Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Stephen Kerr Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 28th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I agreed with every word that my right hon. Friend just shared with the House. She reminds us that there are different parts of and different routes within our immigration system, and that we should always try not to conflate them. I very much welcome her intervention.

It is also important that we get the tone of the debate right, which is why my message to the 3.5 million EU citizens already living here has also been very clear. I say, “You are an incredibly valued and an important part of our society; we want you to stay. Deal or no deal, that view will not change. Our commitment to you is very real. We have listened to your concerns and we are, for example, removing the fee for the EU settlement scheme.” There must be no barriers to those who want to stay, and I urge other EU countries to follow suit and to waive any fees for UK citizens.

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

Some people have already paid that fee. Will my right hon. Friend reassure everyone by confirming that those who have paid the fee will be reimbursed?

[Sajid Javid]

Yes, absolutely. Anyone who has paid the fee under the scheme will be reimbursed in full.

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[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

That is correct, and the point has been well made by many MPs. If it was not for the voodoo thinking of the Home Office, and if normal people were allowed to decide this, that would be happening, to everyone’s benefit.

I introduced a private Member’s Bill on refugees, and I would have thought that this Bill would be an opportunity for the Home Office to extend the same rights to people who have already been given refugee status and are under the age of 18 as it does to those over the age of 18. Again, we have voodoo arguments and nonsense thinking from the Home Office about why it should not do this. There is an opportunity. The Home Office could end the need for my Bill if it wanted to, and it is disappointing that it does not.

We are happy in Scotland, but we need more people. Switzerland has 26 cantons. Half the visas of people going into Switzerland are divided between the 26 cantons, and the other half are centrally controlled in Berne. Switzerland can manage to do that, but the UK cannot, because of voodoo thinking and a desire to keep control where the Home Office does not need control, thereby creating problems and messing up people’s lives unnecessarily. That is our lot, given that we are stuck with the Home Office as it is.

Migration is good. I will repeat that for anyone who is in any doubt: migration is good. I live on a small island in the Outer Hebrides and our construction industry is just about driven personally by a guy called Pawel Kochanowicz. He is a young man who came to live on Barra, and he works day in and day out. Such people are welcome, and the more like him, the better.

[Stephen Kerr]

After 12 years of an SNP Government in Scotland, and when other parts of the United Kingdom have a net increase in immigrant population, why is it that Scotland’s population does not really move?

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

If the hon. Gentleman looks at the part of the UK that became independent 96 years ago, he will see it now enjoys five to six times greater growth. When a country controls all the levers of the economy, it finds that things improve. If a country is scared of responsibility and outsources it to someone else, it should not be surprised if its economy is in reverse. If the hon. Gentleman wants to take control of his life, he should follow the SNP’s route, as the example is there of Ireland, of Iceland, of Norway and of many other countries. What is he scared of? He is scared; that is his problem. He uses migration to make cheap political points on the back of mismanagement by the Home Office and the Government in London—he should be ashamed of himself. I am grateful to him for giving me that row; I particularly enjoyed it.

There are many benefits to migration, and it goes both ways. I have cousins who live in New Zealand. I have Maclean cousins in Cape Breton in Nova Scotia and MacNeil relatives in Vancouver. We have all benefited from the movement of people and, if they are watching, I say a quick hello to them. It is great to use the House of Commons for that opportunity.

My relatives have contributed to New Zealand, Canada and many other places. Other people have helped our country—I gave the example of Pawel Kochanowicz from Poland. The hon. Gentleman’s colleague, the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Luke Graham), made a more sensible intervention earlier when he said that the problem was a lack of resources. We need dynamic resource allocation to make sure that when populations grow, we get more housing, schools and hospitals, rather than people being blamed. As one of my hon. Friends said to me earlier, those people should be seen as strivers and as aspirational, but when the Home Office get hold of the situation, they are seen as a problem. There is no need for that.

