Non-EU Citizens: Income Threshold

Steve Baker Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2016 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 118060 relating to the income threshold for non-EU citizens settling in the UK.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I want first to read out the petition so that people who read the debate in Hansard later can see what we are talking about. It is entitled “Scrap the £35k threshold for non-EU citizens settling in the UK”. It goes on:

“In April (2016) the Home Office and Theresa May are introducing a pay threshold for people to remain here, after already working here for 5 years. This only affects non-EU citizens that earn under £35,000 a year, which unfairly discriminates against charity workers, nurses, students and others.

This ridiculous measure is only going to affect 40,000 people who have already been living and working in the UK for 5 years, contributing to our culture and economy. It will drive more workers from the NHS and people from their families. This empty gesture will barely affect the immigration statistics. It’s a waste of time, money and lives.

This is the first time the UK has discriminated against low-earners. £35k is an unreasonably high threshold. The UK will lose thousands of skilled workers.”

I will now return to using my own words; my own views may be slightly different. I should add that the Select Committee on Home Affairs has considered the issue as part of a wider report on skills, and on how the tier 2 and other visa categories affect skilled workers coming into the country, to which the Government responded in February.

I have been a member of the Petitions Committee since it was set up in May, and the petition before the House is one of a number that have hit the public’s imagination since the e-petition system began. However, from memory, I think this is the first pro-immigration petition to be debated. I have led on one that wanted a stop to all immigration now; and we had a quite interesting discussion about a certain Mr Trump, relating largely to his comments about immigration in the US. This is the first to look at immigration from a positive point of view, and to deal with a specific part of immigration policy. I hope that we will have an interesting debate on how the policy affects people, the contribution that people make when they come to this country and bring their skills here, including economically and culturally, and what we need to do to control mass uncontrolled immigration. I think that there is, largely, consensus that we always need to do more to address that.

I have a few general concerns about the wording of the petition, which are the sort of thing I would say to anyone considering putting something on the e-petition website. Some of the wording was not what I would have chosen—such as referring to a “ridiculous measure” and saying that it

“is only going to affect 40,000 people”.

I think a lot of people who are concerned about immigration will say that 40,000 is effectively just over 10%—about 15%—of the current net migration figure, which is quite a lot. It is quite a high percentage that the Government are looking at, when we are talking about trying to control immigration as a whole.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend confirm that the Government cannot apply such a measure to European Union citizens precisely because we are European Union citizens and are consequently prevented from discriminating in the matter of free movement of EU citizens? Does he agree that it would be better, fairer and more just to everyone if we operated migration on the basis of British citizenship, so that we could treat people fairly, wherever they came from?

[Paul Scully]

I very much agree and will speak about that later. I think we are acting with one arm tied behind our back within the structures of our immigration policy.

The petition also calls the policy an “empty gesture”, which

“will barely affect the immigration statistics.”

However, if we are talking about 40,000 people, it will do more than that. I do not think it is a waste of time. The petition says:

“This is the first time the UK has discriminated against low-earners. £35k is an unreasonably high threshold.”

I suspect that the debate will tease out the various types of occupations that may or may not be affected.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Scully]

At the end of the day, when we talk about the European Union, we are talking about being able to control our own borders. We are talking about the skilled people we want in this country. My personal view is that I would like the UK to leave the EU, in order to get skilled people from other countries across the world. However, in the context of our debate, the best we can do is look at tackling immigration from outside the EU, work out the skills we need and the various industries that need particular help from outside, and work through the tier 2 visa rules in terms of the threshold and the various exemptions we have talked about.

[Mr Baker]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the key point is that the burden of proof lies with those who wish to continue to discriminate against people who are from outside the European Union, in favour of people from the European Union? That is the crucial point. The EU puts us in a position where we are discriminating against non-EU citizens; that should end.

[Paul Scully]

Yes. I have dealt with the curry industry—this may sound slightly random, but bear with me for a second. A lot of people representing that industry complain of the fact that two curry restaurants a week are closing down, out of the 10,000 or so around the country. There are lots of different reasons for that, one of which is that the restaurants are failing to attract skilled chefs. The associations and the trade bodies tell me that the restaurants can hire an unskilled person from another European country; that person can therefore come over here and get a job at the expense of a skilled chef with experience from, say, Bangladesh.