Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Harper and Stuart C McDonald

Thursday 20th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

If the Minister’s Portillo-style tour of the railways takes him north of the border, will he reflect on the eye-watering track access charges paid by ScotRail and the eye-watering disruption caused to ScotRail services by problems with that track? Is it not just common sense that train tracks as well as train services should be fully devolved to Scotland?

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman I hope knows that the way track access charges are paid for is in two parts. If he looks at the total charges paid for track access by ScotRail, he will see that they are done on the same basis as in the rest of the United Kingdom. It is a very fair deal for ScotRail, and I do not think that there is anything for the hon. Gentleman to complain about.

Migration and Scotland

Debate between Mark Harper and Stuart C McDonald

Tuesday 11th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald]

My hon. Friend is right, and the sooner that happens the better.

So what do we seek to achieve through today’s debate? I have been in this place long enough to know that even in the rather unlikely event that I make one of the greatest speeches in Parliamentary history, neither the immigration Minister, the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster), nor the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross), is going to suddenly perform a 360-degree U-turn and wholeheartedly embrace every aspect of these proposals, much as I would love that to be the case. I am simply asking the Ministers, particularly the immigration Minister, to engage with them seriously. Indeed, I make that request of all Members in all parties.

After the recent publication of the report from the Migration Advisory Committee, the Scottish Chambers of Commerce said:

“Business will want to see the Scottish and UK Government working seriously and closely together on these and future recommendations, ensuring appropriate policies are devised and implemented that work for businesses and our economy”.

In anticipation of the Scottish Government’s report, Scottish Labour’s external affairs spokesperson said

“Scottish Labour supports exploring a degree of flexibility within an overarching UK immigration system”.

A spokesperson for the Scottish Conservatives said:

“We’re willing to look at any proposal which helps Scotland prosper in this new era.”

I say to the Ministers that if they were to speak to their MSP colleagues, I think they would find—privately, at least—a degree of sympathy for the proposals that the Scottish Government are making, so I ask them please to engage with them as well.

In contrast, all we had from the Home Office was an unnamed spokesperson dismissing the proposals before they could possibly have been read, and we have since had a fortnight not so much of serious engagement but of knockabout politics, nonsense and soundbites. To draw a line under this skirmishing and to show that the UK Government do indeed treat with respect the suggestions put forward by the Scottish Government and supported by Scottish business, unions and civic society, will the immigration Minister meet Scottish Government Ministers and officials before he finalises the new immigration White Paper and introduces the new immigration Bill? That was something that his predecessor bar one, the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), did on a regular basis when she attended Cabinet as immigration Minister, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman can take his Department back to that form of constructive engagement. That would be far better than the nonsense and soundbites that we have been served in the fortnight since the Scottish Government’s paper was launched.

I want to address some of those soundbites now. We have been told for the 100th time that the UK Government want an immigration system that works for the whole of the UK. Believe it or not, I am quite happy to support that ambition too, as it is entirely consistent with what the Scottish Government propose. We simply believe that a system that works for the whole UK can—and, indeed, must—reflect the different needs and circumstances of its different parts. The Scottish Government paper expressly proposes further change to the UK-wide immigration system. This would involve changes that could benefit all of the UK as well as practical, tailored policies that provide solutions to Scotland’s needs, drawing on international models. There is a whole chapter in the report dedicated to whole-of-the-UK policy change, if only we could get people to read it. Is the Minister seriously saying that the Canadian migration system does not work for all of Canada because it has different rules for different provinces? In fact, most people there would say that the systems and rules work better for the whole precisely because they are tailored to suit the different parts.

We have also been told for the 100th time that immigration is a reserved matter. We are all absolutely aware that that is the case for now, but it does not have to stay that way, and we certainly would prefer that it did not. Once again, however, nothing in the Scottish Government’s paper is inconsistent with that. I have explained that, ideally, it would be for the Scottish Government to draft the criteria and to consider applications for a Scottish visa. However, it could be the UK Government who define the criteria and rules, receive and assess the applications and issue the visas. The UK Government do, of course, implement a shortage occupation list for Scotland, illustrating that tailored approaches are perfectly possible, even if they are not willing to go as far as formal devolution. Again, this is all in the Scottish Government’s paper, and I encourage people to read it.

