Devolution (Immigration) (Scotland) Bill

Polly Billington Excerpts

Friday 25th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Gethins]

You are quite right, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I was keen to knock on the head some of the issues raised by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central. Let me talk about Scottish Labour’s commitments. I will quote the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Anas Sarwar. I do not always do this, and I know that the Secretary of State does not like talking about him—he frequently disregards him—but let me at least give Anas Sarwar his place. He said:

“I’ve had a number of conversations with Yvette Cooper and UK colleagues in the run-up to the election and since the election. They already want to reform the Migration Advisory Committee to make sure there is proper Scottish representation. They recognise there are different migration needs in different parts of the country”.

As for reaching out a bit more to other colleagues, not everything in the Bill is for everybody in this House, but the Bill gives us an opportunity to meet commitments made. We could do that on Third Reading. We could introduce amendments and have a Bill team. I would love to have really good, strong Scottish Labour representation on that. [Interruption.] I would also like to have Conservative representation on it; let the team be reflective of who is in the House. I would be generous to the party of the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie)—almost as generous as the Labour party regularly is to his party.

Let me quote Scottish Labour’s deputy leader. Jackie Baillie said:

“I would expect governments to work together, to talk to each other, to respond to each other’s needs…At the moment there are no plans for one”—

this was said pre-election—

“but I think if you have governments taking common-sense approaches that an incoming Labour government would do, then dialogue will continue.”

The Secretary of State will have the opportunity to talk about this today, and I very much look forward to an update on where he is on the talks. The Bill gives precious time to him, and to the offices of other Secretary of States, and gives the rest of us time to meet the needs of the Scottish sector.

I am glad to see the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton) in his place; I welcome him. As he has rightly said, when it comes to immigration policy, one size does not fit all. It should not be beyond us to devise ways to attract more people to work and settle here. He has talked effectively about the challenges for the rural and island communities that he represents, and I was glad to hear his productive intervention on that. I hope that he is able to have conversations with his hon. Friends about that.

Let me quote from the Scottish Labour manifesto:

“we will work with the Scottish Government when designing workforce plans for different sectors. This will ensure our migration and skills policies work for every part of the UK.”

[Ms Polly Billington (East Thanet) (Lab)]

I am struck by the hon. Gentleman’s interest in making sure that young people get the opportunities that they deserve, because in East Thanet—far away from Scotland—we are deeply concerned that one in 10 young people is out of education, employment or training. I wonder what he has to say about the SNP’s record on this issue, given that one in six young people is out of education, employment or training in Scotland.

[Stephen Gethins]

The hon. Lady makes a good point—how can we provide opportunities for young people? She will also know that right now, we are providing fewer opportunities for young people. Scotland is working very effectively on having positive destinations, including through the great work of Skills Development Scotland. That speaks to the migration debate we have had in recent years. Migration has driven our policies and our economic growth for centuries, yet Labour is leaning into the Reform agenda—it is very disappointing that Reform Members are not in their place—which is so poisonous to our political rhetoric. Migration and refugees are two entirely separate issues. The hon. Lady will also be aware of the tragic small boats issue, which we talk about at length, although we do not talk about migration as a whole. I want us to have a more sensible debate on migration.

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[Ian Murray]

Thank you for your guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker, but the important point is that immigration and skills are completely linked. If the education system is broken and the skills system is broken, the SNP reaches for a Bill like this one, rather than reaching for the levers at the disposal of the Scottish Government.

I speak from experience. A working-class person looking to get on in life needs the security of a house, the opportunity of a career and someone to believe in them. During the pandemic, thousands of working-class kids were sent a clear message by the First Minister that he did not believe in them.

For our part, to tackle skills shortages, we will focus on investment in jobs, infrastructure and public services by upskilling resident workers and tackling economic inactivity. We will reduce the reliance on international recruitment to fill roles. We will have a shortage occupation list that includes specific occupations and sectors that are required in our national interest and for our economy. In addition, the UK Government want to engage with bodies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that are responsible for skills matters. That work is under way and will link directly to the Migration Advisory Committee, the Industrial Strategy Advisory Council, the Department for Work and Pensions and, of course, Skills England from an English and Welsh perspective.

