Immigration Bill

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, there have been many times in our history when we have had a hostile environment for immigration. Perhaps one of the more justified ones was when my own family came from Denmark, a European state—but of course it was not then, in the years 800 to 1000. It was more of a Norse confederation when we came in, and we certainly pillaged. I do not know what else we did, but we took the lands of Suffolk, where my predecessors were—a wonderful county, much enriched by us Norse and the Danes. It was right that there should have been a hostile reaction to those boats coming across the North Sea into—well, it was not the land of Angles then, but Saxon England.

What concerns me is this theme that has come through of hostile environments, created not so much by the Government, though I will come back to that later, but by the public. It is a real issue. I would come back to the theme of leadership that my noble friend Lady Hamwee mentioned, and how we deal with that.

To me, one of the biggest symbols of that hostile environment being set by us, the elite of political power, was the immigration vans. What they said was, “Go home or face arrest”, and then, like some sort of buy-one-get-one-free ad in a supermarket, “106 arrests last week in your area”. You look at that and you think, “Well, actually, that is factually correct: if you are illegal, then we wish you to go home. That is right”. But what an environment, and what a way to state your message. Of course, that did not just go over the TV screens in the United Kingdom or on our own “News at Ten” and other bulletins. It went worldwide. That is the problem about the UK brand that has been created by some of these actions.

What we have managed to do through this, certainly over the new year period, is fundamentally upset our allies in the European Union, the leaders of Bulgaria and Romania. Perhaps even more important, we have upset Donald Tusk, the leader in Poland, one of our potentially greatest allies in Europe in much of what we want to deliver. Most of Eastern Europe was alongside us in our agendas around Europe. Much of that friendship, that work we have done in the past to encourage them into the union has been thrown away by the sort of attitudes that we have shown at a governmental level within the United Kingdom. I highly regret that.

I say to noble Lords opposite that I was filled with great sadness last year, I think it was, when the Labour Party apologised for letting in our colleagues from the new member states of Eastern Europe on their accession to the European Union. There we had a smart, competitive advantage. The best and the brainiest and the most valuable of those citizens came across, first, not to other parts of continental Europe and the eurozone but to us and to Ireland—to our countryside and to our factories, certainly in the far south-west. It was a great boost to our economy. I am very sad that the Labour Party has admitted being wrong and said sorry for that. I think it was one of the great things that Britain did in fulfilling what it said in terms of enlargement of the European Union being important.

My noble friend Lord King mentioned that perhaps we need to think again about mobility in Europe. Perhaps we do, but it was Great Britain that pushed the agenda of enlargement, knowing exactly what the rules were. We were the country that pushed enlargement most, and now, because of that move back again, we are looking very strange within a European context.

This hostile environment shows a country, economy and population that are naturally successful and confident as being inward-looking and fearful. That is not helped by our continued bickering over the rest of European Union.

I was privileged to come into this House in 2006, during the previous Government. One of the things that struck me then was that every year we would have what I called “panicked Home Office syndrome”. There would be a Bill coming into Parliament every session to make the Government look tough on terrorism, or tough on crime. Most of them would be incredibly long Bills, and they took a long time to go through—but most of the powers were already there, and once the Bills were passed they were not implemented. They were not about effect but about headlines; they were about the Government making themselves look tough. I worry that this might start again in terms of the immigration debate because, as noble Lords have already said, in many ways this is not an issue that needs to be dealt with by legislation. I am sure that some aspects should be, but really it is about the competent management of the government that manage these areas—in this case, primarily the Home Office.

In the provisions of the Bill—and many noble Lords have said this already, so I will not delay the House—I am concerned that there is a risk of pushing illegal immigration, which is wrong and needs to be solved, further underground. It is a problem of discrimination, potentially, by landlords in this case—probably not so much by the clearing banks and with current accounts, but certainly by landlords. It is also about the authorities. We have had a couple of examples. I know Chinese restaurants in the south-west that have been raided several times. I cannot think of one instance in which any European or British restaurant or fish and chip shop in Cornwall or Devon has been raided, but ethnic restaurants are targeted by the authorities. This degrades our authority. It is the wrong way to approach this, but it is a temptation. I suspect it will continue.

There are some good things, though. Exit controls clearly make a lot of sense. I quite like being able to walk through an airport where I do not have to check out, but I agree that it is quite a good control. Even there, we often forget as Members of this House that we are members of a common travel area. The UK wilfully does not have control over its own borders: we share them with the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and, more importantly, the Republic of Ireland. I would be interested to hear from my noble friend the Minister whether the border checks and these various other aspects of border control are to be implemented by the authorities in the Republic of Ireland on the same scale and at the same time. I suspect that that is not completely the case.

On the NHS, I fundamentally believe that we should have a welcoming society which, on the whole, resists charging visitors for their medical conditions. If we have tourism with people coming for specific medical treatment, that is clearly wrong, but otherwise we should err on the side of generosity rather than trying to tighten up something that is probably not manageable.

Sham marriages are clearly an issue and need further attention as well, although a lot of those powers are already there. However, as my noble friend Lord Avebury asked, where is the legislation that also says that British citizens should have the unimpeded right to marry who they wish? I do not see that in the Bill. It would seem to be a fundamental right—something that we would want to offer all our fellow citizens—yet we cannot have it at the moment.

The main problem I see is one of fear. Yes, it is a fear of immigration but also of everything behind it. There are two main strands to the solution for that. One is the boring one of management: managing the process better and properly, not through legislation. The other strand, as my noble friend Lady Hamwee said, is that of leadership, in that we have to make it clear that the exchange of immigration and emigration—all the circular movement of people—is generally positive. It needs to be managed and not to be a drain on the UK economy. I am certain that it is quite the opposite of that. We need to put out that message, rather than being completely defensive about it.

I congratulate the Government, as other noble Lords have done, on our foreign aid budget, which makes sure that the problem of excessive migration will go down over the long term. I am also delighted to see that we are not following the example of Australia by using the Royal Navy to push North Sea ferries back into the territorial waters of our European colleagues. Neither are we committing asylum seekers to the island of Sark, which would be the equivalent of some of the Australian operations.

I will finish on this point. We have just had a report from the Government on flooding in the south-west. I come from Cornwall, where one of our big concerns has been to try to get the message out that Cornwall and Devon are still accessible. You can still come and visit us to enjoy our attractions. You can come and locate your business there and you will not be isolated. We have put out the hashtag #openforbusiness for the south-west. If we are not careful and continue with this hostile environment for migration, we will have to start to persuade people by saying strongly that we are open for business in the United Kingdom as well.