Phil Woolas
Main Page: Phil Woolas (Labour - Oldham East and Saddleworth)Department Debates - View all Phil Woolas's debates with the Home Office
(14 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Damian Green
My hon. Friend has done distinguished and sterling work on immigration with the all-party group on balanced migration in the past few years. I hope to reassure him by saying that in the speech I will make at the Royal Commonwealth Society this evening, I will make the point that we need to look at all routes to migration—not only the work route, but the study route and other routes that lead to settlement—so that we can achieve not an immigration policy that is discussed in the usual way, when we ask whether it is tougher or more liberal, but a smarter immigration policy. That is what this country needs.
Mr Phil Woolas (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
I welcome the Minister’s remarks on the relationship between temporary and permanent migration. Will he confirm that it is the Government’s intention to go ahead with the previous Government’s plans for a points-based system for citizenship, which would help to reach exactly the objectives that the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) set out, on behalf—if I may say—of Migrationwatch UK?
Damian Green
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that question, not least because he and I debated the details of the system when the Bill in question was considered, when he was standing at this Dispatch Box. Although I accept the idea that we need a better system for allowing people to proceed to settlement or full citizenship, I was not convinced that the system that the previous Government proposed was anything other than a bureaucratic nightmare. I can assure him that I am still looking carefully at the details so that we can have an effective system that does not place too great a burden on the voluntary sector, which, as I said at the time, I thought his system did.