Immigration

Paul Scully Excerpts

Monday 19th October 2015 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Percy (in the Chair)]

Mr Speaker has agreed that for this debate, members of the public may use handheld electronic devices in the Public Gallery provided that they are silent. Photos, however, must not be taken.

[Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the e-petition relating to immigration.

It is a privilege, an honour and a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Percy. Given the petition before us, the members of the Petitions Committee wanted to ensure that we addressed immigration fully, despite the fact that we have already had a number of immigration debates in the House—not least last week, on Second Reading of the Immigration Bill, which allows us to go further in tackling mass uncontrolled immigration. As a Committee, we thought it important that, although some of the petition’s wording was not quite what many Members would support, we did not just brush these issues under the carpet. We must tackle immigration in a responsible way, in a full and frank debate, to ensure that we can get the resolution and result that we all want: measured, controlled immigration.

This is a really serious issue. We wanted to ensure that we reflected the concerns of the population as a whole. I know from going around my constituency of Sutton and Cheam that immigration probably became the No. 1 issue during the election campaign—its last month in particular. That is reflected in opinion polls. It was Ipsos MORI, I believe, that recently came up with immigration as the No. 1 issue for people at the moment.

There are a number of areas in the petition, and I will take them in turn. One point is that there is a belief among the 198,000 who have signed the petition to date that many people are trying to convert the UK into a Muslim country. I do not particularly subscribe to that view. I can understand people’s fears given some of the headlines in the tabloid press and some of the comments on Twitter, Facebook and other parts of the internet, but we need to look at the situation as a whole.

Given such headlines and the reality of what is happening in places such as Syria and Iraq, and that we see people from the UK travelling to Syria to join ISIS, it is not surprising—indeed, it is very welcome—that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has come up with his statement on countering extremism. We are looking at taking tougher action against individuals. We are going to ensure that there can be extremism disruption orders on individuals who foment and preach hatred and encourage people to decide to remove themselves from their families and travel to those foreign areas to fight alongside people who, frankly, have a disgusting doctrine and no sense of respect for human life at all.

There is tougher action on premises as well: any premises that are hosting such extremism can be closed down. We are giving Ofcom more powers so that it will be able to close down TV and radio stations that are repeating those sorts of messages. We are reviewing schools and other public institutions—colleges and the like—where radicalism and extremism might be fomented. It is also important, and I welcome the fact, that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is having a review of sharia law in the UK. That review is a very important cornerstone of our counter-extremism policy.

I can understand people’s views in certain parts of the country where multiculturalism may have failed and stalled somewhat, sometimes because of the fact that so many people are coming into one area. We can look at Tower Hamlets and parts of the north, for example, where extreme groups have actually built up no-go areas for white British people. It was quickly stamped down on in Tower Hamlets, which was welcome. Vigilante gangs were walking around that area picking on people just minding their own business. That sort of thing has no business in the UK at all. However, only a tiny minority of people are committing such actions. We need to do more to stamp such behaviour out, hence the counter-extremism.

I will give one quick example of where community cohesion slightly breaks down, on a small scale, in my constituency of Sutton and Cheam. In the lead-up to my election, there was a controversial planning application for a small mosque on Green Lane in Worcester Park. I objected to it, as did a number of people, purely and simply because it was in totally the wrong place. There was no parking around and it would have been on a really busy junction that was already at capacity. It was rejected by the planning committee for that reason. However, it was conflated into anti-Muslim feeling among a few people around that area; the two issues got conflated.

There is an Ahmadiyya mosque nearby, in Morden. It is the biggest mosque in Europe; about 15,000 people worship there. A lot of residents in Worcester Park who do not particularly know the ins and outs of Islam thought, “Why do you want this small mosque on the corner of Green Lane? Why can’t people go to the massive mosque round the corner?” They did not understand that Ahmadis are one group that actually unites the Sunnis and the Shi’as, who both dismiss Ahmadi Muslims as not being of the faith, as apostate. Sending Sunnis and Shi’as to that mosque would be like sending someone from the Church of England faith to a Mormon church, frankly, given the different doctrine that they perceive the Ahmadis to have, even though in many cases that is just not the reality at all.

The mosque in Morden recently suffered a fire, which destroyed a lot of its administration offices—back offices. Fortunately, the mosque itself was not damaged. It happened on the day after Eid; if it had been the day of Eid, there would have been 10,000 to 15,000 people in the building. As it happened, there were, I think, 10—there were no injuries and certainly no fatalities. However, 70 firefighters put out that fire.

The police and a number of community leaders organised a number of community events to try to calm the situation down, because it was not clear at the beginning whether it was a race hate or religious hate crime. We believe that, fortunately, it was not such a crime. It was a couple of teenagers, one of whom has been given bail and is coming back in the new year; we are hoping that it was nothing quite as sinister. None the less, the fact that people had to go round the community and set people’s minds at rest shows the unease that there is sometimes and the awkwardness when it comes to keeping a cohesive community.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

We also had an incident just before the election in my constituency, where stickers appeared on lampposts—I gather that this happened nationwide—saying “Voting is shirk”, implying that Muslim people should not vote. My religious community quickly took those down, so that was not representative. Again, it is a small group, trying to stir up trouble.

