Employment Opportunities Bill
Debate between Tony Lloyd and David Nuttall
Tony Lloyd
Will the hon. Gentleman please be patient?
I shall begin by examining the Bill sequentially. I want to talk first about the part of it that I agree with. The hon. Member for Christchurch began his speech by talking about the impact of clause 1, and I had a lot of sympathy with what he said. We really ought to have a serious debate about this in the House, and I have urged the previous Government and this one to take the issue seriously. It makes no sense in a country such as ours to force into unemployment those asylum seekers who are willing to work and to make a contribution to their families, the wider community and the taxpayer. Sometimes, they are forced into worse than unemployment. As we know, the fact that we push asylum seekers into destitution is one of the drivers of prostitution and some types of crime. The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) made a valid point about women who are being trafficked into our society, and we ought to take that issue seriously.
Governments classically respond to the argument in favour of allowing asylum seekers to work by pointing out the danger of creating a magnet that will attract further waves of asylum seekers. The hon. Member for Christchurch was absolutely right to say, in response to the hon. Member for Shipley, that the problem with our asylum system is not that it operates as a magnet, but that we deal so slowly and incompetently with the processing of asylum cases. This was the case all through the years of the Labour Government, and, sadly, it is still the case now. We need rapid resolution of those cases.
Let us take the example of a woman who is legitimately claiming asylum because she has been forcibly trafficked from the far parts of eastern Europe, or wherever, and forced into prostitution in our society. She has no capacity to return home and genuinely fears for her life and for her family back home. We need to be able to say to that woman, “Yes, you are a genuine asylum seeker and you can play a constructive role in our society.” We also need to say to the illegitimate, bogus asylum seeker, “Please return quickly to where you came from.”
There is real merit in having this debate. Even though I disagree fundamentally with everything else in the Bill, I profoundly agree with the hon. Member for Christchurch that we need to have a debate on this subject. We need to debate not only what a civilised society ought to be, but what is practical and proper for our society. In fact, I would go further and suggest that there should be an expectation on legitimate asylum seekers to begin a process of finding work, because that shows commitment to the values and the ethos of our society. That would create a good two-way set of responsibilities, which relates to the proposal in clause 1. Alas, the rest of the Bill does not have the same merit as that first part.
It is always delightful to listen to the hon. Member for Christchurch. He always offers us an entertaining race around the now rather worn and old economics textbooks from the 1920s, the 1870s and the 1850s. Those books are now a little thumbed at the corners, but they are still interesting to read because they shed some light, not so much on the working of a real economy in the 19th century, and still less in the 21st, as on the thinking of those who suggest that the Bill is about freedom. It is not about freedom; it is about taking away social protection for vulnerable people in our society, and that is what we need to talk about.
That is the nub of the intellectual debate about the merits of free-market economics versus what the hon. Gentleman would call the crushing hand of state socialism. Were the minimum wage an example of the crushing hand of state socialism, some Labour Members might be a little happier with the direction of travel in our society’s support for the vulnerable and its recognition of the relationship between those in the most powerful economic positions and those at the bottom of that pile.
Mr Nuttall
I am pleased to hear the hon. Gentleman’s welcome for clause 1. Does he think that asylum seekers and others covered by the clause should have the right to work for less than the minimum wage if other people should not?
Tony Lloyd
No. If that is what the hon. Member for Christchurch is proposing, I have absolutely no sympathy with that view. The reason for having a floor is the ambition to prevent the undercutting of wage rates for individuals, whether they are born nationals, as the hon. Gentleman would have it, or asylum seekers. The suggestion that the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) has just made lacks merit because it would erode the whole concept of a minimum floor below which people ought not to be expected to fall.
I want to deal with the argument put forward by a number of Conservative Members that it is legitimate to do away with that floor. They have cited reasons of competitive pressure and the black economy, to which the hon. Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley) referred. Of course we know that the black economy exists and that it exerts a dangerous influence at the bottom end of the labour market, but we do not want to make it a model for how we deal with the whole economy. We should be seeking to get rid of the black economy, rather than institutionalising it by getting rid of social protection relating to wage rates.
That same black economy erodes health and safety standards at work. In my somewhat distant youth, I worked for companies that thought health and safety was an optional extra, and that put my life and those of other employees seriously at risk. The minimum wage and health and safety legislation all form part of the same debate, which we have had many times. I know that different views exist, but I believe in a proper floor below which people in a decent society should not be allowed to fall.