Immigration Bill

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

It is interesting that we started this debate by being reminded that the Home Secretary was busy distancing herself from the disgraceful ad vans. It is just unfortunate that she has applied the same school of politics to developing the Bill, which is absolutely from the ad van approach to tackling immigration. In her own words, she was trying in the Bill to create “a really hostile environment” for migrants, and not just illegal ones—before the Minister intervenes. The narrative surrounding the Bill is creating a hostile environment for all migrants and a toxic background for a sane debate about immigration.

Let us look at some of the provisions. I will not go into the detail on appeals, because many others have, but what sort of approach is this? The reason we have too many appeals is that too many initial decisions are wrong. The majority of entry clearance decisions are wrong. The appeals system is a safety valve. What approach is it to take away the safety valve, instead of dealing with the problem at the heart of it?

I find the stuff on landlords curious because I thought that this was the Government who had launched the red tape challenge. Where are we now on the red tape challenge? We are creating a needless bureaucracy for landlords who, in large numbers, have said they do not want it. Who will train our landlords to become immigration experts? Where are people to live while they wait for a decision from the Home Office? The Minister represents the party that proclaims itself to be the party of the family. What about the family waiting for mum’s spousal visa? Where will they set up home? According to the Bill, the landlord would breach the duty if he or she entered into an agreement to allow a disqualified person to occupy a property whether or not that person was named on the tenancy agreement. This is ill thought out, with very negative social consequences.

I want to concentrate on NHS charges and on the proposals to introduce a health surcharge for non-European economic area temporary migrants. This was proposed before today’s research was published on the actual cost of NHS use by visitors and temporary migrants. Sadly, it is too reflective of the non-evidence-based approach that the Government are adopting to this Bill; the prescription has been set out before the doctor has diagnosed the condition. We have some of the facts now, but there are question marks over some of the evidence in the report which I would like to share with the Minister.

The report says:

“We have reviewed the medical literature to try to find evidence of how visitors and migrants use healthcare compared to the host population…The findings suggest overall that recent migrants are less likely to use UK primary and secondary care services than UK born residents…At this time, as a starting point, we have therefore assumed in the model that migrant propensity to use NHS services is equivalent to the non-migrant population.”

What does that mean? It means, “we have found one thing but based all our modelling on something else to exaggerate the costs.”

Similarly the independent assessment says that the health surcharge will generate £230 million a year. But we understand that the level at which it will be set is £200. On the basis of information that I have received from the Library this afternoon, that will apply to 552,000 people. The cost would be £110 million a year, less than half the level suggested in the report.

The figure of £2 billion for the cost of visitor and migrant use of the NHS in England includes EU and EEA nationals of course, but it also includes workers who already pay national insurance contributions and taxes, and students, and I will come back to students in a moment. Whatever it is, it is not

“The true cost of health tourism”

as the Daily Mail described it today and as, I am sure, a number of Government Back Benches would characterise it in their contributions.

I go back to the Home Secretary’s opening remarks, where she talked about the cost of those who in the words of the research

“conceal the fact that they have come to the UK specifically to use NHS services that they are not entitled to access for free”.

The Home Secretary said that that cost was several hundred millions of pounds. I hope she will take the opportunity to correct the record because the report says that the cost is “very uncertain” but is estimated to be about £70 million within a range of £20 million to £100 million, or 0.06% of the NHS budget.

Of course there are already rules on charging people who are not ordinarily resident in the UK for using the NHS. The evidence on how the system is working is patchy, but the NHS appears to be recovering gross income of about £15 million to £25 million, less than 20% of the estimated chargeable costs. Add in the costs of administering the current system—estimated at over £15 million—and the current overseas visitor charging system may be generating a small profit, according to the Department of Health’s own assessment. Does the Home Secretary look to improve the current system? No, she introduces a new one without a full impact assessment of how much it will cost. This really is dog-whistle politics at its worst, building policy on prejudice rather than on facts and setting it in the context of a falsely constructed debate around health tourism.