We have also been told a few times that the Migration Advisory Committee has rejected the idea of a devolved system, but that is absolutely not a fair representation of what the MAC said. It is true that the Committee decided, on balance and accepting that there were good arguments on both sides, that if the Government want a salary threshold for tier 2 visas, it should be one salary across the UK. That went against the majority of stakeholder submissions, particularly from Scotland. Nevertheless, it is totally wrong to say that the MAC rejected the case for devolving migration powers or introducing tailored rules for Scotland. To quote the MAC report directly:

“We acknowledge the desire of the Scottish Government for immigration to become a devolved rather than a reserved matter, a question on which the MAC takes no position seeing it as a political rather than an economic question.”

The one part of the MAC report that we do call on Ministers to implement is its recommendation that a pilot project should be established to look at retention of migrants in remote and rural areas. That is a recommendation that the former Home Secretary—now the Chancellor of the Exchequer—accepted in a written statement back in July last year. An entire chapter of the Scottish Government paper is about wanting to engage in the pilot process, and the Scottish Government have tasked their own expert group on migration and population to consider how that could best benefit Scotland’s rural communities. Again, our ask is simple: will the immigration Minister meet Scottish Government Ministers and engage with them on how that pilot scheme could work in Scotland?

Another old chestnut is the argument that issuing a small number of Scottish visas would make the UK system too complex. That takes some brass neck, given the state of UK immigration law and the complexity and bureaucracy that successive UK Governments have imposed on those who come into contact with it. When it comes to work visas, it is widely accepted that while the bureaucracy of the tier 2 system might be surmountable for large multinational companies, it is ill suited and incredibly cumbersome for the small and medium-sized enterprises on which the Scottish economy is more reliant. The Scottish Government paper expressly adopts as one of its principles the need for the migration system to be easy to access and understand, and indeed the MAC and the UK Government have accepted the importance of making the process simpler. The visa proposed by the Scottish Government seeks to make things simpler still for employers by avoiding the burden of formal sponsorship and ensuring that salary thresholds do not exclude particular jobs. There is every opportunity for the Scottish visa to make life simpler for employers and applicants, rather than more complex.

Finally, the Prime Minister brought up the ludicrous old argument about a tailored system making a border a necessity. Hon. Members will know that successful tailored so-called regional migration systems exist right across the globe, including, of course, in the Government’s favourite Australian system. Not a single one requires internal borders. I might also quietly point out that the UK is happy enough to share an open land border and a common travel area with a country that has an entirely independent immigration system. Over the past five years, Ireland has issued an annual average of 27,000 visas to non-EEA nationals who of course have no right to live and work across the border in Northern Ireland or in any other part of the UK. Next year, EU migrants going to Ireland will fall into that bracket as well, roughly doubling the number of people who will arrive in Ireland with the right to live and work there, but not in the UK. But no one is saying that we need additional checks on people coming into other parts of the common travel area. That is because thinking of immigration control as simply what happens at the border is to fundamentally misunderstand it.

Most immigration control depends on what happens in country. Successful enforcement includes selecting people who are most likely to comply with their visa restrictions, then on placing appropriate conditions on what people can and cannot do once they have passed through the border, and only then on the enforcement action and sanctions that are applied if people do not comply.

The UK’s main work route for non-EU nationals, soon to be rolled out to EU nationals, operates in precisely the same way. People have a visa that is tied to a particular employer. We do not make them comply by erecting a border around them or their workplace; we simply recruit a person we trust to do the job, place conditions on their visa and rely on enforcement and sanctions in the small number of cases where that is needed.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is right that much of the enforcement of our immigration system are the in-country rules, but I have read his paper carefully and he is proposing a Scottish visa that is not tied to the sponsorship of a particular employer, has no requirements for a minimum salary, and would therefore be a complete open door for people to get into the country that way with no one to carry out any in-country enforcement. He has just destroyed his own argument.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I have not destroyed my own argument, because the parallel is with Ireland. The in-country checks would take place in those parts of the United Kingdom where people are not entitled to live and work. It is often said that that would be a back door to working in other parts of the UK, but the checks exist there. If somebody with a Scottish visa applies for a job in London, they will be turned down because there are sanctions for employers who break the rules and for the people who actually do that. It works perfectly well. Nobody suggests that we need to take any action in relation to the people coming in via Ireland, and it would be exactly the same for the far smaller number of people using the Scottish visa.

