Immigration Bill

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary and the Prime Minister have made a series of claims about immigration and the Bill, many of which do not stack up. They said that there would be action against illegal working, but there is nothing about that in the Bill. The Prime Minister promised action against those who

“deny work opportunities to UK workers.”

Again, there is nothing about that in the Bill. They promised to reduce the “pull factor” for people from the EU. Again, there is nothing in the Bill about that. They promised to

“reclaim our borders and send illegal immigrants home”,

but border control has got worse and fewer people are being returned than ever. They promised—the Prime Minister said “no ifs, no buts”—that net migration would be down to the tens of thousands by the election. It is currently at 176,000 and recent figures show that it has gone up. There has been a lot of rhetoric and a lot of confusion, and people are concerned about immigration.

We know that over many generations, people have come and contributed to this country: they have built our biggest companies, worked in our public services, and become great scientists, Nobel prize winners and even Olympic medal winners. We also know that in a global economy, in which people travel and trade more than ever, pulling up the drawbridge on all migration is not good for Britain.

Stronger controls are needed. Migration needs to be managed and, yes, we should have a proper debate about measures to control immigration, deal with its impact and tackle illegal immigration. Unfortunately, that is not what we have heard from the Home Secretary today.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

Does the shadow Home Secretary realise that we have already gone a little over half the distance from the very high levels of net migration that we saw under the last Labour Government to our target of tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands? Will she congratulate the Home Secretary on that progress?

[Yvette Cooper]

The most recent figures for net migration show that it has increased. The hon. Gentleman has chosen to support a target that ignores illegal migration altogether and that includes university students who contribute to the economy. Furthermore, he can claim that progress has been made in meeting the target if the number of British citizens who leave the country or who fail to return to the country increases. That is the target that he is pursuing.

[Meg Hillier]

Many of my constituents are first, second or multiple generation immigrants who work hard to prop up our NHS and other public services. Does my right hon. Friend agree that penalising people when their families come over by adding extra charges to every application is unfair on those people who are breaking their back for Britain?

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right that the system has to be fair for people who have come here over many generations and who have contributed to this country and continue to do so. It is right that people who come here must contribute and be able to support themselves. Equally, the system has to be fair to all. There are considerable concerns that the system is not fair. The Home Secretary’s proposals do not address those concerns.

[Mr Clappison]

In the light of the right hon. Lady’s comments, will she tell us whether she would have a target for net migration if she were Home Secretary?

[Yvette Cooper]

As we have said before, the problem with a net migration target is that it encourages more British people to leave the country or to remain in other countries. The Prime Minister has promised—no ifs, no buts—that he would reach the net migration target of tens of thousands by the time of the election. On the Government’s own figures, net migration is going up.

We believe that the pace of migration matters. It is right to support measures that will bring the level of migration down, but we must also have serious measures to tackle illegal immigration and to ensure that the system is fair, including in its impact on employment and the workplace.

[Mrs May]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I will give way to the Home Secretary if she will tell us whether she regrets using the divisive ad vans in the first place.

[Mrs May]

I have already answered a question about the ad vans. Given that the shadow Home Secretary has not answered the question that my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) asked about net migration, perhaps she will answer my question. Does she accept that the level of migration under the last Labour Government was too high?

[Yvette Cooper]

We have said that the pace of migration was too fast. It is right to have measures to bring the level down. We have said that many times. The Home Secretary has had every opportunity to apologise for the divisive ad vans, which she has admitted were a serious problem. I will give her another opportunity to intervene to do so.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

rose—

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

Hopefully the hon. Gentleman will apologise on behalf of the Home Secretary for pushing those divisive ad vans.

[David T. C. Davies]

May I say—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I think that there is an identity crisis that needs to be resolved. I think that the right hon. Lady was pointing in the direction of the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson).

[Yvette Cooper]

I was indeed.

[Mr Speaker]

We will hear from T. C. another time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

On the subject of regrets, does the right hon. Lady share the regret of the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), who said in 2010 that having unmitigated and unplanned immigration from the European Union at the same time as 5.2 million people were on out-of-work benefits under the last Labour Government was a mistake that the Labour party needed to face up to?

[Yvette Cooper]

We have said that we should have had transitional controls for eastern Europe. Government Members need to consider how they can defend the fact that since the election deportations have dropped by 7% and deportations of foreign criminals are down by 14%, and how they can explain why the number of illegal migrants absconding at Heathrow has trebled since the election and why the number caught afterwards has halved since the election.

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

Will the shadow Home Secretary give way?

[Yvette Cooper]

I ask the hon. Gentleman to explain that point if the Home Secretary will not.

[Mr Raab]

The right hon. Lady is in a rich vein of contrition. Will she add to her list of apologies an apology from the last Government for signing up to EU rules that made it much harder to tackle benefit tourism and, on the point that she has just raised, human rights laws that made it much harder to deport foreign national criminals?

[Yvette Cooper]

There is nothing in the Bill about the matters that so concern the hon. Gentleman. Where is his apology for the fact that the number of businesses that are fined for employing illegal migrants has halved since the election? Again and again, action on illegal migration has got worse and enforcement has deteriorated since the election.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I want to make some progress on the measures that are in the Bill, even though a lot of the measures that we need to tackle illegal immigration are not in it. Let us consider the Bill before us. Some measures are sensible and we will support them. Some are confused and we await illumination on how the Government plan to make them work. Some areas raise genuine concerns, and in other areas the Government are not going far enough, particularly on the labour market and on illegal immigration.

I am glad that the Bill includes stronger action against sham marriages. Indeed, we called for those measures. Like the Government, we listened to the concerns of registrars about cases where they feared abuse, but had too little time to ensure that investigations took place. We also called for stronger enforcement powers for UK Border Force officials. The problem is that the UK Border Agency does not use the powers it has in practice at the moment and enforcement has been getting worse.

The Home Secretary talked about biometrics. We agree that there are some loopholes that should be closed for taking fingerprints, but she needs to explain why her Home Office Ministers endorsed stopping the fingerprinting of stowaways at Calais. This is not about a loophole in the law; it is about a loophole in practice that we raised with Ministers two-and-a-half years ago and which they refused to do anything about.

[Mrs May]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I will give way to the Home Secretary if she can explain why, two-and-a-half years ago when this was raised with her, the Home Office Minister agreed that it was right for UKBA not to fingerprint stowaways at Calais.

[Mrs May]

I suggest that the right hon. Lady checks her facts, because I believe the decision not to fingerprint clandestines at the juxtaposed controls was actually taken before the 2010 general election.

[Yvette Cooper]

And I suggest that the Home Secretary checks her facts, because in April 2011 we raised with Home Office Ministers the importance of restoring fingerprinting to Calais, which border officials had chosen to do. Two-and-a-half years ago, she refused to do that and she has continued to refuse to do that, and her Home Office Ministers said that was the right thing to do. I will let her intervene again if she will tell me that she will now, two-and-a-half years later, restore the fingerprinting of stowaways to Calais. Will she restore the decision to do fingerprinting at Calais? The Home Secretary is refusing, repeatedly, to restore the fingerprinting of stowaways at Calais, despite the fact that we have raised this with her and other Home Office Ministers repeatedly. Her Home Office Ministers have endorsed the decision not to have fingerprinting at Calais, not to be able to check illegal immigration and not to be able to follow up when people attempt to return to this country.

We support measures to restrict access to British driving licences for those who are here illegally. In fact, we introduced those measures. As the Government have admitted, the changes were mostly brought in before the general election, but we are happy to support them all over again. It is also sensible to have stronger checks on bank accounts.

There has been a principle stretching back over 30 years that overseas visitors should contribute for using the NHS. We will therefore support sensible contributions to the NHS from visa payments, and it would be helpful for Ministers to confirm that such payments will go to the NHS. It would also be helpful if Ministers confirmed whether they have dropped proposals for GPs to have to implement the same kinds of checks as private landlords before letting pregnant women see a midwife, or giving children the measles, mumps and rubella vaccination—both issues that doctors have raised as public health concerns.

[Simon Hughes]

If the right hon. Lady is honest, she will realise that Labour’s record on illegal immigration is far from glorious. I have indicated that I am willing to give the Government the benefit of the doubt on Second Reading, although I have criticisms of some aspects of the Bill. It would be helpful to know whether the official Opposition will support or oppose the Bill on Second Reading.

[Yvette Cooper]

I will set out the Opposition’s response on exactly that point in due course.

[Ms Abbott]

Is my right hon. Friend aware of how concerned GPs are, including the Royal College of General Practitioners, that they might find themselves acting as immigration officers? They feel that that would be contrary to the oath they take to serve and to heal.

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right. Doctors have concerns about whether the proposals are workable in practice—the practical bureaucracy attached to the proposals—and the implications for public health. We think it is sensible to have better co-ordination between hospitals on, for example, cost recovery through the E111 system, but for any proposals it is important that the Government listen to GPs’ concerns.

[Caroline Lucas]

Building on the right hon. Lady’s point, does she agree that it is not only inhumane for doctors not to treat people with serious illnesses, but counter-productive? If somebody is here with a communicable illness, it is counter-productive for doctors not to treat them. This is just a nasty policy and a case of blaming foreigners to distract from the Government’s £20 billion of cuts to the NHS and the cost of reorganisation.

[Yvette Cooper]

This is a matter on which the Government still need to answer questions and they are confused about what they are proposing. The Bill contains limited measures, but they also seem to be setting out other measures that are not in it.

The measures on landlords take up 16 clauses—a quarter of the Bill. This, it appears, is the Government’s flagship policy on tackling illegal immigration. The only trouble is that we have no idea how it is supposed to work. There are more than 400 European identity documents, and the Government have not explained whether private landlords are supposed to know which one is which. There are countless different documents to show that people are entitled to be here. Will private landlords have to know each one? On some figures, nearly one in five usual residents, including British citizens, do not have passports. What will they have to do to rent a flat? When the Home Secretary was asked two weeks ago about how this policy would be implemented, all she could say was:

“There’s a lot of confusion.”

That is right, and the Home Secretary has done nothing today to clear that confusion up.

All these policies on driving licences, tenancy agreements and bank accounts will, according to the Home Secretary, tackle illegal immigration. How much difference will they actually make in practice, even where the policy is sensible enough in principle? One does not need a British driving licence to drive in Britain and one does not need a British bank account to take cash out of a cash machine or to earn some cash on the side. What difference will the measures make to the growing number of people who are here illegally because they are less likely to be stopped at the border and less likely to be sent back home? Deportations are down by 7%. The number of people stopped at the border and turned away has halved since the election. The number of illegal immigrants absconding through Heathrow has trebled, and the number caught afterwards has halved. Six hundred and fifty thousand potential smuggling warnings were deleted by the Home Office without even being read, and 150,000 reports of potential bogus students were never followed up.

There is still no answer from the Home Secretary about how many people came in without proper checks as a result of her bordersgate experiment. We get the same response from the Home Secretary each time: to blame the civil servants, to blame the landlords, to blame all migrants, to blame the technology and to blame the Labour Government. Her latest response is to blame the Minister for Immigration.

[Keith Vaz]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The issue of who comes in and out of this country is important. Does she share my concern at the delay in starting the tendering process for the e-Borders project? As we know, there were problems with the project under the previous Government and it is three-and-a-half years since the contract was terminated. Does she not agree that we need this as soon as possible?

[Yvette Cooper]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. The Government decided to suspend the contract three years ago, in 2010. There has been a complete freeze with no contract in place and no proper action taking place. He is absolutely right that we need not just proper checks in place when people arrive, but proper checks on deportations and departures to be able to take follow-up action on illegal immigration.

What was the Government’s flagship policy to tackle illegal immigration, which was trailed by the Prime Minister, who this summer promised new action? It was to hire a man with a van to drive around in circles for two weeks. What was the Home Secretary thinking? Did she really think that people here illegally, who have ignored Home Office letters and avoided UK Border Force scrutiny, would change their minds because they saw one of her posters on an ad van? What did she think people were going to say: “Oh, thank goodness I saw the ad van today. I had just forgotten I was supposed to go home. Hang on while I pop out and get an airplane ticket”? Will she confirm that only one person has rung up to return? He did not even see the vans: he saw a picture in The Guardian. This has not just been a blunt instrument; it has been a complete failure. Will she admit that this has been a pointless gimmick from the start?

Last week the Immigration Minister said that the vans could be rolled out around the country, but instead the Home Secretary strung him out and today decided that the policy is a blunt instrument and she will not do it again. Why did she do it in the first place? Will she stand up and tell the House how many people returned home as a result of it? The Immigration Minister said that only one person returned as a result of the ad vans, but will the Home Secretary say how many people have returned as a result of her ad van approach?

This is not just about a policy that is ineffective and a blunt instrument. The Home Secretary sent the van around four London boroughs with the highest proportion of ethnic minority British citizens. One Brent resident—a British citizen—said:

“As a child in the 1970s with migrant parents I remember how ‘go home’ was shouted at us in the streets and graffitied on walls. One of my earliest memories is of the panic I felt when hearing my parents discussing in hushed tones whether we would indeed have to ‘go home’, as we watched the National Front march on TV.”

The Home Secretary agreed to that slogan. She agreed to send it round communities whose parents heard it from the National Front in the 1970s, and whose British citizens work in our public services, build our businesses, and fight in our armed forces today. She signed off and defended that policy, all for the sake of one person returning. She should be better than that, and I hope she is ashamed of what she did.

[Barry Gardiner]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for allowing me to intervene, because Brent was one area where the van came round. On the occasions when it did so, the division and hurt that it caused in the community was extraordinary. Does she agree that the policy could not have been introduced because the Home Secretary genuinely thought it was likely to inspire anyone to leave the country, and that instead it was a calculated political propaganda move? As such, her party should pay back to the taxpayer the cost of those vans.

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and the Home Secretary should confirm that she will never pursue such divisive gimmicks again. That is beneath her and ought to be beneath the Government.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

The policy was disgusting and embarrassing. What a dreadful episode it was, and let us hope it never happens again. On apologies, however, will the right hon. Lady apologise for the intervention by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) in the summer? He had a go at Tesco and Next, but he got the place of Tesco’s base wrong. Will the right hon. Lady apologise to Tesco and Next for that “British jobs for British workers” nonsense revived by the hon. Member for Rhondda?

[Yvette Cooper]

The labour market is an important issue, and it is particularly important to ensure that employers are not exploiting low-skilled migration. I will come to that issue in a moment, but let me finish the point about illegal immigration.

Instead of gimmicks, we need practical measures to help tackle illegal immigration. Why not improve enforcement? Why not reinstate fingerprinting for stowaways at Calais, as we have been urging the Home Secretary to do for two and a half years? Why not tighten up checks in the first place? Student visitor visas have now become too easy a route through which people come to Britain to work illegally. They do not even have to provide proper paperwork to show they have a place on a course. Numbers are up 70% since the election. Surely that should ring alarm bells for Ministers. The Labour party will table amendments to have proper checks on student visitor visas, stronger inspections and enforcement, and stronger action against employers who take on and exploit illegal migrants. If the Home Secretary is serious about tackling illegal immigration, I hope she will back our amendments and plans.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, but we must make some progress so that other Members can contribute.

[Dr Huppert]

The right hon. Lady mentioned student visitor visas. Is she aware how essential those are for many colleges and English language schools, and a whole ranges of other institutions around the country? Does she really want to damage their business?

[Yvette Cooper]

It is right to have a proper system that is fair and supports our economy, universities and higher education sector, but also prevents abuse. It is a concern that the hon. Gentleman’s Government are dissuading and discouraging university students who want to come here from all over the world, but he should also be worried about the potential for abuse of student visitor visas, as highlighted by the independent inspectorate. Concerns were raised, but because those visas are not included in the Government’s net migration target, the fact that numbers have increased by 70% does not bother Ministers, even though the inspectorate raised the risk of abuse.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I will give way one more time, and then I must make progress.

[Barbara Keeley]

My right hon. Friend is perhaps moving on to what is not in the Bill. The Home Secretary said earlier that she wants to end modern-day slavery. Last week a dreadful case of modern slavery and trafficking ended with the conviction of a couple from Eccles who had brought a deaf 10-year-old orphan girl into the country, using the passport of a 20-year-old woman. They kept her as a domestic slave and subjected her to sexual assault. Is it not tragic that someone who is rescued, such as the victim in this case, and actually well looked after, might have been snatched back into trafficking, and ended up in a brothel or worse? The Government have not enacted measures to assign a trusted individual in such cases, although they could have done so in this or other Bills. How can we take the Home Secretary seriously when she has those opportunities yet does not take them?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. It should disturb us all that an appalling two thirds of children who are rescued from slavery and trafficking go missing again and often become victims of the same traffickers or other groups. We need far stronger action on that; we owe it to those children who have been rescued, often from appalling conditions. We should not let them simply disappear again.

[David T. C. Davies]

Does the right hon. Lady recognise that one reason for that is that care workers in children’s homes are not allowed physically to restrain and prevent children from walking out? That is a result of the Human Rights Act, which was passed by her colleagues, along with the failure to deal with immigration that has led the Government to bring forward these urgent proposals today.

[Yvette Cooper]

If I had known the hon. Gentleman was going to raise such nonsense, I would not have let him intervene in the first place.

Let me move on to some of the remaining elements of the Bill. People who come to Britain and then abuse British law should not expect to stay here, and Labour has previously supported action to ensure that article 8 of the European convention on human rights is properly interpreted in cases involving foreign criminals. We also believe that appeals should be speeded up—serious cases that go to Strasbourg certainly take far too long.

The measures in the Bill do not deal with those issues, however, and instead it appears that the Government want to abolish appeals for whole categories of immigration cases because they cannot cope with the fact that they get so many decisions wrong in the first place. There are genuine and serious concerns about that approach because it turned out that the Government got it wrong in 50% of entry clearance cases that went to appeal. In managed migration cases that went to appeal, they got it wrong in 49% of decisions. In the majority of those cases the problem was Home Office error, so why not just put a bit of effort into getting the decision right in the first place? If those appeal rights are removed, many cases will cite human rights grounds to get an appeal and more cases will go to judicial review. The Government’s own impact assessment shows that that could cost £100 million, halving any savings the Home Secretary might hope to make.

The real gap in the Bill is that is says nothing about the exploitation of immigration in the workplace. There is nothing to deal with employers who take on illegal migrant workers or to tackle the exploitation of legal migration by the undercutting of wages and conditions in the local labour market. There is nothing to deal with the lack of enforcement of the minimum wage, or employers who use loopholes in the minimum wage to overcharge workers for overcrowded accommodation and offset that against their pay. There is nothing to deal with agencies that recruit only from overseas and exclude local workers from their books, or employers who recruit for some shifts only from certain nationalities.

All those practices are bad for everyone—they are bad for migrant workers who are exploited, bad for local workers who are undercut, bad for other businesses that are undermined and bad for our economy, which continues to depend on low-skilled migration being exploited in that way. The Government are doing nothing. The Labour party will set out amendments to give councils powers of enforcement on the minimum wage, close loopholes and tackle irresponsible agencies, and I hope the Government will support those measures.

The Bill does not do what the Government claim it does. Some of the measures are sensible, some are confused, and some are of serious concern. They claim it tackles illegal immigration, but it does nothing of the sort. It fails to do enough to tackle the serious problems. The Opposition will not oppose the Bill as we believe it should go to Committee so we can amend and reform it, use the opportunity to introduce better and fairer controls to deal with the Government’s failures, and make immigration work for all.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—