That is clearly illustrated by the fact that, according to the Office for National Statistics, the majority of the people who will be impacted by the health surcharge will be students. I was fortunate enough to host a breakfast seminar before the summer recess at which the guest speaker was a former higher education Minister in one of the Australian states. He said that he was delighted to be in the House of Commons because it gave him the opportunity to congratulate the Home Office on its work, which had led to a significant increase in the number of students choosing to study in Australia rather than in the UK.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. Does he agree that there is a danger that, by placing yet more strictures on potential international students, the Bill will send a signal that they are not welcome in the UK? This is such an important export industry for the UK, if I can put it like that, and it is important that the mood music—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order.

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. She is rightly highlighting the concern that has been expressed from both sides of the House in previous debates. UK higher education is a major export earner, contributing about £8 billion to the UK economy annually.

I remember an exchange with the Immigration Minister when he was newly appointed, at a meeting of the all-party parliamentary university group, in which he pointed out that we should be talking not only about the income that international students brought in but about the costs that were incurred, including the cost to the health service. I went back to Sheffield university and said that we needed to look into that issue. The university commissioned Oxford Economics to carry out the most rigorous assessment possible into the income involved and the costs for our city. That assessment did not just cover the NHS and education; it went to the nth degree, covering every conceivable cost including traffic congestion. It concluded that international students were worth about £120 million a year to the Sheffield economy in net terms, which probably equated to about 6,000 jobs. Measures such as those in the Bill will serve only to discourage students from coming to the UK.

The Minister will argue that the health surcharge will bring us into line with our major competitors, which require health insurance as a condition for obtaining a student visa, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) pointed out, it comes on the back of other changes introduced by the Home Office that have done huge damage to the competitive position of our universities. This will simply be seen as another signal that international students are not welcome in the UK.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Is the hon. Gentleman not aware of the latest university entrance figures, which show that the number of foreign students applying to and getting into our top universities has actually increased this year?

[Paul Blomfield]

I am well aware of those figures. In general, the defence has been that the numbers were flatlining and that there has been a slight increase this year. There has, however, been a disturbing fall in numbers in certain areas, including taught postgraduate courses, and that is a problem. The point is not that there might be a slight increase; it is that we are losing market share. Higher education is a hugely growing sector of the international economy. The Government, through the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, have estimated that the number of international students travelling around the world will have doubled by 2020. It is not good enough to be complacent about flatlining figures or about small increases, because they mean that we are losing market share.

[Dr Huppert]

The hon. Gentleman and I have discussed students’ concerns many times. Does he agree that a similar argument applies to the student visitor visa? Will he join me in opposing any proposal to clamp down on those arrangements, on the ground that it would also damage our colleges?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. May I point out to the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) that quite a lot of Members are waiting to get in, including Dr Huppert? Perhaps if he takes fewer interventions, we might get to the hon. Gentleman.

[Paul Blomfield]

I will take that advice, Mr Deputy Speaker, and take no more interventions.

We need to look carefully at the student visitor route to see how much is displacement and exactly what is going on within those numbers.

My major concern, and that of our universities, is that we are losing market share as regards university students coming to the UK. The health surcharge obviously comes on top of a number of measures that the Government have introduced, and it is not just about the health surcharge. The universities are concerned about the provisions on landlords. They are worried, as other Members have been, about what will happen and that landlords—we know that 83% of them do not want these measures—will take the easy way out. We have seen the evidence in the reports over the past couple of weeks of letting agents in London who are discriminating against people on racial and ethnic grounds and on grounds of their appearance. The danger is that that will happen in this case and that international students, often leaving home to come and study here for the first time, will be discriminated against and will find an unwelcoming environment in this country.

The Bill is the kind of measure that brings politics into disrepute. It is gambling with our economy and our reputation just for a cheap headline. People deserve better.