Amnesty Debate in Westminster Hall on Wednesday 20th June 2007
Migrant
Workers (Regularisation)
Westminster Hall - Wednesday 20 June 2007
Column 439WH
[Mrs. Janet Dean in the Chair]
Jon Cruddas (Dagenham) (Lab): Just to clarify any confusion about the title of
the debate, initially it was put down as the Registration of Migrant Workers,
but it has been clarified to focus on the regularisation of unregularised
migrants. The two titles mean very different things, so I just wanted to make
clear my focus in this debate from the outset.
By one of those coincidences, I was made aware that our request for a debate
about regularisation had been successful just after I had accepted an invitation
to participate at 10 o'clock this morning in my constituency in a refugee week
event with John Armitage, from the diocese of Brentwood, who has been a leading
advocate of the regularisation campaign throughout. Unfortunately, I cannot make
the event today, but the campaign's work in our constituency to support refugees
or unregularised migrants is humbling to witness as a local MP.
Given that we are in the middle of refugee week, it is timely that we hear some
of the debates about the status of at least 500,000 people in this country, not
including their dependants, who have no legal status in the country. From my
local casework, I have found those people are often the most abused by
employers, landlords and criminal gangs. Given the nature of the debate about
refugee week, which is taking place throughout the length and breadth of the
country, it is also timely that we discuss the possible remedies to bring them
out of the shadows and regularise their status in this country.
I know that the issue is very difficult politically, but it is incumbent on us
all as local politicians and public policy makers to speak up for some of those
people who have no voice and no traction in the political process. The debate
today is about providing possible remedies-sometimes called an "amnesty", but I
prefer the term "an earned regularisation"-to the status of up to or possibly
more than 500,000 people in this country.
It is agreed that those 500,000 people are a combination of refused asylum
seekers who have been made to wait years for their applications to be processed,
and are now rooted in British society; and visa over-stayers, who work, pay
taxes and are part of our communities. What both have in common is that they are
in legal limbo; that they are often, as a result, very poor; and that they are
trapped between the countries that they have come from and the society that they
wish to make their new home.
The Home Office accepts that most of those people will remain in the UK.
Deportations are expensive and difficult, and they number no more than 20,000 a
year. At the current rate of deportation, it would take 25 years to remove
hundreds of thousands of irregular migrants, and it would cost billions of
pounds. Even if it were possible, it would not make any sense to do so, as
economists, including those at the CBI and the TUC, agree that continued
migration is vital if we are to meet skills shortages, and that it is
responsible for our current low-inflation growth.
A report by the National Criminal Intelligence Service summarised the total loss
to the Exchequer from unpaid tax and national insurance contributions to be as
much as £3.3 billion. The extra fiscal revenue from a regularisation process
would result in a net gain to the Exchequer of between £500 million and £1
billion, according to estimates supplied by the Institute for Public Policy
Research. At the same time, the National Audit Office says that each deportation
costs almost £11,000. The IPPR says that it would cost £4.7 billion to deport
the 500,000 people whom the Government think are in the country.
Many other countries, including the United States, Spain, Greece and Germany,
have issued so-called "amnesties" in recognition of the fact that at some point,
people who have lived in the country for an extended period, starting families
and putting down roots, can no longer be reasonably be regarded as outsiders.
Maintaining the current policy is causing chaos, distress, bureaucratic logjams
and misery on a large scale. De facto, those people are part of society, and our
obligations to them mirror those that we owe our fellow citizens. Hard-working
families are being criminalised, and honest people turned into liars. The
underground economy is growing, creating an area outside the law which gives
succour to criminals.
One solution, which we outlined in early-day motion 1371, standing in my name,
and which I think has the support so far of 81 MPs from all political parties,
many faith groups, business leaders, community leaders, the Mayor of London and
the Strangers into Citizens campaign, is that irregular migrants who have been
in the UK for four years or more, up to a determined date, should be allowed to
work legally for two years without access to benefits. At the end of that
period, subject to employer and other references, criminal checks and the like,
they should be given leave to remain. That six-year earned pathway would also
maintain a strong deterrent to future illegal immigration. That is only one
option in hand. The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants has also put
forward a solution based on a two-year threshold and then a five-year work
permit, leading to an earned regularisation. There are different models around.
I shall not use the word "amnesty" today, because it suggests to more
melodramatic elements of the press, a blanket pardon for criminals, and it gives
the impression that anyone without status in the UK should be given leave to
remain. I am arguing for a pathway into citizenship for long-term migrants,
which is a significantly different concept.
My proposal would consist of a carefully managed programme, which would allow
those people who had made new lives in the UK to acquire the rights and legal
status that everyone who lives and works in the UK permanently should enjoy.
Regularisation is what I wish to argue for today-a one-off as opposed to a
rolling regularisation measure to coincide with the Government's
border-enforcing policies that are set to take effect over the next two years.
Next year a points-based system will be introduced, and we also have the
introduction of ID cards, and the general overall of the Home Office's work.
Arguably, they create the opportunity for a one-off regularisation process to
deal with the legacy of public policy failures that have been mapped out over
possibly 20 years.
I do not oppose-indeed, I support-the notion that a nation state must regulate
its borders, and any measure with provisions that are too generous could weaken
that policy. In 2005, Spain regularised some 700,000 people as part of a wider
border-enforcement measure to extend the state's control over the black economy
and curb illegal immigration. Since 2005, the number of illegal immigrants has
gone down not up-proof that well designed regularisation helps to deter illegal
immigration.
There is no longer a deterrent effect in criminalising people who are
hard-working, honest and conscientious, who pay taxes and contribute to society,
and who have put down roots in the UK. Forcing them to live beyond the law does
not make our borders stronger, but brings the law itself into disrepute. It also
encourages people traffickers, drug traffickers, international criminals and
terrorists, who are far harder to track down, because of the size of the shadow
economy in which they operate. Regularisation would help to expose those
undesirables, enabling authorities to concentrate resources on removing them,
not the honest, hard-working people who are building Britain.
Regularisation would also greatly benefit our asylum process, clearing at a
stroke the huge backlog of cases dating back to the late 1990s. The measure
would also bring relief and hope to thousands left destitute or in limbo,
freeing up their energies and gifts to the benefit of the economy.
Overall, the benefits of regularisation might be: to reduce the size of the
undocumented population; to reduce the size of the underground economy; to
increase tax and social security contributions, given that as a result of
Spain's 2005 measures, the country has paid off its social security deficit; to
improve the human rights and dignity of migrants; to enforce minimum wage and
other labour legislation, levelling the playing field for all workers; to gain
control over the undocumented population, allowing Governments and local
councils to meet real needs; to improve the rule of law and national security,
reducing criminality and enabling states to concentrate on deporting undesirable
or criminal elements; to fill local labour market needs; to assist in community
cohesion and integration; and to reduce employer exploitation.
Regularisation enables migrants to break free of exploitative employers, to
challenge exploitation through the law and to compete for better jobs. Many
irregular migrants face a glass ceiling that their status imposes, and most work
well below their skill levels.
I want to cover a couple of the responses that we are likely to hear today. The
first is that a regularisation programme of the type envisaged would encourage
greater illegal migration. It is true that regularisations in the EU have not
succeeded in drying up illegal immigration, but they have offered a just, humane
and sensible way of responding to it. The only factors that can definitively
reduce illegal immigration are tight border controls and a sluggish economy with
high unemployment. As long as our economies are growing and our birth rate
remains low, we can expect immigration. However, because the economy is ahead of
any attempt by the state to manage the migration, there will be some degree of
illegality.
The question is whether a regularisation programme will make the situation
worse. It is true that although the US, Spain and Belgium have introduced
regularisation measures, all have continued to experience illegal immigration.
However, it is also true that those countries that have not introduced
substantial regularisation measures, such as the UK, have also experienced a
rise in illegal immigration. Although we can be certain that, on their own,
regularisations do not prevent illegal immigration, it would be foolhardy to
suggest that they caused or encouraged it.
Mr. Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con): I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on
securing this debate. I have been following his argument closely and with
genuine interest. The evidence from other countries that have brought forward
such regularisation measures would suggest that each time they have been
introduced, a larger number of illegal immigrants have been introduced into the
programme. For example, Italy has had five such programmes. In 1987-88, 119,000
illegal immigrants were regularised, and that figure has increased in stages, to
235,000 in 1990, 259,000 in 1996, 308,000 in 1998 and 700,000 in 2002. Does that
not suggest that such regularisation programmes actually encourage illegal
immigration?
Jon Cruddas: The picture is much more mixed than that. Most migration experts
assert that economic factors-not the chance of citizenship-are the primary pull
factors in the migration process. Rather than seeing the regularisation process
as the key driver behind patterns of migration, if we compare and contrast the
situation in Spain with the experience of other countries, the picture appears
much more mixed and suggests a more nuanced analysis of the pull factors. The
jury is out-the subject is up for debate and that is why we are having this
debate today. However, simply seeing the regularisation process in Italy as the
trigger for successive waves of illegal immigration belies the broader economic
dynamics at work, which suggest a more balanced analysis of what contributes to
such extraordinary demographic flows.
To continue from that, the dynamics at work in patterns of migration in Europe
over the past few years suggest that the push factors are poverty at home, lack
of opportunity, political instability, violent conflict and the desire to
reunite with family members abroad. The pull factors in Europe are a declining
population and a continuing demand for labour, especially in the low-wage,
low-skill parts of the economy. Anecdotal evidence in the UK suggests that
irregular migrants are usually escaping a situation or seeking a better life.
They are not after a new passport. Often they go back or move on to a third
country, but sometimes they end up staying, albeit for a host of reasons that
they would not have foreseen when they left their initial countries.
Migrants have come to the UK in search of new lives and opportunities, not
citizenship. A one-off regularisation measure of the sort that I propose would
not act as a further incentive, because our criteria are strict-the Strangers
into Citizens campaign proposes four plus two years-because the measure would be
a one-off and because both the main political parties in the UK are committed to
border enforcement measures, which would make it harder to enter the country
illegally. On its own, regularisation will not deter illegal immigration,
either. However, combined with border enforcement measures, such as those that
the Government are now implementing and the type of measures that I advocate, it
would be stated with certainty that regularisation would not encourage further
illegal immigration.
Most irregular migrants who also pay taxes receive nothing in return by way of
benefits. It is only right that those work and contribute to British society
should be given the basic protections of the welfare state.
Colin Burgon (Elmet) (Lab): I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this
debate on one of the toughest subjects facing us in Britain today. I start from
the position that he does, which is that I do not want anyone to be exploited,
but would he attack me for a lack of faith, in being vaguely sceptical about the
TUC report this week? It said that migrant workers do not have an impact on
unskilled and semi-skilled workers. I take the view that we have an incomes
policy in this country that affects unskilled and semi-skilled workers, but not
the big City earners in the square mile down the river. How are we going to
address that problem, so that we can ensure that our key belief that nobody at
all should be exploited is delivered to us all?
Jon Cruddas: That is a big debate, but I agree with my hon. Friend and have some
suspicions about the TUC report. It argued that, apart from a number of
anecdotal examples, there was no negative effect, in terms of employers abusing
migrant workers, of deregulating labour markets. In my constituency recently,
for example, a Lithuanian gang was employed on £15 a day-barely half the minimum
wage-on a public contract. Similarly, I am sure that we all have anecdotal
evidence of forms of exploitation and abuse that I have not witnessed in 20 to
25 years occurring in regular patterns in cities such as London. That means that
we have to deal with the problem. Part of that should be a regularisation
process. Often, those who receive the most compound abuse, from employers,
landlords, criminal gangs and so on, are those who have no status.
To put a floor under the labour market, we have to address the tough stuff-those
groups of people who are disproportionately used as pawns to deregulate labour
markets. In my experience, those who have no status are the most susceptible to
those bad employers. That is why regularisation is part of a series of policy
initiatives that would allow a more mature debate about race and migration, as
well as choking off some of the material forces that play into the hands of
those employers who want to abuse those groups in society with the least
protections. Regularisation is linked to the TUC report, but the TUC report does
not go anywhere near far enough in acknowledging the labour market pressures
that are causing the race to the bottom that we are currently experiencing.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North) (Lab): Like other hon. Members, I congratulate
my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Would he agree that one good step
forward would be to encourage and allow much tougher contract compliance by all
public bodies in all public spending, particularly on construction and
maintenance contracts? Too often, local authorities and others turn a blind eye
to what they know is going on, in their name, effectively, through public
spending on building contracts.
Jon Cruddas: That is absolutely right. The state has a key role in that, as well
as in the health economy, for example. Some of the most widespread abuses of
migrant workers that I have witnessed have been through the supply chain in
cleaning or security contracts and the like. The state has a key role. This is a
different policy agenda again, but if we introduce a system of contract
compliance, so that those who bid for public money should have a system of
employment contracts over and above the statutory minimum, that could also help
to create a floor. That way, the most vulnerable would not be the most
exploited, through their labour market situation, by employers using those with
no recourse to the law to overcome their exploitation at work. I therefore
acknowledge the pioneering work done by some of the unions in cities such as
London on living wage campaigns among those who arguably have the least status
in this city, but who make some of the most significant contributions.
Clare Short (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Ind Lab): I congratulate my hon. Friend and
strongly support the campaign. The cruelty with which some failed or waiting
asylum seekers are treated is abominable. The strong anti-immigration feeling in
the country is partly caused by the chaos of the system and by lots of people
being unable to work. That makes people resent those living at public expense
who are not working.
To stop an uncontrolled flow and to stop criminal people smugglers from running
the international asylum system, we need to renegotiate the Geneva convention,
give automatic funding to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,
ensure that anyone who is fleeing anywhere in the world is cared for-we are not,
for example, providing funding for Iraqi refugees-and have committed numbers, so
that we can bring in people in a managed way, with their families and able to
work and settle. The answer to the point that the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr.
Hollobone) raised is a renegotiation of the convention, to bring it up to date
for the conditions of the modern world.
Jon Cruddas: I totally agree. The debate about regularisation is not a panacea
for anything, but an attempt to stimulate a series of consequential debates
about the international treaty and how to manage extraordinary global
demographic movements. There is the refugee issue; my right hon. Friend the
Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short) alluded to Iraqi refugees, and
there are 2.2 million of them.
Domestic policy initiatives over and above regularisation could allow the
construction of a different architecture around the politics of race, migration,
asylum and demography in this country. Arguably, the combination of our current
policies is systematically poisoning the well around the whole debate. Unless we
retrieve the situation by having a mature, grown-up debate based on real people,
such as the 500,000 in this country, we shall not be able to retrieve some of
the terms of debate. That is worrying for the broader issues of community
cohesion.
I witness that in my own community; the far right has secured 12 council seats
in our borough, and that is not unrelated to some of these questions. Unless we
step back, try to establish a different discussion and bring different policy
initiatives-even if they are uncomfortable-into play, I will worry about where
the whole debate will head.
I shall make a couple of concluding points, as I know that a number of
colleagues want to contribute. Like many who call for one-off regularisation, I
welcome the Government's commitment to tighten UK borders and introduce a new
monitoring and assessment system into the immigration process. Keith Best of the
Immigration Advisory Service stated that regularisation:
* "should happen at the same time as the introduction of the Government's
e-borders programme between 2007 and 2008, because it would help to clear the
decks. If we held an amnesty at this time, it would allow us to know, once and
for all, the identity of those who have over-stayed, while encouraging people to
come forward."
There is a precedent. In 2003, there was a mini-amnesty in the UK, when the then
Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr.
Blunkett), ordered it as a means of "clearing the backlog" of asylum cases. What
was presented as an administrative matter was in effect a mini-regularisation
programme. There were no recorded complaints that the 50,000 people who
benefited had in any way abused the system. Equally, when the A8 countries
joined the EU in 2004, the UK Government did not tell the Poles and Lithuanians
who had been working here illegally that they should go to prison or back to
their countries. They were asked to register.
A one-off regularisation of the sort that I support and that has been proposed
by the Strangers into Citizens campaign or the Joint Council for the Welfare of
Immigrants, recognises the dignity of human beings who have made new lives in
this country. It would extend and reinforce the rule of law; level the playing
field for low-paid workers; enable businesses to employ legally the labour that
it needs; recognise the role that migrants already play in society; ensure that
tens of thousands of British workers receive the protection of the law; shrink
the underground economy; free up billions of pounds in extra taxes for the
Exchequer; enable local authorities to plan better according to real population
figures, not the increasingly out-of-date ones supplied by the census; solve the
expensive, inhuman delay in processing old asylum claims; build a more cohesive
British society; and turn outlaws into neighbours-"strangers into citizens"-in
the best British tradition of pragmatism and justice. Furthermore, it might well
be popular.
Mrs. Janet Dean (in the Chair): Before I call the next speaker, I advise Members
that I intend to call Front-Bench spokespeople at 10.30 am.
9.53 am
Mr. Neil Gerrard (Walthamstow) (Lab): It is good that we are having a debate
about what we should do about a problem that everyone knows exists. There is the
context of the Government agenda, which says that migrant workers bring economic
benefits and considers managed migration. However, it also says that it will
crack down on illegal working. Some of the proposals in the UK Borders Bill,
which is still progressing through the House, are related to that.
We know that very significant numbers of people are working here illegally. As
my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Jon Cruddas) said, we should consider
what that means. Out there, the common concept of those who work illegally is
that such people work in the moonlight economy. However, a lot of people are
illegal in the sense that they do not have permission to work, but work in the
mainstream economy. Over the years in constituency advice surgeries, I have seen
lots of people who have come here through a variety of means. