Legal Migration

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, legal migration is important to the British economy, but it needs to be properly controlled and managed. In the past decade we have welcomed more than half a million people through humanitarian routes, principally from Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan. We in the Labour Party support these humanitarian routes, but the overall figures, which are way above these humanitarian routes, are out of control. People are understandably worried about housing, getting local GP appointments and access to public services when they can see that their communities are growing. The net migration figure stood at 672,000 last year, which is three times the amount at the 2019 general election. There has been a 65% increase in work migration visas this year, and this includes a 150% increase in health and care visas.

Yesterday’s announcement is an admission of the Government’s failure on the immigration system and the economy. The Prime Minister is now proposing policies he opposed six months ago and opposing policies he helped introduce. The Labour Party has said repeatedly that net migration should come down and called for action to scrap the unfair 20% wage discount, raise salary thresholds based on economic evidence, and bring in new training requirements linked to the immigration system as well as a proper workforce plan for social care. While the Government have been forced to abandon the unfair wage discount that they introduced, they are still failing to introduce more substantial reforms that link immigration to training and fair pay requirements in the UK, meaning that many sectors will continue to see rising numbers of work visas because of skills shortages. The Labour Party is also calling for a reformed and strengthened Migration Advisory Committee that could advise on the impact of all policies to ensure that the details are correct.

There has been a failure to invest in skills and apprenticeships. Some 160,000 fewer people have taken up apprenticeships under this Conservative Government. For engineering and manufacturing, apprenticeships have fallen by half while engineering visas have increased. The Government have resisted calls to link requirements for skills training to the immigration system, and the UK is failing to train and pay people in the UK properly, leading to a skills shortage and a low-wage economy that relies on migrant workers.

In addition to this, the asylum system is broken. As of October, the number of legacy asylum cases waiting over a year for a decision to be made stood at 32,109. There were, in addition, 85,000 cases under a year old that had not been dealt with; thus, the overall backlog has not been reduced.

The Home Office has now hit its target for the number of caseworkers working on asylum cases, reaching 2,500 full-time staff by the end of the summer. However, the turnover of staff rose between April and August 2023 to 36%, having previously dropped to 25%. This puts into question the level of expertise in the team and the quality of decisions being made.

Following changes to Immigration Rules, which make it easier to withdraw an application on behalf of an asylum applicant, the number of asylum withdrawals has risen to 17,000. In a recent Select Committee hearing, the Permanent Secretary stated that he did not know the whereabouts of these 17,000 people. It may be that the length of time that cases are being left before being processed allows people to abscond, or that details have become incorrect over time, particularly when they move address so frequently; or it may be that the Home Office is being stricter with its criteria for withdrawing cases.

I understand that the reason for the withdrawal is not noted. I ask the Minister: why is the reason for withdrawal not noted and does he believe that it should be? Either way, losing track of 17,000 asylum seekers is representative of the danger of allowing such a backlog to build up in the first place. Of course, legal immigration is important to our economy and, of course, we should meet our humanitarian obligations. But with net migration figures at 672,000 last year, with government policies that flip and flop, and local public services under pressure, it is inevitable that the voting public become sceptical and disillusioned. The Labour Party says there should be a longer-term plan for immigration for the economy and for our country.

I turn to a separate matter, which I received an email about today. I see that the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, is not in her place, so I will repeat the questions from Universities UK about the higher-education sector and how it may be affected. First, is the Minister able to outline timescales in terms of reference for the Migration Advisory Committee’s review of the graduate route visa?

Secondly, do any changes to the salary threshold and financial requirements for work and family visas apply to new entrants only and, if so, what is the situation for existing visa holders? Thirdly, can the Minister give clarification on what the new salary discount will be for roles listed on the immigration salary list if they are not part of the 20%?

Lastly, will the Government promote a clear message that international students are welcome in the UK, and that the Government remain committed to the international education strategy?

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, yesterday’s Statement to the other House was one where figures were plucked from the air; one must draw the conclusion that they are arbitrary, in the sense that they do not have any background in what one might call a forward workforce planning regime for the country as a whole. One would have expected that, if you were to do a workforce planning regime for the future, it would be timed, looking forward as to the requirements on our workforce in this country.

It is certainly the case that the Government are well aware of the length of time that it takes to train individuals and get people moving along that pipeline. It is also certainly the case that the issue of medium-salaried people has come out as one of the major concerns of the document put before us yesterday.

The Statement, when examined for the sorts of people that the country needs who are going to be excluded by the regime, includes such people as butchers, chefs, welders and joiners. It is quite clear to anyone who has been around this country looking at the hospitality and tourism sectors that there are significant shortages of people to fill those places. It is not infrequent that you see a sign for a chef outside a restaurant where they are short of staff. The question to which we need to address ourselves is: where is the forward planning behind the figures that have been put before us?

Equally, the regional pay disparities around the United Kingdom mean that the wage levels in London and the south-east of England are very different from those that you find in other parts of the country. The wage levels that we are being told about have a bit of a sniff for the London and the south-east but are damaging to other parts of the economy where wage levels are different. The correct form of workforce planning would have had all these issues under review.

The issue of social care visas is obviously one of a lack of investment in the past. The Migration Advisory Committee has previously said that the Government’s persistent underfunding of local authorities, which of course fund adult social care, is the most important factor in the staffing crisis. The Government now say in the Statement that care workers without families will ensure that we have enough people to meet the demands of our caring services.

Equally, we are assured that the CQC will now oversee all this information, but there are problems for the CQC because its inspections do not actively address the working conditions and well-being of care workers. In that sense, the independent regulation of health and adult social care contains significant oversight gaps. How is the CQC going to ensure that those are fulfilled for those filling these vital posts from our immigration system?

I have questions about the impact upon companies in the sectors that are most impacted by the Statement. This comes on the back of last night’s discussion in this House. The Minister at that time did not recognise where I got my figures from: it was paragraph 12.2 of the Explanatory Memorandum for the regulations on fees that we were talking about last night. It says, and the words are quite clear, that there will be a significant impact on companies—these are the Government’s words—of

“tens of millions of pounds”.

On top of that, companies are now having to think whether they can afford to pay these amounts of money in order to recruit. A failure to recruit sufficiently for a company to operate means that the UK company itself might be in danger of not being able to continue to operate, and so UK workers might be affected by that decision. It is worth understanding what training and workforce plan is behind the migration strategy.

I have what might be thought of as a cheeky question, but it is one that worries me considerably, regarding the ability of British citizens to bring their partner to the United Kingdom to live with them, and with their children if they have any. I had a think about this and it was clear to me that a significant number of current government Ministers have partners from another country —we can all think of examples of that. My question is: what number of our population have partners from another country, given that £38,700 is a large figure for someone to be able to bring their partner to this country to live with them?

The danger here is that, in that development of a partnership between two people, the British citizen could think, “I can’t bring my partner to this country, so I will go to their country instead”. If they decide that, we might lose some of the vital people whom we need for our country, especially remembering that we are heading towards a time in our society where, for every elderly person, we will have only two people of working age. There is a big change coming, and we need to be prepared for it.

Have the Government assessed how these restrictions to legal migration will impact the numbers on overstaying visit visas? How many British citizens will be driven out of the country to live with their partners and children elsewhere in the world, as in the question I just addressed? Will the restrictions apply to workers who are already sponsored? Sometimes people have to renew and, when they do, will the restrictions that apply in this new Statement apply to them when they renew their work permissions in this country? Will an existing migrant worker’s salary have to rise in order to extend their visa? Finally, have the Government considered the disproportionate impact that the increase in family visa requirements will have on British citizens who live outside the south of England and London, because of the wage disparities around the rest of the United Kingdom?

That is a range of questions which we need to have answered, but the context of it all is: what is the plan? Is it merely a decision to have an arbitrary number which looks good to the public—or looks good in an election manifesto—rather than one which faces the problems which our economy, and our future as a country, will be needing?