[Paul Scully]

I thank my hon. Friend for that example. As she rightly says, situations around the country are sometimes exacerbated by a breakdown of community cohesion but are in no way reflective of the population, whether the Muslim or the indigenous British population —the Church of England population. Actually, I will correct myself. It is really important that, in describing the Muslim population, we do not bring together religion and ethnicity or race, because Muslims are not limited to Pakistanis, Bangladeshis or Arabs. There are a number of British-born Muslims. There are a number of people who have converted. There are a number of American Muslims and African Muslims. Muslims are represented in countries right across the world. It is important that we make that distinction even though, as I have demonstrated, it is easy to bring the two together by accident.

To return to my example, the final piece of the jigsaw in Worcester Park was a third group of Ismaili Muslims who bought a pub, not far from the controversial planning application site, called the Worcester Park Tavern, where they wanted to build a community centre. There were some issues surrounding the proposal—purely from a planning perspective, to do with things such as parking and traffic. However, because of the other two mosques, a lot of people in Worcester Park were whipped up—I felt that there was a bit of an undercurrent—into opposing the application because they were anti any Muslim group taking over the pub. In reality, however, Ismaili Muslims do not pray in the same way, and a number of them drink alcohol; they are a very different group.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman intend during his allotted time to refer to the majority of immigrants to the United Kingdom who are not Muslims? Does he intend to use the opportunity to talk about the positive benefits that migration gives and will continue to give to the United Kingdom, rather than playing into the hands of the xenophobes by constantly talking about the problems caused in some communities?

[Paul Scully]

Absolutely I do. I am trying to set the scene by reflecting some of the concerns, which are the reason why 198,000 people have felt the need to sign a petition. We must bear in mind that the reference to Muslims is only one part of the petition; there are references to a number of concerns about immigration, such as benefits. I will come to those, but first I will finish describing the example that I was giving.

The Ismailis in the area decided not to take that planning application any further because they felt that if they were not wanted in that area, they would go somewhere else. That is to the detriment of Worcester Park, because the members of the Ismaili community around the area, whom I know personally, play a positive role in society. They are successful businessmen, and successful in their various other fields. They play an active role in their communities through charity and philanthropic work, and they have fantastic support networks.

To pick up on what the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) said, that is the case for so many people who follow the Muslim faith in this country. Their religion dictates that they should be charitable and philanthropic, and that they should look out for people more vulnerable than themselves. Looking wider than that, many immigrants, especially from the Arab world and Asia, share the values to do with the importance and benefit of a fantastic education, the need for hard work, the need to succeed and look after their families, and the need to build up support networks. I absolutely echo what the hon. Gentleman has said. Immigrants from a number of different backgrounds play a hugely positive role—not only economically, but culturally—here in the UK.

I want to cover the statement in the petition:

“Foreign citizens are taking all our benefits, costing the government millions!”

There is no doubt that a number of people who have come into the country claim benefits—either out-of-work benefits or, more likely, in-work benefits. People tend to come to this country to get on; they do not come for the fun of it. They do not move halfway across the world simply to do nothing in the UK. Often, they want to take a job, look after their families and make the most of the opportunities that the UK has to offer.

In the UK, immigrants from within the EU often get the same level of benefits as they would in their home countries, although that is something that we, as a Government, are trying to change. To most people from outside the EU, we do not make available recourse to public funds, and rightly so. Since April this year, we have introduced an NHS surcharge of £200 for each year of an immigrant’s visa, because NHS tourism becomes less likely if people understand that there is a cost attached to coming over here for healthcare.

Those facts do not stop people holding the view, which I have heard from some of those I have spoken to on the doorstep, that many immigrants come into the country just to claim benefits. They do not want to work; they just want to claim benefits. Sometimes, the same people also told me, “They are taking all our jobs.” It is a kind of Schrödinger’s immigrant, and we cannot have it both ways; there cannot be lazy people taking all our jobs. I do not know whether hon. Members saw the viral spoof Donald Trump quote the other day:

“I’m sorry Clinton, but my ancestors didn’t make their way to this great country to have immigrants come in and take their jobs!!!”

Although that quote was a spoof, it reflects some of the arguments that we hear around the country, which is why it is incumbent on us as politicians to make the case that some immigration is very good for the country, both economically and culturally, but that we need to address mass, uncontrolled immigration full on.

I have met, as I am sure have many of my colleagues in the Chamber, people in the construction industry and the trades—carpenters, plumbers, electricians—who find the situation incredibly difficult because they feel that they are being undercut by European workers or workers from further afield. I absolutely understand their concerns, but we must also understand that we, as people who use those trades, take such workers on. I have employed a Polish plasterer, and I know colleagues who have used Romanian builders. Why do we do so? Because they are cheap. If their work is good and they can undercut the market, that represents open competition, which I absolutely subscribe to as a free-market Conservative.

One thing that drives people to the UK is the fact that we have the fastest growing economy in the developed world and in Europe. Yorkshire created more jobs than France last year, and the UK has created more jobs over the past few years than the whole of Europe. While our economy is doing okay—better than it has been over the past few years—and there is double-digit unemployment in several southern European countries, it is no surprise that people are attracted by the UK and that they come here to better their lives and those of their families.

