Immigration

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Monday 19th October 2015 Westminster Hall

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker.

Unlike just about every other speaker so far in the debate, I do not have an interest to declare in the sense that I am not a migrant and have no immigrant parents or grandparents, but I love and respect the opportunities and possibilities that migration can bring both to the migrants going in and out of the United Kingdom and to the United Kingdom and other countries benefiting from migrant flows.

I agreed with the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) when he said that we need a measured immigration debate, and we have had a pretty measured debate today. A lot of important points have been made by hon. Members, which I have noted down, although I might struggle to read my handwriting. I am also not convinced that the petition offers the best platform on which to conduct a debate. In that regard, I share the views of the hon. Members for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) and for St Albans (Mrs Main).

Last week we saw a measured debate in Westminster Hall on a topic that everyone would agree was appropriate and that arose from a petition on cannabis. Regardless of Members’ personal views, the petition was set out rationally, could in no way be described as offensive—never mind prejudiced or discriminatory—and dealt with a subject that had not, as far as I am aware, featured heavily in House of Commons business since the election. Taking all those factors into account and the number of signatories to the petition, few people would be critical of the fact that such a debate was held. As my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) said, however, I cannot say the same about the petition referred to in today’s motion.

I fully appreciate that the e-petition system is designed to ensure that MPs give consideration to topics that they might otherwise be reluctant to discuss, but, as it happens, immigration is not one such. As the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) pointed out, we had an immigration debate in Westminster Hall as recently as July and we debated the Immigration Bill extensively last week. A more important point is that we ought to apply some minimum standards to e-petitions. For reference, Scottish Parliament guidance on them includes requirements that petitions should not

“Contain any false statements...Include language that is offensive or inappropriate, for example swear words, insults, sarcasm or other language that could reasonably be considered offensive by a reader.”

Those are reasonable requirements, which the petition we are debating would borderline fail on accuracy and on whether a reasonable person would find the content offensive or inappropriate. The Petitions Committee might want to look again at how best to respond to such petitions—whether we can accept the subject matter that has attracted such high numbers, pick another petition on the same subject or simply hold a debate on immigration.

In any event, we are here, so I will respond briefly to each of the points in the e-petition. It states:

“Foreign citizens are taking all our benefits, costing…millions!”

As the hon. Members for St Albans and for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) said, that is not true. The Department for Work and Pensions has set out a lot of data showing that 92.8% of all those receiving benefits were UK nationals when they first registered for a national insurance number, compared with only 2.2% who were EU nationals.

The petition also states that many immigrants

“are trying to change UK into a Muslim country!”

The hon. Member for St Albans spoke eloquently about why it is wrong to conflate the issues of migration and religion. My party would associate ourselves entirely with her comments about the contribution of Muslim citizens to this country. That aside, suffice it to say that among the estimated 8.5 million people living in Great Britain in 2015 who were born abroad, about 4.2 million were Christian, compared with 1.5 million who were Muslim and 1.5 million who had no religion. However, as I said, religion is not an issue that should be conflated with that of migration.

The petition also argues:

“If the Government does not do anything, then Britain may take in 12 million more immigrants by 2060.”

In fairness, one piece of EU modelling showed that to be a possible trend, but it is important to point out that the modelling was of one possible scenario and certainly not a prediction. The speech of, again, the hon. Member for St Albans reminded us that predictions on migration trends can go badly wrong very quickly. In any event, that is clearly not an argument for no immigration; it is one for managed migration, and the true debate is about how we go about achieving that.

Finally, the statement about

“footage of foreigners destroying British soldiers graves, which is a huge disrespect to us”

is absolutely irrelevant to what the petition seeks. As the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam pointed out, that is a reference to the destruction of a cemetery near Benghazi in Libya by an armed militia group. It was hugely disrespectful, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes said, but as the House of Commons Library briefing note puts it:

“There is no suggestion in media reports that any of the militia involved were planning on migrating to the UK.”

There is really nothing to do with anything there.

I wonder whether, on reflection, many of the signatories to the petition will understand that the idea of no immigration is not a helpful one for a whole host of reasons. What if the petitioners themselves or members of their family fall in love and marry foreign nationals? Is the petition really saying that they should not be allowed to live in this country? Should the incredibly talented nurses, doctors and teachers mentioned by the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle, the ones who support our public services, be turned away? What about the international students who enhance the learning experience of those they study beside and who contribute to our universities intellectually and financially? What about the workers who are keen to take up jobs that we struggle to fill, or those with the skills that we lack and would take years to train? If we lose them, we lose jobs.

None of that is to ignore the challenges that migration can bring. Various hon. Members have referred to them. The answer is to deal with the challenges, such as in housing or public services, with careful strategies. Zero immigration is not a careful strategy, because of the harm rather than any help that it would do to our economy and our public services. Nor, however, is the existing net migration target a careful strategy, and it is not one that many people believe will ever be achieved.

A number of other hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak, complained about the target including refugees in its total. I agree that having refugees as part of a net migration target is completely inappropriate. Equally, however, it is a mistake to include students, skilled workers or husbands and wives in the net migration target. What sort of Government policy can be thought to be a positive thing if it keeps my wife or partner from coming to this country?

Nothing from the Government so far has addressed how we deal with the challenges that migration brings. It is all about how we stop further levels of migration; it is not about how we deal with the challenges that have already arrived. The only suggestion that we have had so far in fact came from the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak, which was the migration fund.

As I understand it, a migration fund was set up under the previous Labour Government and lasted for a brief time—a charge on visa applications was redistributed to and used in parts of the country where, perhaps, public services were beginning to struggle and not to cope. Why was that fund abolished within months of the coalition Government taking office? Where are the strategies to deal with the issues raised by Government Members today?

I said in the immigration debate last week that my party acknowledges and is proud of, and prefers to emphasise, the tremendous contribution made by people who chose to make this country their new home. They make contributions to our public services, our economy, our culture and, most importantly to many of our citizens, our family lives.

Healthy population growth is important to Scotland’s economy. Some hon. Members have already mentioned the role that migration can play in tackling demographic challenges, so the Scottish Government’s economic strategy sets out to match average European population growth during 2007 to 2017 with the support of both increased healthy life expectancy and migration.

Migration can be part of the solution to the challenges we face. We will campaign for Government policy that reflects the needs and circumstances of Scotland’s economy and, indeed, those of the whole of the United Kingdom. We want a Government that recognise and are up front about the fact that migration is an important part of our future.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

We have about an hour left. In the event that the two remaining Front-Bench Members feel that they need to take all that time, can I ask them to divide it between them? I also remind the Minister that Mr Scully will need two minutes at the end to wrap up.