European Union Referendum Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Willoughby de Broke]

My Lords, I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Green. It is important that these matters of immigration, however unpalatable they may be sometimes, are brought out into the open. The point that he made, which I also made in my speech, though it did not seem to find favour with noble Baroness, is that we should also look at the consequences for this country of staying in the EU. This amendment touches on that and is worth supporting. Surely this will be one of the pivotal arguments. Again it might not be popular to say so, but immigration and control of our borders will be a major topic during this referendum campaign. To have something about it in the Bill would be very useful.

I hope the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Green, will find favour with the Government, because the public will certainly be interested in it, given the huge waves of immigration that are coming our way and will continue coming our way—I agree with the noble Lord—with huge consequences not just for numbers but also for infrastructure, schools, hospitals and accommodation. There are many consequences here and I know people are concerned about this. This is an important amendment to look at carefully and I hope the noble Baroness will follow that.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise for missing the first part of the noble Lord’s short speech. Since he referred to the population issue earlier, perhaps I might be allowed to say a few words. Incidentally, the reason the balance of competences report did not include population is that it is not one of the issues on which the European Union has any competence. There have been indirect references to population issues in one or two of the provisions of the treaties. I think it is the treaty of Amsterdam that has an obscure protocol in which the Republic of Ireland says that nothing in the treaties should be construed as countermanding Article 41 of the Irish state constitution, which is about abortion. While we are on the abortion issue, the efforts that Catholics in Scotland are now making to ensure that abortion law is not only not pulled up to the European level but pushed down to the Scottish level demonstrate that population issues are extremely sensitive.

[Lord Green of Deddington]

My point is not that population falls under EU competence. Our membership of the EU and the fact that we have no way of limiting the number of migrants from the European Union obviously feed directly into net migration, which accounts for virtually all the long-term haul of our population increase.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, as the noble Lord knows, I follow the Migration Watch UK publications in detail. One way or another, I have also been involved in migration issues since the end of the Cold War. One of the things by which I am most struck is that population and migration flows are very complex. When you close one door the flow comes in from another, as we see at the European level and also at the British level. It is very hard to close our doors more than we do.

The issue of secondary migration that the noble Lord raises in the second half of his amendment is also complex and delicate. I agree that it is one at which we need to look in more detail. But much of what Migration Watch does, and this amendment, ignores the important pull factor in British migration. I am struck, for example, that the newspapers in recent days have talked about the NHS going out to recruit additional nurses from abroad, while at the same time we are being told in the comprehensive spending review that the Government will cut nurse training and impose fees on nurse training in Britain. A better example of a pull factor in migration could simply not be found.