There are two ways to tackle that. Either we can tank our economy—I do not believe that anyone here would subscribe to that solution—or we can make our immigration policy less attractive to unskilled economic migrants or people with skills that we do not particularly want to attract. That will allow us to concentrate on attracting the very best skilled workers and migrant entrepreneurs to the country.

The final point that I will cover from the petition is the mention of footage showing foreigners desecrating British soldiers’ graves. I am not sure why that was put in the petition. There is some footage showing people kicking over the graves of a number of soldiers, not all of them British, in Benghazi, Libya, two or three years ago. It is a shame that, because we sometimes shy away from talking fully and frankly about immigration, such issues can be conflated into what amounts, often, to a non-sequitur. It is important that we concentrate on the policies that the Government are introducing and those that we need to go further and introduce.

My own background is one of the big drivers for me when I think about immigration. As many Members know, my father was born in Rangoon in Burma. My grandfather worked as a port commissioner and was in charge of scuttling the docks in Rangoon before the Japanese came in. During that time, my grandmother and my two aunts were refugees at a camp in India and, by chance, they managed to find my grandfather in a fort in India.

My father came over here when he was 18. He finished his apprenticeship on the Glasgow docks. The docks, either in Rangoon or in Glasgow, gave him the welcoming present of asbestos inhalation, which unfortunately killed him 25 years ago. None the less, when my father came here, he made a real success of himself. He came with no money but with a great education from a Jesuit school in Amritsar. He worked incredibly hard, instilling in me the importance of a good education, and the need for hard work and family, which set me in good stead. When I look at my Burmese family, I see the support network that they have built around them. They do not look to the state to look after their own. My grandmother was a real matriarch and looked after a number of our extended family well into their old age. We can spread those values across the nation and we must herald some of the values that they hold dear.

I mentioned the fact that immigration is good because many of those people do jobs that others simply do not want to do. Of the NHS, 11% is staffed by people from abroad and 26% of NHS doctors are from abroad. The curry industry is an amazing industry that most people like, whether they are British or first-generation immigrants to the country. A lot of people enjoy their curry. I had tandoori chicken, which was served up by the café in Parliament, a little earlier on. It is our national dish. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) has some strong views on that, as do I as Chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the British curry catering industry. I have that role because the curry catering industry is a massive industry for the country, although it is struggling at the moment, partly because of some unintended consequences of our immigration policy, which we will perhaps hear more about later. I mentioned that there are jobs that people do not want to do. We have an ageing population so we need to bring people in. We need skilled people to come in to do those jobs so that we can create the wealth that helps to pay for pensions, freedom passes, our health service and all the services that older, retired people rely on, as we all do.

I will give one example of a migrant entrepreneur. A friend of mine and the Minister—a chap called Atul Pathak—came over here when he was young with very little money. He worked hard day in, day out in Southall on some pretty arduous jobs. Over the past few years he has gone from the ground floor of the hospitality industry to becoming McDonald’s largest franchisee, running 26 restaurants around London and turning over £50 million. He employs 2,000 people and has given 450 of those the opportunity to gain GCSEs in English and maths. He has provided a number of apprenticeships and some of his staff now have degrees in hospitality. He has helped to bring on thousands of people to follow something that was a job through to being a really satisfying career. He is a fantastic example and does a huge amount of charitable work. A lot of entrepreneurs who have come here from other countries come with a slightly different philanthropic view from ours as businesspeople in the United Kingdom. They are far more active in the charity environment. It is really important that we learn those lessons and share them.

I have talked about the fact that immigration is good for culture, which is important, but let me turn for a second to the fact that mass, uncontrolled immigration is bad. There are tensions when too many people come into the country, like the 2.5 million people—twice the population of Birmingham—who came in under the last Labour Government. That provided a big shock to our infrastructure, including to hospital beds, school places and housing, which are all issues that we are now having to tackle. There are various community tensions in certain areas—I mentioned Tower Hamlets and other towns—so we need to control numbers.

I am pleased that the policy of the previous Government, which we are carrying on now, has started to address the issue. It is like turning an ocean liner around: it cannot all be done particularly quickly. None the less, we have been slashing student fraud. We have struck off nearly 900 bogus colleges and made access to welfare and housing tougher, but there is plenty more to do. I am glad that the Immigration Bill will make it far harder for illegal immigrants to work and access public services, and far easier for us to remove people who should not be here.

The one area in which we need to go further is the European Union. The Prime Minister is trying his hardest to renegotiate a number of terms with the EU, especially regarding freedom of movement. My opinion is that we need to leave the EU. That would ultimately give us far more flexibility to control our own borders, which are strong. Bear in mind the fact that we have the channel; there is sea between us and the rest of Europe. There are tensions in the some of the central and eastern European countries, where we hear about border issues every day. We have a sea and a strong border, which we could do something about if we had the policies in place to do so. Leaving the EU would give us more flexibility to control our borders and tackle some of the unintended consequences of immigration from outside the EU. Things such as the curry industry—bringing curry chefs over—might benefit.

