Miriam Cates
Main Page: Miriam Cates (Conservative - Penistone and Stocksbridge)Department Debates - View all Miriam Cates's debates with the Home Office
(8 months, 1 week ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Cleverly)
I put on record my condolences for your loss, Mr Speaker.
The Government have implemented a number of measures to reduce net migration. Those include restricting overseas students from bringing family dependants to the UK while they study, stopping overseas care workers from bringing family dependants, increasing the salary threshold for skilled worker visas—ultimately to £38,700—and increasing the minimum income requirements for family visas. We recognise that levels of migration have been too high and, upon my appointment, I immediately took action to bring those figures down.
Miriam Cates
I thank my right hon. Friend for his answer, but one of the main drivers of immigration over the past 20 years or so has been labour shortages caused by falling birth rates. According to projections by Philip Pilkington and Paul Morland, if birth rates do not increase, immigration will have to rise to over a third of the population over the next 50 years if we are going to maintain a sufficient working-age population. Immigration on this scale has no democratic consent and obviously my right hon. Friend has promised repeatedly to reduce net migration, so what discussions has he had with colleagues in the Treasury about this issue? Does he agree that the Government must have a strategy to address falling birth rates, to ensure that we do not always have to rely on ever-increasing rates of immigration?