Immigration Bill

Mel Stride Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

I am very grateful to make a contribution to this debate and of course my remarks are informed by the experience of being the son of immigrants; my father arrived in this country in the 1950s, but is no longer alive. The remarkable greatness of Britain that allows me to be here representing my seat in a sense conveys the importance of the debate; it is what is great about this country. In discussing immigration, migration and, indeed, emigration, we balance and underline that greatness, which gives us the diversity that we all cherish.

I am also informed by two particular experiences over the past few years. One was an experience that many hon. Members will share, particularly those representing so called “safe seats” or those who have ministerial office in government. During general elections, we end up out of our constituencies, travelling around the country, holding balloons in shopping centres and persuading people to vote for our parties. I found myself in North West Leicestershire with our candidate Ross, campaigning in Coalville. We were greeted—well, not greeted; many people tried to avoid us—and I got stuck in a conversation with a young man called Scott. He supported Leicester City; I support Spurs. We had a long conversation about this and then I plucked up the courage, not to ask him to marry me, but to ask him who he was going to vote for. At that point, I was set back because he told me he was going to vote for the British National party. I said, “What do you mean? Why are you going to vote for the BNP?” He described himself as a brickie, and he told me that eastern Europeans—“the Poles”, as he called them—had come to that part of the country and undercut his wages. He said they were preventing him from being employed. He pointed to his four-year-old son and said, “I’ve got to feed this boy. That’s why I’m voting for the BNP.” That is a difficult argument to counter, just as it was for my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), who so badly fumbled it at the last general election, and for all hon. Members across the House.

Another factor was the riots. People talk about them starting in Tottenham, but they spread to very different areas. I have strong memories of members of the English Defence League on the streets of Enfield Town, just two miles away, chanting “England, England, England” and handing out leaflets saying that we had to do something about the African gangs. That is the context of this debate, and these subjects have to be handled very sensitively indeed.

Why was that young man in Coalville, Scott, so concerned about immigration? His wages were being undercut and he often could not get a job. Was it not the job of the Government properly to enforce the minimum wage? Was it not the job of the Government to be tough on unscrupulous employers? In London at the moment, we have a crisis involving school places, and people are voicing their concerns about the situation. Surely it should have been the job of successive Governments to deal with that. People complain about housing and about the benefits bill, but successive Governments have failed to build sufficient housing in this country. There is concern out there, but that concern should fall right back on us here. Successive Governments have failed to deal with the issues that stoke those concerns.

Before I came to this place, I had the privilege of taking a law degree at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and I then made it to Harvard law school. I learned a lot about our constitution and about the constitution that was forged in the United States of America. In both those places, it is important to remember that the foundation of our democracy was the Magna Carta; I am not quoting this for the sake of it. It states:

“No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled. Nor will we proceed with force against him except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.”

Why then, in 2013, are we returning to the subject of appeals and denying civilised human beings the right of appeal? Why do we tell people that it is okay for them to go back to Afghanistan? Why, after the debate we had on Syria, are we telling people that it is okay for them to go back and launch their appeals from there? Why, given the debates that we have on international development, do we expect people to go back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and launch their appeals from there? Just a few months ago, we were having a debate in this place on the residence test and the changes to judicial review. Those changes will mean that far fewer people will be able to exercise their rights.

The sense that we are choking our democracy is coming from a number of different directions; it is not exclusive to this debate. It places a stain on all that we have achieved in this place, and all that we expect our young people to understand about our democracy, if we are not honest about why our services are feeling the pressure. Our Prime Minister says that he wants to see an end to the something-for-nothing culture, but if we are not honest about what fosters that, we give the wrong impression.

Let me go back to the period when my father arrived in this country, the 1950s. It was a period of austerity, with the country just coming out of rationing, a period in which we celebrated the coronation of our current Queen and a period of crisis, the Suez crisis, but it was also a period during which it was typical and usual to have on landlords’ doors in this country, “No Irish, no blacks, no dogs.” We forget that at our peril. That is why I will absolutely not vote for a Bill that encourages landlords to go down that road again and that does not have the necessary understanding, restrictions and knowledge of our history. Believe me, anyone in this House who knows anything about the Irish community will know that “No Irish need apply” has been a consistent phrase in our country’s history, and we are now going back to a place where we hand our landlords the power to make such decisions without the necessary experience to determine the validity of a stamp in a passport.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Lammy]

I will not give way.

Many people in this country from poor and working-class backgrounds do not have a passport. They have not applied for one. They do not go off to France or southern Italy on holiday every summer, or save up to go to India or the Caribbean. They are lucky if they get to Skegness at best. They have no passport and now they will be forced to buy one because landlords cannot always determine where somebody is from and will want to be sure. Those people without passports will be passed over and others will get preferential treatment.

My father would be rolling in his grave and I can tell Members who would be smiling: Peter Rachman, that famous landlord in Notting Hill who caused so much damage to so many people. It is an absolute shame that we are going down this road.

Despite all the Government’s discussions of the importance of our global economy, anyone who believed in the importance of trade and our export market would do nothing to damage the higher education sector, which brings in £14 billion from the students who come to this country. Every vice-chancellor would say that this Government have got things wrong in their treatment of students and higher education, just as 82% of landlords are asking, “Please do not give us this power. We do not want the power, we are not policemen and we do not want to do this. The Government should do this.” What is the Government’s record? What about the UKBA? How effective is it as an agency? How does it stack up on the list of effectiveness? It is one of the most appalling agencies we have ever seen in this country and that is why the Government have had to tinker with it, change it, get rid of it and take it back into the Home Office.

Why, when 70,000 appeals are being made, 50% of which succeed, would the Government deny people the right to appeal? It is because of the race to the bottom, because of the UK Independence party and because we have failed to have the honest discussion with the British public about what we have failed to invest in. Yes, the last election was marked by this issue, but in 2005 I had to canvass across the country while looking at the posters with that scribbled writing, “It’s okay to talk about immigration—it’s not racism.” I remember those Conservative party posters. We will have that debate again and I hope that the British people will recognise the nastiness at the core of the discussion. In the end, we do down our country when we walk down that road.