Migration

Priti Patel Excerpts

Thursday 15th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your kindness and your warm introduction. I thank the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden), my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and the Backbench Business Committee for organising the debate, which has been interesting.

As colleagues will know, I spent just over three years in the Home Office, so I am familiar with these issues, challenges and difficulties. I have lived and breathed the problems around the migration policies, the complexities of the systems and other rather difficult issues. There were never just a handful of issues; there are always multiple, deeply challenging issues.

I will highlight some specifics and, importantly, where we can do things differently. It is important to discuss a range of matters when covering migration, including economic migration, the labour market—I have a background in labour market economics and feel very strongly about that—and the establishment of safe routes. I am grateful to colleagues who have already touched on such routes. The Afghan resettlement scheme and Operation Pitting were, I remind the House, a deeply traumatising experience for everybody at the time, particularly those in government. I worked with officials who simply did not sleep at night while we were removing people from Afghanistan. There was also the British national overseas scheme, which was about our responsibility to support British passport holders overseas. There is also how we deal with the asylum system and illegal migration issues.

On the economic front—the labour market aspect, linked to the points-based immigration system—yes, we ended free movement when we left the EU, which was important, and the new system we have in place is very much governed by rules. We believe in firmness and fairness—fairness in particular—but also in people being able to come here based on their skills and qualifications and the labour market shortages faced by our country and our economy. I want to expand on that.

Britain should always be open to attract the brightest and the best from across the world in professions such as science, research and health in particular; we all remember the schemes to support health and care workers coming to our country. We can think about those routes and the categories of individuals I have mentioned, and yet we still hear cries—sometimes facile cries—that our numbers are far too high without an understanding of the contribution that people who are coming here make.

Under the points-based system, individuals are sponsored and pay thousands of pounds for their visas. On top of that, they pay thousands for the immigration health surcharge—and, by the way, many of them also end up being net contributors to the economy and higher rate taxpayers. These points are too easily overlooked when people just focus on numbers, and Members have touched on what happens when we do that.

I was in government for just over three years, and I was a lone voice in calling for a labour market strategy specifically to support the points-based immigration system. It is obvious that we need a labour market strategy. This would have sat with the Treasury at the time, and the Treasury simply did not do this work. I pay credit to the current Chancellor, who has picked this point up. We desperately need this strategy. Without that, we will continue to have labour market shortages and all the problems that Members have spoken about.

We also need to strengthen skills. I am afraid it is not good enough for the Government to say, “Let’s just train more fruit pickers.” People do not want to pick fruit; that is a statement of the obvious now. As this is a Government who invest a lot in technology, why are they not giving farmers capital allowances to help them bring in technology to pick fruit and vegetables, in the way that many of our competitors do?

I will quickly touch on illegal migration. It is right that we increase the fairness and efficiency of our system, so that we can better protect and support those in need of asylum, while also deterring illegal entry into our country. We need to break the business model of the people smugglers. The Government are seeking to do that, and it is hard work. There is no one single solution, but I am worried that the Government may be overpromising. They say, “We’ll just stop the boats,” when clearly, we cannot just stop the boats. There are so many other things that need to be done, such as offshore processing, bringing the Rwanda scheme to light, life sentences for people smugglers and making it harder for migrants to make these dangerous crossings. We must also stop the repeat and endless last-minute claims that go through our courts and the appeals system in particular. The “New Plan for Immigration” tried to do a lot of that, and I hope the Government will continue to pursue those policies.

In the time I have left, I would like to ask the Minister some specific questions regarding asylum accommodation, which is a very hot topic across many constituencies. We have a crisis in hotels, but at the same time, in Braintree district we have a proposed site to accommodate asylum seekers in Wethersfield. I thank the Minister for speaking to me about this issue last week. I was on a call with the local authorities concerned yesterday, and they are still waiting to find out whether they will receive financial support. The police and the NHS are still waiting for clarification about the funding packages and when they will come. Our councillors are deeply worried about whether they will be held liable for service provision.

There is not enough clarity yet between Clearsprings, the service provider, and local authorities about who will have responsibility for the delivery of not just the site but services. There are areas in Essex already accommodating a large number of refugees—particularly in Chelmsford and Colchester—and asylum seekers. After a short period in Wethersfield site, they will then be dispersed in the community or potentially back into hotels. The Minister has spent some time with me on this issue, and I wonder if he could update me on it.

To conclude, these are difficult matters to address. There will never be a single solution to this, but it is important that we constantly in this House find the right kind of solutions and discuss these issues in a sensible and pragmatic way.