Immigration Bill

Steve Rotheram Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

As the Home Secretary said, we have had a lively and thorough debate, if not a genuine dialogue, as the movement from the Government has been minimal. We have not won many amendments but we have certainly won the argument. For that, I thank my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) for the assured and expert way he led for the Opposition on the Bill. He was, of course, our star summer signing and, like one of Mr Wenger’s best from the old days, he has managed to outshine his considerable reputation already, with more to come.

I would also like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), who brought an invaluable insight from her outstanding work on tackling the exploitation of children, and my hon. Friends the Members for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck), for Workington (Sue Hayman), for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) and for Blackburn (Kate Hollern) who served on the Committee. Our thanks go too to the co-Chairs of the Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) and the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), and to the third-party organisations that the Home Secretary referred to, which made a very important contribution.

Figures were published last week that I believe set the context for this Third Reading debate. The ONS reports that net migration has reached a record high of 336,000—up 82,000 from last year and 101,000 higher than the level it was when the Prime Minister came to office. I heard the Home Secretary’s comments about the record of the previous Government. She needs to have a look at her own record before she comes to this House and points the finger in this direction. That is the record of her Government. Let us set it against what they promised.

The Conservatives’ 2010 manifesto made a solemn pledge to reduce net migration to “tens of thousands”. “If we don’t meet it, boot us out,” said the Prime Minister. The 2015 manifesto made the same pledge—and we now know that, rather than reducing net migration, the Government are increasing it by tens of thousands. That is the Home Secretary’s record, and it is lamentable even by the standards of the Government. The Home Secretary likes to go to the Conservative party conference and talk a tough game, but the truth is that she cannot escape her own record. The very scale of the gap between her rhetoric and the reality continues to erode public trust on this most important and sensitive of issues.

As I made clear on Second Reading, I will always support practical measures to deal with the public’s legitimate concerns about immigration, and there are some measures in the Bill that we support—particularly the emphasis on labour market enforcement and English language requirements in public services. What I will not do, however, is lend our name to desperate attempts to legislate in haste and to half-baked measures that owe more to a PR exercise to camouflage a record of failure than a considered attempt to create the firm but fair immigration system of which the Home Secretary spoke.

We will refuse to give the Bill a Third Reading tonight because the Government have failed to listen in Committee and failed to produce any meaningful evidence that the measures in the Bill will have any more success than the steps that they took in the last Parliament. Worse, by legislating in this ill-conceived way, they have produced a Bill that could have a number of unintended and pernicious consequences, as my hon. and learned Friend the shadow Immigration Minister so skilfully exposed in Committee.

First, the Bill could undermine all the progress made on tackling modern slavery and human trafficking—for which, actually, the Government deserve some credit. Secondly, the Bill could leave desperate children utterly destitute. Thirdly, it could lead to discrimination in the workplace and the housing market and erode important civil liberties and human rights. I shall take each issue quickly in turn.

I have real concerns that the creation of a new offence of illegal working could deter vulnerable people, such as trafficked women and children, from having the courage to come forward to report rogue employers and criminal gangs. Those unscrupulous individuals already hold the whip hand; the tragedy is that the Bill will strengthen their grip over these most vulnerable of people. The House should reject the Bill. Working to put food in your kids’ mouths should never be a criminal offence. More broadly, if employees fear losing wages or even imprisonment by coming forward to report employers, might not the effect of the Bill be the reverse of what the Home Secretary wants? Might it not actually increase the size of the black market?

Those are genuine concerns and I have not seen any convincing evidence from the Government to suggest that they are misplaced. Although the Government have remained unmoved during the Bill’s passage through this House, I feel sure that their lordships will wish to push them hard on this issue in another place.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Government are focusing on the wrong party in the Bill? They should be concentrating—[Interruption.] They should be concentrating, as the Home Secretary should while I am speaking, on clamping down on unscrupulous employers who prey on the misery of people forced into terrible conditions, such as those exploited on Britain’s building sites. I have actually seen that with my own eyes.

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend has more experience than anybody in the House of the workplaces that might be most affected by the Bill. He is absolutely right to say that unscrupulous employers—sadly, they do exist in the construction industry—will feel emboldened by the Bill. They will know that exploited people on building sites will no longer have the courage to report them to the authorities. [Interruption.] The Home Secretary says that is “desperate”, but those people are desperate and she is putting them in a worse position. She needs to think about that before she puts the Bill into law.

Another concern is about clause 34, which removes support from families—a power that the Home Office has long sought; the proposal was put to me as a Minister and piloted under the last Labour Government. The official evaluation of that pilot found no evidence of increased removals but plenty of families going underground and losing touch with the authorities. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central said in the debate, there is also the shunting of costs from the Home Office to local authorities.

In the end, however, the question we need to ask ourselves is much more fundamental: should any child—whoever they are, wherever they come from—be denied food and clothes while they are on British soil? I do not think so and I would venture to say that most Members on both sides would, in their heart of hearts, think the same. The great irony is that it was the then Conservative Opposition—specifically, the shadow Home Office team—in the last but one Parliament who led the charge against what was then known as clause 9. They were right to force the then Government to pilot this change, and we were right to drop the whole idea once the results of the pilot were clear. If what they said was right then, why is it not right now?

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) on raising widely held concerns about the need for immigration rules that allow for the reunification of refugee families. She spoke powerfully about that. I hope that the Government will continue to look at this, particularly at new clause 11, which calls for a review of the rules.

Finally, I turn to the concern about the potential of the Bill to increase discrimination and erode basic rights and liberties. We live in the most challenging of times when there is no shortage of people with extreme views who seek to set race against race and religion against religion. We are legislating in a febrile climate in which discrimination can easily flourish, and this House must take great care that nothing we do adds to that. The right response to these challenges is not to erode important rights and liberties but to do the exact opposite—to protect and champion them. Given the huge backlog in the Home Office and its consistently poor record on initial decisions, the deport first, appeal later approach could undermine Britain’s position in the world as a bastion of fair play and higher ideals. Despite the evidence published by the Government, I remain concerned that the threat of imprisonment to landlords who rent flats or houses to people without immigration status could lead to discrimination in the housing market, and a greater sense among black and Asian young people that they are being victimised.

Let me end on a more positive note that gives us a glimmer of hope for the Bill’s onward passage to another place. I am pleased that the Minister, whom Labour Members have time for, has conceded significant ground on immigration detention. That has had strong support from Members on both sides, including the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller), who has Yarl’s Wood detention centre in his constituency and has long called for a more humane system.