[Ms Billington]

What is important is not only economic security for individuals and the opportunities that a strong economy would provide for them, but the economic security of our country. The SNP voted against Great British Energy and opposes nuclear power, both of which are vital to our energy security and our economic security. If it is opposed to those, how can we be sure that it would be competent to deliver immigration policy?

[Ian Murray]

It astounds me that the leader of the Scottish National party in this place, the right hon. Member for Aberdeen South, has GB Energy headquartered in his own constituency but voted against it. SNP Members voted against the extra £4.9 billion in the Budget, and they stand against nuclear power. Those three examples show why Scotland needs to take a new direction at the election next year.

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[Dame Meg Hillier]

Unbelievable as it may seem to the hon. Gentleman, I was a Minister between 2007 and 2010. I was a child Minister, of course. [Laughter.] I can understand his confusion, but that was the case at the time, and it continued for some while, because I then dealt with the local Member of Parliament—by then I was in opposition—about the challenges of that particular route. As he will know, the route from Scotland to Larne is the shortest route that can be taken, so people would make that journey. I have done that journey and driven along the long and winding single-track route to get there. It is not somewhere to get stuck behind a lorry, for sure.

I was really demonstrating the point about the challenges of having multiple agencies. It is difficult enough with one Government, frankly. I spent over a decade on the Public Accounts Committee, looking at the problems of Whitehall, and even within one Government things do not always go smoothly as different agencies interact. To add an extra layer of complication seems to me something we would not want to see.

The police at that time were overstretched, and moving to Police Scotland did not help. That is not a criticism of that policy, although I know colleagues have strong feelings about that, but it did not mean there were suddenly, magically, more police officers who could be deployed differently because of the challenges in that area.

[Ms Billington]

SNP Members talk about a period before Brexit that was ideal, and yet their proposal for this immigration system would increase the complexity at the border, including by creating a land border, despite the complexities of dealing with the island borders that we already have.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

Indeed. My hon. Friend was not an MP when we were discussing Brexit, but oh my word, there was a lack of thought about the issues with the land border prior to that. Madam Deputy Speaker, you may recall that when the former Prime Minister, now Baroness May, was proposing her Brexit deal, only 17% of Members of Parliament had been Members of Parliament when the Northern Ireland agreement was signed, so there was a distinct lack of understanding in this place. We all expect and hope that Members will read into these issues, but often that got missed, and there was a distinct lack of understanding about the border. We do not want to go down that route again.

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[Dame Meg Hillier]

That is exactly the point. The hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry puts great faith in Committee stages. I have been here a long time, and they are not always as good as people say that they will be. Even if there was a Committee stage, there are so many other elements. That is one of the challenges with a Bill that is simply one line long. There are issues and knock-on effects for not just the Home Office, but all the other cross-UK institutions. I spent more than a decade on the Public Accounts Committee, and I know that if we pull a lever somewhere in Whitehall, unintended consequences flow into places we would never have thought of. The skill in government is to try to work that out, and a Bill like this would not deliver that necessary joined-up approach.

[Ms Billington]

I am struck particularly by what my hon. Friend says about the impact being felt elsewhere in Whitehall when a lever is moved. I give the example of a friend of mine, who was a doctor working in a depopulated part of Cumbria for part of the month and in Orkney for another part of the month. How would we organise the visa that enabled her to serve the population in Orkney? Would she need a visa to operate in west Cumbria or, indeed, in both places? Those problems that cannot be solved by a one-line Bill. We need to be serious about the fact that we need an overall immigration policy, rather than one entirely designed by and for Scotland.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

My hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. I absolutely take what the hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry highlighted. As I said, there are really challenging issues with the demographics in the Scottish population. We all need to put our shoulder to the wheel to deal with those things, rather than saying, “If only the SNP Scottish Government were in charge of immigration, it would all be fine.” This Bill is a gimmick, and the hon. Gentleman knows that it will not work.

I will touch on the higher education figures. In the last two years, we have seen the number of home Scottish students drop. In 2021-22, the figure was just over 183,000, and it has dropped to just shy of 174,000. The number of non-UK students has gone down in the past couple of years, but it is nevertheless a significant number at 73,915. The Government are not against foreign students coming here—that is important—but we need to strike a balance, so that there are enough places for the young people in Scotland and across the UK who want to attend Scottish universities, and who are perhaps being squeezed out by the imbalance and the cost of going.