In conclusion, I want quickly to talk about refugees because we are in the middle of a full-blown crisis. We do not want to go back to the position of the early 2000s, when all the talk about immigration was of bogus asylum seekers. We need a situation where we can have strong borders, bring in the people we want and also fulfil our moral obligation—we have a rich history in this—of bringing in the refugees who are most in fear of their lives, so that they feel welcome.

We must have a welcoming environment for legal migrants and refugees, and a hostile environment for illegal immigrants. That needs to be distinct so we do not conflate two issues, but it is a difficult situation to turn around. I fully support the Government’s plans for immigration and the Immigration Bill. Now that we have a majority Conservative Government, we can do things that we could not necessarily do under a coalition Government. I look forward to the Minister’s response on how immigration policy will develop over the next couple of years.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve McCabe]

The hon. Lady is right. I make it clear that I do not consider people who are concerned about immigration, or who object to it, to be bigots, but I have a problem with the petition. Some of the people who contacted me had a legitimate right—they were not constituents, by and large—to say that they did not like what they had read in the press, whether or not it was what I had actually said. I understand that. The vile nature of some of the other people’s comments probably justifies what I said about them—in fact, what I said about them was probably mild compared with what I read from them.

I will pick up on what a couple of people said. A Mr David Harrington, who I understand owns or works for PressLine, a marketing consultancy, extended my criticism to say that I had accused all signatories of being of a racist tendency, which is quite worrying if he runs a marketing consultancy. That may have been what Mr Harrington heard, but never did I say it. The danger of petitions that deliberately set out to pander to people’s fears is that people end up reading things that are not there and hearing things that have never been said.

Mr Harrington, a bit like the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam, advised me that it was Labour that had opened the floodgates to mass migration. Members may not be surprised to hear that I do not entirely share that view, but people have legitimate concerns. We all know that there is pressure on some of our services at the moment and that people fear such pressure. There is pressure on health services and on access to school places. Certainly as far as European migration is concerned, I have more faith in the Prime Minister than it appears the hon. Gentleman has, because I do not want to plan to leave the European Union; I want the Prime Minister to succeed in his negotiations. I hope that one of the things the Prime Minister will seriously consider trying to negotiate is a migration fund so that, where we have a significant influx of people into a particular part of the country from Europe, we can draw on it if the influx is putting pressure on our services. That would be a welcome and useful proposal, as has been made clear in my extensive consultations with my constituents on immigration.

There is clearly an issue in relation to the benefits system. The vast majority of immigrants come to work, so we should not be entirely concerned when the petition says that foreigners are “taking all our benefits”, but it is reasonable to ask questions about benefits. For example, most people would recognise that it is absurd that people who do not have children resident in this country are able to claim child benefit. That is a reasonable point. I am not sure that I support the idea of transferable benefits. It is probably also legitimate to say that there should be a reasonable qualifying period for accessing benefits.

The hon. Gentleman drew on the example of curry shops. The balti business is very big in the Birmingham area. The issue is not about whether one should have to bring over a chef from the Indian subcontinent in this day and age. It would be better to put a bit more support and funding into our sixth form colleges and further education colleges so that they are not at risk of collapsing. If we cannot train people as balti chefs and curry chefs in this day and age, there is something badly wrong with our skills training in this country.

I recommend to the hon. Gentleman that, as was Labour policy at the last election—the Chancellor is now keen on some bits of Labour policy—where an employer asks for a visa to bring someone into this country because they argue that they genuinely cannot fill the skills gap, and where it is practical to create an apprenticeship, we should say, “You can have the visa, provided that there is an apprenticeship to train someone from here for the future.” That would be a useful and practical way of addressing that particular problem.

The Government’s targets need a bit of realism. I liked a lot of what the hon. Gentleman was trying to say—he was trying to be fairly balanced—but then I heard him say, “Oh, the last Labour Government let 2.5 million people into the country.” Where has that figure come from? How many of those people are permanent residents of the UK? How many of them does he know anything about? The reality is that that figure has been conjured up for propaganda purposes, just as the Government’s target to reduce immigration is now becoming a straitjacket for the Home Secretary. It would probably be better if the Government were to set out clear principles for the areas of concern on immigration so that people across the country can work together. That would be more fruitful than setting unachievable targets that lead to further disillusionment, which would be a mistake.

Of course, including refugees in the target, thereby confusing refugees with conventional economic migrants, is a dreadful mistake. I hope the Minister, who is responsible for refugees, will take advantage of this debate to tell us a bit more about what is happening with the Syrian refugees. How many orphaned and abandoned children can we reasonably expect to have been resettled in this country come Christmas? An answer to that question would be helpful, and it would also be helpful if he made it clear that he sees a clear distinction between refugees and economic migrants and that he is willing to consider not mixing the two in the numbers.

It is preposterous that this country wants to make it hard for high-value students to come to our universities. I do not know why we should discourage people who pay good money to come to our universities, and who help to subsidise our own students. Such students will not stop going to university; they will just go to Australia, Canada or the United States. The losers will be our universities and research programmes. It is a dreadful mistake to include students in our immigration targets, and the Minister will have no difficulty getting support from the Labour party, and maybe from other Opposition parties, if he were to come clean and make that distinction. Students are not coming here to settle permanently. They are people who come here for a time-limited period and who we actually want to come here.

