Migration into the EU

Pat Glass Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Main]

No, I will not. The hon. and learned Lady had 10 minutes, and there are many people wishing to speak.

We should be talking about immigration, which includes some people with refugee status but also a large number of people who come to this country either because of our membership of the EU or because they are coming here as economic migrants. My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr Holloway) made a powerful and well informed set of comments, based on having been in the camps, not just on people writing to him in his postbag.

If this issue was not such a concern to the British public, I do not believe that even now our Prime Minister would be trying to thrash out some deal that allays the fears of the British public about our loss of control over immigration into this country as a result of our membership of the EU.

It is telling that Mr Manuel Barroso said last night in an interview that what we are trying to achieve is a form of control on immigration through benefits packages, and that his view is that that will make no difference whatsoever. I share that view, because I do not believe that people necessarily come here because they have been lured by benefits. I believe that many people come here because they wish to work. They wish to take advantage of the opportunities that this country offers and of a better economic future for themselves and their family, and there is better healthcare here, and indeed better package as a whole. Whether we can afford for a large number of people to come into this country—a number that the British public would like to see reduced—is a different debate, but I do not believe that the benefits package that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister might achieve by 18 February, however well secured, will make a jot of difference to immigration. Indeed, when my right hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration responds to this debate, I would like to hear whether he thinks such a package will make a jot of difference.

It is interesting that England—not the UK—is the second most crowded country in the European Union, if we exclude the island state of Malta, and the ninth most crowded country in the world when the city and island states are excluded. That contributes to the British public’s perception of whether, and how much, immigration into the UK is a good or bad thing.

I speak as someone with a highly desirable constituency that is surrounded by green-belt land, although it does have areas of multiple deprivation. I can assure the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West that how many houses are built to accommodate newly formed households is a source of concern, and we should look it straight in the face. These are not separate issues, they are all interlinked.

Government household projections show that in England—not Scotland, obviously—we will need to build enough housing to accommodate the additional 273,000 households a year between 2012 and 2037, which is a total of five million homes. That is a vast number of houses and it means sacrifices of things such as the green belt, which many of us have to consider as constituency MPs. It also means that there are huge pressures on jobs in certain areas, and it is no good whingeing about jobs not being available to British workers. I seem to remember Her Majesty’s Opposition saying, “British jobs for British workers”, and the reason they say such things is that they know the British public are concerned about these things.

Currently, there are 2.1—

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Mrs Main]

I will give way briefly to the hon. Lady, because I do not wish to take too long.

[Pat Glass]

Does the hon. Lady agree that one of the great strengths of this country has been its ability to absorb and to integrate hundreds of thousands of people over the centuries? They have included who have come here to work, my family being one of them. Those people came here to work, paid their taxes, raised their children, fought for this country and died for this country.

[Mrs Main]

I completely agree with the hon. Lady, but it should be up to this country to decide the numbers. I do not disagree at all with what she has said; she is absolutely right. However, the British public tell me that they wish to be in control of those numbers. They also say that to many opinion pollsters, and I believe it is why the Prime Minister is currently negotiating. If they wish to make those numbers even greater, that is the decision of the British public; it should not be a decision imposed by an unelected bureaucrat in Brussels.

In total, 41.5% of the 5 million workers here who were not born in the UK were born in the EU, and most were originally from outside the EU, so some people do cross the EU and come through that route. There are currently 2.1 million EU-born workers in Britain. That accounts for a large number of people who are working and paying their taxes in this country.

British workers say that they are worried about their jobs. It is estimated that only 982,000 of the jobs that have been created recently have been for British workers. We are creating jobs and making opportunities, and that is why immigration is a big pull to our country—we are not the basket case that some EU economies are. They have not got the jobs to offer. I do not blame people for looking for jobs, but the British public expect us to discuss this issue robustly.

What number of people can we accommodate in housing? Where are we going to plan the additional housing that is needed to support and house those workers? House prices are rising because of supply and demand. In areas such as mine, which are near enough to London to commute to it, it is not a surprise that house prices are exorbitantly high, with an average house price of nearly £500,000. It is because of the pressures on getting on the housing ladder.

We are really being unfair to the British public if we do not look at the two sides of the same coin. Overall we are a prosperous country—although some areas of the country are struggling, there are no two ways about it—that offers opportunities to people in less fortunate situations. However, if those people are attracted to our country to take up the jobs that are being created as a result of our prosperity and the Government’s long-term economic plan, we have to accept that they will need housing, services and all that comes with it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham is absolutely right to have secured this debate, but we are tinkering around the edges of the issue if we are looking at red cards and a benefits-based policy. I do not suspect at all that migrants are drawn to this country because they wish to claim a few pounds in benefits. I believe that they want to come for the opportunities that I have described, and it is up to us—as it is to countries such as Australia—to decide at what pace that immigration takes place, how we can accommodate it and the numbers involved in that immigration. We can do that only when we regain control of our borders, which of course we can do only when we leave the European Union and all the constraints that it brings with it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I, too, thank the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr Holloway) for securing this debate. It is really important to discuss these issues, even if there are deep divides between us on the right way forward. The challenge of migration into the EU is clearly a huge one. Last year it was the biggest challenge in a generation. All the forecasts are that migration into the EU is likely to be greater this year than last year, so there is no doubt as to the nature and scale of the challenge.

Syria has been discussed this afternoon. When we look at the size of the challenge, it is worth reminding ourselves of the figures in relation to those fleeing Syria: 13.5 million of the population of 22 million are in dire need and 6.6 million are displaced, of whom 4.3 million have fled abroad. That is a huge issue that will be even bigger this year. Last year, nearly 1 million of those fleeing from Syria claimed asylum somewhere in the EU.

It is important to reflect on the causes of migration into the EU, which are predominantly persecution; gross human rights abuses; extreme poverty; and climate change. We can find all those causes reflected in any refugee camp in Europe. I was in Calais, which the hon. Member for Gravesham mentioned, and Dunkirk at the beginning of January. In Dunkirk there are many families. One of the men spoke to me and explained that he had fled from Kurdistan as a result of ISIS taking over his town, and he ended up in Dunkirk. There are lots of different reasons why people are on the move in the numbers that they are.

The first imperative in dealing with the challenge is joint international work upstream to try to reduce the conflicts that cause so many people to leave in the first place. I concur with the comments about how the vast majority of people from Syria would very much prefer to be back in Syria at the first opportunity. We must have upstream work to de-escalate conflict, and we must work with our international partners wherever we can to reduce the likelihood of people having to flee their home country.

There is also the question of people smuggling. Our Government and various Departments are working jointly with partners in Europe and beyond to deal with people smuggling, not only in Europe but upstream. My staff in the Crown Prosecution Service were involved in that when I was the Director of Public Prosecutions. Again, that is work that needs to be done upstream.

As for our contribution to rescuing those who are desperate and at risk of losing their lives, I thought it was a wrong turn when we withdrew some support for the rescue operations. I am glad that we are now fully engaged in those exercises on the Mediterranean again. Assuming that all that work is carried out, we then have to consider how to process individuals quickly when they get to Europe.

I have been pressing for some time on the issue of family reunification. There are rules, such as the Dublin III agreement, on family reunification and the rights of some of the people who are currently in Europe to reunite with family here. In some of the camps, such as Calais and Dunkirk, it is absolutely clear on the ground that those rules are not working in practice. We could do more about the refugee crisis than we are currently doing. Of course it is welcome that we are relocating 20,000 people from the camps outside Syria, but, along with others, I am concerned about the number of unaccompanied children in Europe. It is not only about the number, but the fact that more than 1,000 have disappeared. They are particularly vulnerable, so I urge the Government to do more for unaccompanied children.

We must also address the question of how we support people if and when they arrive in this country. This is the second of three Westminster Hall debates on refugees and migration. We had a debate this morning on the support for asylum seekers when they arrive in this country and how the contracts to provide accommodation are not working as they should.

The central point of this debate was made by the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter): in the light of the scale of the challenge and the reality of the steps that need to be taken, leaving the EU will not help. We need to be playing our part upstream to reduce conflict, playing our part in rescuing those who are desperately in need, and co-ordinating the response to the challenge in Europe. I do not think that there are many Members of this House, or many members of the public, who genuinely think that we should simply step away from Europe, or who think we should recognise the huge numbers of people fleeing into Europe and the desperate conditions from which they are coming and simply say, “It’s not our problem. We will somehow exit from Europe and play no part.”

[Pat Glass]

Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that, if we exit Europe, unless we become a city state like Singapore—a tax haven on the edge of Europe—and have absolutely no trade agreements with Europe, we will still be subject to all the surcharges on everything we make and export? Unless we do that, we will have to abide by the rules and regulations that apply for all EU member states, along with those states that trade with them, such as Norway and Switzerland. That includes the rules on the free movement of people. Whether we leave or not, it is not going to make any difference to the free movement of people across Europe.

[Keir Starmer]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I agree. I have tried to make a similar point about criminal justice measures. A number of EU criminal justice measures are critical in the UK and used 24/7. Almost all those involved in criminal activity above a certain level operate across borders, and we rely heavily on EU criminal justice measures to combat that activity. By that I mean that we locate our own staff in Europe and are co-ordinating with our partners all the time. Without those measures, we would be at much greater risk in relation to criminal justice.

If we come out of the EU, I accept that there is no rule to prevent us from trying to renegotiate the economic and criminal justice measures, but it would be a very difficult renegotiation that would, in all likelihood, take us back to precisely the same measures. Take, for example, the European arrest warrant. It is extremely unlikely that our European partners would negotiate with us an approach to such warrants that was different from the existing arrest warrant. We would therefore step outside Europe and have to renegotiate the same provisions as we have now, but we would lose all influence. I saw that when I was Director of Public Prosecutions: the moment the Prime Minister suggested that there was going to be an EU referendum, our voice around the table on what future measures should be crafted to deal with crime was reduced in both volume and influence.

There is also a point of principle, touched on by the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), as to whether we really want to retreat from the world stage or play our part. We see our role in the world as one in which we will involve ourselves in, for example, the conflict in Syria. The argument that the Prime Minister made to the House before the vote on Syria was premised on our responsibility as a nation state to play our part in combating Daesh. That is the sort of nation that we are: we want to play our part in combating Daesh. I voted against the motion before the House, but not because I disagreed with the principle that we should play our part internationally to resolve the crisis in Syria. So, too, with humanitarian aid—