It is not just Ireland that we are talking about: our friends in the Isle of Man get to issue their own visas and yet the UK is happy to operate a common travel area with them. If the Isle of Man can do that, why not Scotland?

The Lib Dem amendment has not been selected, but I will address it. There is little in its critique of the UK immigration system that I could possibly quibble with, and it is consistent with the principles of dignity, fairness and respect that the Scottish Government’s paper refers to. The amendment also reiterates the party’s call to end limitless immigration detention and to close Dungavel detention centre. My party and I have been making those points for years on end, and we did so in one of our most recent Opposition day debates last summer. Indeed, my party was making those points even while some Lib Dems were part of the coalition Government delivering aspects of the hostile environment that they now condemn. As their amendment states, I want a fair, effective immigration system for the whole of the UK, but again there is absolutely no reason why that cannot incorporate tailored approaches for the different parts of the UK. I urge hon. Members to engage positively on the issues. Their amendment should have added to our motion, not attempted to replace its substance.

The case for a devolved, or at least a tailored, system for Scotland is powerful and verging on the unanswerable. We are at a pivotal moment for migration policy and for Scotland’s population. The overarching objective of UK Government policy is to reduce migration. Nobody in this Chamber can seriously dispute that such a policy goal is wholly inappropriate for Scotland. The Scottish Government, after extensive consultation with stakeholders, have put forward serious but reasonable proposals for a Scottish visa based on a wealth of research and international experience. I urge Ministers and Members across the House to engage seriously with the proposals, because failing to do so risks drastic consequences for Scotland. If that engagement does not happen, if those proposals are not taken seriously and nothing is done to avoid those drastic consequences, more and more people will consider the other way to avoid those drastic consequences. That is, of course, to push through our own independent migration policy, just like Ireland does, as an independent country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

First of all, I make no apologies for wanting people who are in the United Kingdom illegally to go back to their countries of origin. People should obey the rules and follow the law, and they should not be here when they shouldn’t be here. I make no apology for that.

The point I was making was that we need to look at the reasons why people may not be choosing to go to Scotland. One of the clear points made in the Scottish Government’s own paper, in which they look at the experience of Canada and Australia, is that it is the economic performance of countries that determines their attractiveness to migrants. I simply note that the United Kingdom’s economy is forecast to grow more quickly than Scotland’s over the next four years, according to both the independent Office for Budget Responsibility and the Scottish Fiscal Commission, which says that the Scottish economy will grow by less than 1% in 2019, less than 1% in 2020, just over 1% in 2021 and just over 1% in 2022—significantly lower than the projected growth rate for the United Kingdom. That suggests to me that if the Scottish Government were more effective in increasing the Scottish growth rate, more migrants may choose to go to Scotland.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

This is a chicken and egg situation, and the right hon. Member has got it the wrong way around, if that is possible. The point is that all those papers and the MAC itself suggest that, if countries are able to attract more migrants, their economy will grow. We need the powers to attract and allow in more people, and to grow our economy faster. The Minister referred to that point on a previous occasion in the Home Affairs Committee. He was very good at pointing out how the tier 2 system was wholly unsuitable for Scotland. That is one of the key reasons why Scotland—and pretty much everywhere outside London—struggles to compete to attract migrants.

[Mr Harper]

I am very interested that the hon. Member says that. He was chastising people before for not having read the Scottish Government’s paper. In their paper, they talk about the Canadian experience. I mention Canada and Australia because those are the two models that the Scottish Government talk about, ignoring the fact that both Canada and Australia are geographically vast countries and their geographical experiences are not particularly relevant to the United Kingdom’s. On page 81 of their paper, the Scottish Government specifically say about the Canadian experience:

“Migrants reported that the most significant factor affecting retention in the province of nomination”—

in other words, migrants staying in the province where they originally went—

“was economic: onward movement was most likely to occur where they considered that better or more job opportunities were available outside of their original province. This points to the importance of linking provincial migration with labour market opportunities.”

The hon. Member has argued that London is a much more attractive place for migrants. Following the logic of the arguments made in his own paper would result in the conclusion that the Scottish Government would allow lots of people to go to Scotland, and that those people would then look across the United Kingdom at more attractive job opportunities, which he has just pointed out are in London; they would then not stay in Scotland, thus effectively nullifying the policy.