This petition is misleading in a number of ways. It ignores the fact that the number of permanent visas being awarded is currently down by about 15%; it ignores the fact that many of our most welcome immigrants come on fixed five-year work permits; and it does not take account of what they come to do or where they come from. We are talking about doctors, nurses, scientists, social care workers, digital engineers—the very people the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam wants to come here to help, support and invigorate businesses, and to start businesses—and they are coming from places such as India, Australia, the USA, the Philippines, Canada and New Zealand. They are the main countries that we are taking immigrants from at present, which is hardly the picture conjured up by this particular petition.

Of course, the petition also ignores what the impact would be on our agriculture and hospitality sectors, for example, if we were to end immigration immediately. The effect would be to close down those sectors. I do not know whether the person responsible for originating this petition thought about the implications of that, or whether the 190,000 or so people who were so keen to sign it have considered that, but I understand that closing our borders would mean that it would be quite difficult to leave the country as well as to enter it. As I have said, I have no problem with discussing and debating immigration. There are immigration issues that we should tackle. There are some where we could find quite a bit of cross-party consensus. However, I for one have no desire to have to go around telling my constituents, “I’m sorry. You’re not going on holiday after all this year, because we have decided to support a petition that says we are going to close our borders.” I do not think that things have got quite that bad in the UK.

I welcome the opportunity to debate this issue. There is a persuasive argument, I say to the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam, to consider whether we should issue further guidelines on the wording of petitions. That might be helpful. That is no criticism of the hon. Gentleman or his Committee but there may be times when the current e-petition situation has unintended consequences.

Is it not reasonable to ask that we be given a bit more information about the person originating the petition? It is probably fair to know who they are, where they live, whether they are a registered British voter, for example, whether they have any party political association or any history in relation to a particular subject. It would not be unreasonable to know that. The idea of the e-petition system, of course, was to give a voice to the public and to ensure that we in this place did not ignore issues that matter.

[Paul Scully]

I will quickly answer that point. As the hon. Gentleman said, the Petitions Committee is a new Committee and we are developing and looking at reviewing our processes as we go through. This is the third debate that has arisen from an e-petition and we will always continue to review the system. We certainly know the people who are signing the petition, because we are in contact with them and informing them about the result of their signing the petition, whether it is just a Government response, whether we will have a debate such as this one or whether there will be some other action.

[Steve McCabe]

I am grateful for that intervention. My point is that we should know, not just the Petitions Committee. Indeed, all the other people who might be tempted to sign a petition should perhaps know in advance, as well. That would be quite useful.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Grant]

I am sorry if I am not making the point clearly enough, but by conducting the debate on the terms of UKIP and those even more extreme than UKIP, it allows people like the gentleman who started the petition to believe that they are in the ascendancy and on the front foot. I do not know anybody—it is certainly not the policy of the SNP—who thinks there should be utterly open, uncontrolled immigration into Scotland, and I would not imagine that any UK parties would want the same for England. One of the big problems is how the controls are defined. For example, the salary control prevents qualified nurses from getting into the country. How ridiculous is that? It has been pointed out that the controls that were set up supposedly to stop bogus students coming in to go to bogus universities seriously affected the financial viability of some of our great and most ancient seats of learning.

To finish the comments I was making on my links to immigration, my Auntie Mary was born in Scotland. She was an immigrant. My wee brother and wee sister were born in Scotland, and they are immigrants, because one lives in Ireland and one lives in Germany. Why is it that, as part of the demonisation process that is so built in that we do not even recognise it, when other people come here they are immigrants, but when we go there we insist on becoming expats? Some of the biggest and most concentrated immigrant communities that can be found anywhere are of British immigrants in parts of southern Spain, Portugal and France. If we allow the debate to be carried out in the terms expressed in the petition, we are inviting the far right and other countries to demonise and discriminate against British citizens in exactly the same way as some people would want us to discriminate against the citizens of other countries.

Among the other great disservices of the past few weeks is what I can only assume is a deliberate strategy of conflating the humanitarian refugee crisis with controls or lack of controls over immigration. Those are two completely different issues. We are not required to take Syrian refugees or refugees from anywhere else because of our membership of the EU. That is not affected by our signing up or not signing up to Schengen or anything else. A fundamental requirement of international law is that we give proper succour to refugees if they come in fear for their lives. We allowed the Home Secretary to make a statement about the Syrian refugee crisis headed, “Immigration”, which was an utterly shocking piece of bad naming, misrepresenting the true situation in the Mediterranean. Where people want to come here because they are in fear for their lives, that is not immigration. I fully agree with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak that it is utterly and totally wrong to include hopefully short-term or temporary succour to refugees in an immigration figure.

[Paul Scully]

Would the hon. Gentleman not agree that the Government’s approach to the Syrian refugee crisis, which concentrates our help on the camps and taking people from there, directly helps refugees? Taking more people who are landing on these shores by crossing the Mediterranean risks giving support to human traffickers, who are bringing economic migrants as well as refugees.

