Migration and Scotland

Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Simon Hoare

Tuesday 11th February 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move,

That this House condemns the UK Government’s response to the Scottish Government’s publication of 27 January 2020, Migration: Helping Scotland Prosper, setting out proposals for a Scottish visa scheme within a UK-wide system; welcomes support for the Scottish Government’s proposals from the business and rural communities in Scotland as well as the Scottish Trades Union Congress, Federation of Small Businesses Scotland and Scottish Council for Development and Industry; notes Scotland’s unique demographics in that all population growth for the next 25 years is projected to come from migration; recalls comments from the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in June 2016 that Scotland would decide immigration numbers if the UK were to exit the EU; and calls on the Home Secretary to engage positively with the Scottish Government in relation to these proposals before introducing the Immigration Bill and to devolve powers to the Scottish Parliament to enable a tailored migration policy for Scotland.

It is a pleasure to introduce this significant and serious debate on migration and to support the incredibly reasonable and considered policy proposals recently published by the Scottish Government—proposals that would ensure migration policy worked for every part of the UK but could also be tailored to reflect Scotland’s particular needs and circumstances. Indeed, those two features go together, for it is only by making sure the system is tailored to the different parts of the UK that we actually ensure that it can work for all the different parts of the UK.

From the outset, it is important to emphasise that these proposals have been widely consulted upon and developed collaboratively. The report flags up support for a tailored system from organisations such as the Federation of Small Businesses in Scotland, the Scottish Council for Development and Industry, the Scottish Trades Union Congress, the Law Society of Scotland, the David Hume Institute and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Many more names could be added to the list, from the all-party group on social integration to think-tanks such as the Institute for Public Policy Research. A range of academic reports have set out options for differentiation, including Dr Christina Boswell and Dr Sarah Kyambi at the University of Edinburgh and Dr Eve Hepburn for the Scottish Parliament. Lessons from international examples have been learned, from, among others, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Switzerland.

During the Brexit referendum campaign, we were told by the now Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster on the matter of future immigration numbers:

“It would be for Scotland to decide because under the proposals that we have put forward we believe that a points based immigration policy…would be the right approach.”

He went on to say that the head of the Leave campaign in Scotland had written to the First Minister explaining how Scotland

“can have a greater degree of control over immigration policy”

after Brexit. So I look forward to the support of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

The simple proposal put forward by the Scottish Government is for an additional visa route for people to come to live and work in Scotland. Learning, in particular, from Canada’s provincial nominee programme, it would ideally be for Scottish Ministers to set out criteria and rules for selecting who could get one of those visas. The Scottish Government would then accept and reject applications against those criteria. The application would then transfer to the Home Office, not for reassessing the merits of the application, but to verify identity, check immigration history and satisfy security requirements. The visa granted would include a requirement that the visa holder live in Scotland for its duration. There would ideally be routes to settlement after that, probably at the five-year mark. It is acknowledged that a range of different models would be possible. The details and the numbers involved would be subject to negotiation.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

I agree that we need to make sure that our immigration system is fit for purpose and meets the needs of the UK’s economy, but the hon. Member said he would expect people granted a visa to stay in Scotland for the duration. How would he police and enforce that? There is a great difference in scale between Scotland and England and Canada and America.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I shall come to that point later in my speech, if I may, but I can think of examples that are much closer to home than those that the hon. Gentleman has given. For instance, the Republic of Ireland has an open border with a country that has a completely independent immigration system, but no one seems to think it necessary to close the border to the north, or to introduce routine checks at ferry ports or anywhere else.

All the reasons why such a tailored approach is necessary have been rehearsed repeatedly by my hon. Friends in the House for several years, and have been set out in a series of Scottish Government papers as well as in independent reports. Historically, Scotland’s population story has been one of out-migration. Only since 2001 has the country seen a sustained period of net in-migration, driven by a growth in both the number of EU citizens and the number of people from the rest of the UK who are coming to live and work in Scotland. While that recent history of in-migration and population growth has been welcome, the old history has left us with a legacy of a rapidly increasing older population and a smaller share of younger working-age people. Those challenges are not unique, but they are more pronounced in Scotland than in other parts of the UK and, indeed, Europe.

Looking ahead towards mid-2043, even as matters stand, we see that all Scotland’s very modest projected population growth is set to be from in-migration, with more deaths than births expected each year. Our working-age population is expected to remain the same size, but the population of older people will increase. Those trends are either distinct to Scotland in the UK context, or far more pronounced than they are in the UK as a whole.