’s promise to bring immigration down to tens of thousands a year?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

It is necessary to distinguish carefully between border controls and migration. We control our own borders and we determine those who come in and those who do not, whether they come from within the European Community or otherwise; that is quite a distinct issue from the question of migration. We are already dealing with migration by seeking to address the extent of economic migration and we are determined in our ambition to bring it down to the tens of thousands.