[Peter Grant]

I had not intended to get into a debate about refugees, because the debate is not about refugees—that is what I am trying to say—but the direction I approach the matter from is that 4.5 million people have fled Syria because they would have died had they stayed. The United Kingdom takes 20,000 people. Who do we morally think we can tell to take the other 4,480,000? There are not places roundabout Syria that are stable enough to take those kind of numbers. That is why I welcome the Government’s moves so far. I am on the side of the bishops. The Government have not gone nearly far enough, but let me repeat: the petition should not be allowed to be about refugees. This is about immigration, and the two have got to be kept utterly and completely separate.

I was as shocked and offended as anyone when I saw footage a few years ago of people desecrating war graves. The desecration of any grave or any site of religious or spiritual significance is a terrible thing. What was done in the footage was done to create disharmony and conflict and to set communities against one another. That is why the militants did it. As has been pointed out, the petitioner was incorrect in stating that British war graves were desecrated. There were some British war graves and there were war graves of other nationalities who fought alongside Britain when Britain most needed them. They gave their lives in the service of the values that so many of their countries share with the nations represented in this hall today. A lot of them died in the uniforms of countries from which citizens would not be allowed to come if the petitioner got his way and if some of the reforms that the Government have talked about were implemented.

Let us not forget that, whether we talk about immigration or foreigners who have no intention of coming here even temporarily, we are talking about people whose countries suffered desperately in the fight against Nazism and about people who have come to settle in the UK whose fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers fought, risked their lives and sometimes lost their lives fighting for exactly the same values that our people did. It is wrong to start driving barriers between people based on the country they were born in, on the language that they speak, on the colour of their skin, on the god they choose to worship, on the way in which they choose to worship their god, or on their belief that there may not be a god at all. To discriminate against people on any of those grounds is rightly unlawful. More importantly, it is indefensibly immoral. There are no circumstances in which it is acceptable to discriminate on such grounds.

Like the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak, I have been on the receiving end of some very unpleasant emails from my constituents. I have had about 100 emails asking for an anti-immigration debate since I got elected this year and I think 99 of them have come from the same place. I got hate mail almost handed over to the police some years ago. I wrote a letter to one of our local papers in response to what I saw as xenophobic comments about immigration and refugees. I pointed out that in a few weeks’ time some of us would celebrate our patron saint. I was not referring to St Andrew, who comes a couple of weeks later. Being an adoptive Fifer, I am proud of the connection that we have with St Margaret.

I can understand and I share a lot of the feelings of those who earlier this year celebrated the achievements of the present monarch, and I can understand why English people celebrate the incredible achievements of the previous Elizabeth, who also reigned for a long time, but I believe the finest monarch that we had in our days of independent monarchy was Margaret, who is now a patron saint. She came to Scotland as a refugee. She did not choose to come to Scotland. She came as a refugee and became by far our best loved monarch of all times, certainly in the pre-Union days. When I have commented on that before, I have had hate mail accusing me of being a traitor to my country and of being a traitor to my cause. I made those comments because we just never know what outstanding acts of good can come from somebody who has come here in the most desperate of circumstances. We never know what exceptional contribution someone who comes here as an immigrant may or may not make, just as we can never know who the next great migrant emigrating from these shores might be and what good they might do in other countries.

In exactly the same way as closing down all international trade would harm us all, closing down all immigration would be a desperately sad step to take. In practice, that is what the petitioner is asking for. We cannot close Britain’s borders to anybody trying to come in without borders going up against anyone trying to go from Britain to other countries.

A couple of people have asked who the petitioner was. They have been identified. In fact, they were interviewed by a news website not far from the constituency of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak. It was somebody in Walsall. They are not a registered voter because, ironically, at the time the petition was started the young gentleman was only 17. Although some of us would have been happy to allow them to express their views through the ballot box, a majority of people in here would not have allowed them to do so. Perhaps he had to set up the petition because other people would not allow him a vote. When he was asked where he got the information in his petition, he said he got it off the internet, so perhaps that is an issue we need to look at.

I would be against rejecting a petition that appeared to have been supported by a substantial number of people simply because we found it offensive or we thought it was wrong. If people bring forward ideas based on falsehoods and on facts that are simply not accurate, the way to deal with it is to get the inaccuracies out into the open and to expose them for what they are. So when we get the response from the Minister—spokespersons tend to read through what the Government’s record is and what their future plans are—I hope the Government will take the chance to say unequivocally that the request that has been made in the petition is unacceptable, because the comments, arguments and statements of fact on which the request is made are utterly and completely untrue and unjustifiable.

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[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

I welcome the subject of the e-petition that we are debating this afternoon, even if I do not agree with the wording. My comments are similar to those of my hon. Friends the Members for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) and for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) in that, if we do not have this conversation, we alienate a significant number of people whose views may become more extreme. However, if we have an honest, open debate with all the facts made clear, we can hope that sensible arguments will win and those with extreme views will be outnumbered. If we dismiss such views completely, we alienate a huge section of our population.

Immigration is the No. 1 issue in my constituency. It was before the election and still is when I knock on doors now, and the reasons are several. My constituency is quite divided. Due to a local skills shortage, those in Lewes town itself feel that we are not taking enough people from outside this country. A separate e-petition was started on 15 August with the opposite view to today’s, calling for the country to take on more migrants, particularly refugees, and a march in support of accepting more refugees is taking place in my constituency a week on Saturday. In the other part of my constituency, along the coastal strip, many residents would agree with the sentiments in today’s e-petition, so views on this topic are divided even within a small area in the south-east of England.