Indeed, the Home Secretary himself conceded that the people who came here under free movement were good—that the students were good and everything was good. They were helping our economy. They were paying more tax than they were taking out. The Government are actually better off having people from other countries here paying more in, because people from this country tend to take out more than we put in. That is why the UK has had a deficit since 2001—a black hole. It has not paid its own way in all those years.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald) suggested that we should perhaps take responsibility for migration away from the Home Office and give it to the Treasury, because then we might get some of the sense and logic that the hon. Member for Saffron Walden talked about in her speech. She is in no danger of promotion in the Tory party if she keeps talking about sense and logic, but she can take her own risks. We need to see this happen. An Immigration Minister said to me, “But we have the manifesto commitment on the one hand and the economy on the other.” I will spare that Minister’s blushes, but we know what Bill Clinton said about the economy. It is important that we look after the economy, and daft, voodoo-based Conservative election promises should be thrown in the bin with all the rest of the voodoo thinking that we have seen from the Home Office and the Government on something that is an opportunity. Migration is an opportunity, and the Bill should be an opportunity to do things, not to stop things.

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[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) and my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart). I was not going to mention this, but it now seems appropriate: my mother, Sheila Lillian Harman Kerr, passed away on Thursday evening. She was a daughter of Birmingham, so I have a bit of Brum inside me. Members may not be able to discern it from my accent, but a bit of Birmingham lingers in my heart. I feel she might be smiling at the fact that I am following such an excellent Member of Parliament for Birmingham and someone who represents someone who was a servant of the city of Birmingham.

I rise to support the Second Reading of this Bill on a key matter relating to our departure from the European Union: control over our borders. I thank Ministers for their decision to scrap the charges for the settled status process for EU citizens. In particular, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) for the very significant part he played in bringing that about. I know how much that means to people in my constituency. It is very important that our actions in government match our words. We must send a clear message to our family members, friends, neighbours and colleagues who have come to this country from the European Union, and to whom this country is now home, that they are a vital part our community. They enrich our lives and play a hugely valuable part in our economy, and I deeply regret any suggestion from any source to the contrary. Members of this House owe it to their constituents and the reputation of this House to measure the way they express themselves about such matters, and in interventions they make in debates about our departure from the European Union.

I have several points to make about the Bill. The first is about the university sector, and the University of Stirling in particular. In a report for Destination for Education, KPMG calculated that every international student recruited to a British university brings a net positive economic contribution of £95,000 in total. For the academic year 2015-16, that was estimated to be worth £20.3 billion. We are talking about a major British exporting success. I am proud of the UK university sector’s global standing, and I am proud that the University of Stirling is consistently highly rated as a destination of choice for international students. Stirling loves its international students and welcomes them with open arms.

Our world-class university system is the envy of the world and an unrivalled source of soft power influence in the world. I do not believe that student visas should be subject to any kind of cap, and I was encouraged by the Home Secretary’s remarks on that matter. We are competing with other English-speaking countries. By making it more difficult to access British universities than those of our competitors, we are doing ourselves no favours. We are in danger of losing market share in a growing global market. International students applying for bona fide courses at bona fide institutions should be allowed to come here. After all, they will support themselves.

We need a visa system that reflects an unabashed bias towards attracting and retaining talent, including newly qualified international graduates and postgraduates from UK universities. Why on earth would we not want such talent to stay in the United Kingdom to the benefit of our economy and the public good? As with other issues that we examine in this House, we must look for the balance of fairness. It is not fair or right to expect an international worker, graduate or postgraduate to earn more than £30,000 per annum, and to say that they qualify as skilled labour only on that basis. That would be a terrible mistake. The average graduate salary in Scotland is in the region of £21,000. Instead of rigidly fixing the system to a formula based on notional taxation contributions, we should look at earnings potential and social contribution.

We must be fair to businesses of all sizes. I ask hon. Members to consider how difficult it is for a small business to sponsor an international worker for employment in the United Kingdom. I worked for a global businesses before coming to this House, but what works for a big business does not necessarily work for a small business. The test of what is good for our economy is not how a global corporation copes with an imposed process, but how it works for a small business with limited resources.

I say this to the Government: beware of a one-size-fits-all approach to skilled labour. I would have thought that it is stating the obvious to say that what works in London and the south-east will not be right for other parts of the United Kingdom, so we must build flexibility into whatever policy we apply. The variables must be weighted to ensure that skilled labour can be attracted and retained in all parts of the United Kingdom and all scales of business.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

I rather suspect the hon. Gentleman will not agree that immigration should be devolved, so let us park that to one side. What role should the devolved Governments have in setting UK immigration policy?

[Stephen Kerr]

I have long said in this House and outside it that the best way forward for the people of Scotland is for Scotland’s two Governments to work closely together, and I have made suggestions about how working together might be interpreted in a constitutional machinery sense. I am very grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. I think it is important that Scotland’s Governments work together on this issue.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

I am extremely grateful for that. Will the hon. Gentleman explain that point? What should the devolved Governments’ role be? Should they get to set student numbers or have different salary thresholds?

[Stephen Kerr]

I do not think we should be talking about student numbers at all. The Home Secretary said earlier that there should be no cap on student numbers. It is important that we establish a constitutional process whereby the Governments of Scotland work together and talk and listen to each other.

[David Linden]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He knows how much respect I have for him. The Immigration Minister is on the record as saying that she would not grant the Scottish Government powers that she would not grant to Lincolnshire County Council. Does he support her view on that matter?

[Stephen Kerr]

I have made it clear what I think should be happening in how Scotland’s two Governments work together.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Stephen Kerr]

I will not give way again, because I am now using my own time.

A lot more must be done about seasonal workers. It cannot be said often enough that a rigid system for seasonal workers will cause untold damage to the rural economy and to sectors such as hospitality and tourism, both of which are vital to my Stirling constituency.

We must also be fair to everyone and enforce the laws that we pass in this place. Will the Minister enlighten me about how we check and measure that people are leaving the United Kingdom? That should be straightforward enough in this data-driven age. It would help us not only to secure our borders against illegal immigration but to support those who may be able to remain but have outstayed their current visas. I have casework to that end.

Leaving the EU allows us to have a non-presidential—non-presidential? That may be as well, but it would allow us also to have a non-prejudicial immigration system that does not simply allow free movement for people from the EU but opens us up to the wider world of talent—to skilled workers, to knowledge workers, to compassionate workers, to people who would make a welcome contribution to our society. Stirling is open to business, to students and to people from across Europe and the world, and I want to see that continue well into the future.

I hope that Ministers will appreciate that we have challenges to meet in my part of Scotland. Stirling is the most beautiful place in these islands to live and work, with doorstep access to Scotland’s great cities and the wilderness beauty of the highlands, and we have secured an exciting city deal that will help us to explore the full potential of our local economy, but we need the ability to attract people to come and make their homes and their living in our communities. The SNP Government do not help much in that regard by making Scotland the highest-taxed part of the UK.

I will undoubtedly support the Second Reading of the Bill tonight because I fully support its purpose, but further down the line, when other measures come about resulting from the White Paper consultation, I will of course do what I feel is in the best interests of our country and my constituents.

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[David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones). I am reminded of a trip we took together last year to the United States when one of the last things we did was visit the State of Massachusetts’ refugee and immigration programme. It had some interesting ideas for both supporting refugees and making them valuable members of society, including by finding them jobs. We might want to learn from that.

Let me start by expressing an interest in the subject of immigration, as the husband of an immigrant, but an immigrant from outside the European Union. Before I came to the House, my wife and I began to be experts in the immigration process. My wife, who is from Azerbaijan—outside the EU, as I have said—is often surprised by how easy it has been in the past, and, we hope, will be in the future—indeed, I am sure that it will be—for EU citizens not only to stay here, but to continue to come here to work. I welcome not only the Bill but the 12-month consultation with business and services throughout the United Kingdom, which should set the country on course for a truly fair immigration system that reflects the country’s priorities.

Let me also compare my view with that expressed by the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) at the beginning of his speech. Scottish Conservative Members share an understanding of the issues faced in Scotland by industries such as fisheries and agriculture, and the problem of the shortage of skilled labour at home and its availability overseas. We may simply differ in regard to the solutions that we envisage.

In June 2016, 17.4 million people in the United Kingdom—including, it is estimated, the majority of voters in Banff and Buchan—voted to leave the European Union, and there can be no denying that a desire to take back control of our borders was one of the many reasons for that vote. In 2017, along with other Members, I was elected to represent the people in a Scottish constituency on the basis of a manifesto that had pledged to respect the referendum mandate, which included an end to free movement, and I believe that the Bill delivers on that promise. I also believe that it marks another necessary step towards a new immigration system: a system that we control, a system that is fair to people from all countries, and a system that is skills-based and tailored to our economy, society and public services.

[Stephen Kerr]

Does not every major social attitudes survey that has ever been conducted in Scotland indicate that the attitudes of the Scottish people towards immigration are not remarkably different from those of people in the United Kingdom as a whole?