My constituency has low levels of immigration, so it is startling to find people who are concerned about immigration and its effects. Only 7% of my constituents are foreign nationals, compared with a London constituency such as Battersea where the figure is closer to 35%. For my constituents, the issue is often not immigration itself, but rather the fear of immigration. When I talk to people and drill down to find out what they are concerned about, it is the pressure on resources and infrastructure. Housing is at a premium in my constituency, both in terms of availability and affordability. People are worried that an increase of migration into the area will make the situation even worse.

Our road and rail network is also congested. A journey that should take 20 minutes by car or bus often takes an hour or longer simply because of the level of traffic on the roads. Westminster Hall debates have been held on the topic of rail issues along the south coast and on the Brighton main line. People know that those lines cannot take many more passengers. I was talking to a group of elderly people who told me that they were having to wait two weeks for a GP appointment, so the thought of more people living in the constituency is a source of great fear. It does not matter whether people are from outside or inside the European Union or from within the United Kingdom, parts of the south-east are at capacity. Until we address that issue, the fear of immigration will continue.

[Paul Scully]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point about the movement of people from within the UK. I know that she used to live in London, which has expanded continually since Dick Whittington was a boy. The population is forecast to rise to nearly 10 million in a few years’ time, which is of particular concern to Londoners. Does she agree that it is important to address that as London expands?

[Maria Caulfield]

I absolutely agree. I migrated from London to Lewes over 20 years ago, and we are seeing an increase in people moving out but still commuting back into London, but London is definitely expanding. Some parts of the south-east coast are actually referred to as London-by-the-sea.

I speak as the daughter of Irish immigrants who came to this country for a better life, so I am by no means against immigration. I see first-hand the benefits that immigration can bring to local economies. I was a nurse right up until the election and saw the valuable contribution made by workers from other countries. If we stopped immigration and closed our borders tomorrow, the NHS would be brought to its knees and grind to a halt. My constituency is quite rural, featuring several vineyards, and local farmers tell me that the issue is not one of cheap labour. They cannot get people to fill their jobs. It is about workers’ availability and willingness, which is why they are so reliant on migrant workers for essential but seasonal work. Colleagues have quoted such figures already this afternoon, but European immigrants pay more in tax than they ever claim in benefits. It is estimated that such immigrants have contributed some £20 billion to our economy as a whole since 2001.

The concerns are genuine, however, and we should not ignore the many people who have signed this petition even if we disagree with the wording. As colleagues on both sides have said this afternoon, we need to ensure that people understand the difference between refugees and economic migrants, because they are in very different situations and need dealing with differently. We must consider the lack of integration over the past 10 or 15 years. While on a trip with the Women and Equalities Committee only a couple of weeks ago, we heard from various groups of migrants who had settled in places such as Birmingham, Manchester and Oldham that not allowing integration has had a detrimental effect on their communities. Members of Parliament should be doing more to support it.

Lack of space is another issue with which the south-east of England is struggling. We are building as many houses as we physically can as quickly as possible, but the south-east has only so much capacity, which is why I welcome the Chancellor’s support for a northern powerhouse that can take the heat off the south-east by creating jobs in other parts of the country, which would deal with people’s fears about the difficulties of managing our resources.

In conclusion, I am not against immigration, but as my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay said we need a managed approach. Immigration has risen dramatically in the past 10 years, completely uncontrolled. We must look at the skills that we need, rather than simply closing the border and not welcoming migrants. We must be clear about what skills we need and how to provide them. I know from working with doctors, for example, that there is already a shortage of doctors but a few years ago we used to welcome them from Australia, China and other parts of the world. Already people cannot get visas and come to this country to work, which is having a negative impact. We must also look at integration, so that people who come here are not setting up a whole new community, but becoming part of an existing one.

I am against closing the borders, so I disagree with the motives of the petition, but I welcome the debate. Unless we have an honest and open debate, we are storing up problems for the future. I will not continue, because most of the points that I wanted to make have been covered by colleagues. The debate has been excellent and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) on securing it.

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

Thank you, Mr Walker, for calling me to speak. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I assure you that I do not intend to take more than about 10 or 15 minutes. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) for facilitating the debate.

I echo some of the comments made about the petition and urge the Petitions Committee to look again at how petitions are brought forward for debate. I do understand that it is difficult to get the balance right between petitions that we might think more worthy of debate and others. It is worth going back to have another look at the guidelines, but I do not mean that as a criticism for bringing forth today’s debate.

My party and I profoundly disagree with the petition. That will come as no surprise to anyone here—to some extent, it echoes many of the comments already made. May I start by emphasising the huge contribution made by so many people who have come to this country over many years? Without that, the UK would not be the country, or set of countries, that it is. Our economy and our society benefit from the talent and investment of people who come here, including students who come here to study. That cannot and should not be measured solely in financial terms; we must look much more broadly than that.

An example given by the British Medical Association reflects some of the comments made by hon. Members in the debate. In anticipation of the debate, it said:

“Much of the rhetoric about immigration has focused on the pressures that increased immigration has placed on public services including the health service, housing and schools.”

It believes that it is important to acknowledge the contribution made by

“highly skilled migrants, including doctors…in delivering and sustaining public services including the NHS and our universities.”

It draws on the example of international medical graduates—doctors—who have become essential members of the UK’s medical workforce. The NHS is dependent on them to provide a high quality, reliable and safe service to patients. It says that international medical graduates

“have enhanced the UK health system over the years, improving the diversity of the profession to reflect a changing population, and filling shortages in specialties which may otherwise remain empty.”

That is just one example of the contribution made by those who have come to this country over the years.

A number of hon. Members touched on the question of refugees. I appreciate that that is not the core subject matter of the debate, but may I say a few words on that? We need to celebrate our proud tradition of providing refuge to those fleeing persecution in other countries. In the light of the current crisis, we need to work with the UN to support vulnerable refugees, and those from Syria in particular. More needs to be done and we need to tackle all of the issues upstream.

I remind hon. Members that serious proposals were put forward last week by a highly experienced group of judges, ex-judges, lawyers and other experts in the field of refugee law and practice. Their proposals are worthy of serious consideration and we must find time to consider them.

First, the UK should take a fair and proportionate share of refugees from both within and outside the EU. We need to have that debate—we had some of it last week. Secondly, safe and legal routes to asylum need to be established. That goes to the heart of the discussion about whether refugees should be taken from within Europe having already arrived, or beforehand, but the key issue is safe and legal routes. Thirdly, there must be access to fair and thorough procedures to determine eligibility for protection. Those serious proposals have been put on the table by eminent experts in the field who think there should be debate, and I urge that we find time for that.

Although I have profound concerns about and disagree with the motion, I accept that we should debate immigration and the issues that lie behind the petition. That does not mean that those who drafted or supported it are right or that they speak with one voice, but we should not shy away from the questions raised for us to debate. It is therefore good that we have had this debate today.

In many ways the question is about how to get the balance right. We need an immigration system with controls that are properly administered and effective, but, equally importantly, we also need fairness and humanity. We need strong borders. Labour has argued for more staffing on the borders and better training for those staff. We also need fair rules to protect those who are exploited and migrant workers in particular.

[Paul Scully]

This is an opportune time to raise something that perhaps the Minister can discuss or take away. The Government brought in exit checks in about April, but we need more of a physical presence to police those checks. That may require investment.

[Keir Starmer]

I am grateful for that intervention. Labour’s position is that it is more appropriate to have more staff on the borders carrying out proper checks than to impose a burden on landlords to carry out checks later on, as proposed by the Immigration Bill, which will be in Committee from tomorrow morning.

On preventing exploitation of migrant workers, my party and I welcome the establishment of a director of labour market enforcement. There has been a very low number of civil penalties and criminal prosecutions over the years, so hopefully the establishment of that post will change the position considerably.

In terms of fairness and humanity, there are issues worthy of serious consideration: first, ending the indefinite detention of people in the asylum and immigration system; and secondly, ending the detention of pregnant women and victims of sexual abuse or trafficking. There is also the question of removal of support from those whose asylum claims have failed. That policy was piloted 10 years ago and ended in failure.

Finally, when looking at a balanced approach, there are the counterproductive issues. It is counterproductive to put such constraints on students coming to the country that many of our leading institutions fear that they will drop in the world rankings year on year as they fail to attract the students they need or fail to retain them thereafter. That needs to be looked at seriously. I will put in that same bracket the proposals in the Immigration Bill on employee offences. I have no difficulty at all with the provisions that come down harder on employers, but the problem with coming down on employees is that unless individuals have the confidence to come forward, the counter-effect will be that it will not be possible to bring the cases the Bill intends to allow.

In conclusion, we should celebrate the contribution of all those who have come to this country. We need to balance the strong and effective with the fair and humane, but I welcome the fact that we have had this discussion today.

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[Paul Scully]

It is a privilege and a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker.

The title of the petition has been read out in parts, and not necessarily in its entirety, but for the benefit of anyone reading it in Hansard, I will explain that it is “Stop allowing immigrants into the UK”, and it was started on 25 August 2015. I am sure that readers will be able to find it on the petitions website.

I know that the Petitions Committee will take the feedback from the various Members who have spoken. We always consider the action taken on any petition, and this one will be no exception. Having given a reminder of the petition title, perhaps I should also clarify the fact that the extraordinary noise we heard a few seconds ago was the Minister clicking his fingers.

I am grateful to hon. Members on both sides of the House for this measured debate. I did not seek election just to wring my hands about any subject; in the current context, my aim would be, much as my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) said, a better way to manage migration—and also to take the population of the country with us on the journey, and turn around the ocean liner. We must always call out xenophobia, prejudice and bigotry when they are in front of us, but I suspect that, as the Minister said, many of the 198,000 people who signed the petition may have done so out of frustration and anger at what they see, and what they perceive through tabloid headlines and things they read on the internet. When I have spoken in my constituency to people who have similar views about immigration, I have found that when the issue is discussed rationally and reasonably they tend to row back from their extreme positions.

We must not shy away from such debates. We must continue to debate such issues whenever they arise. I am grateful to the Minister and all those who have taken part in the debate for the measured way in which we have conducted it.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the e-petition relating to immigration.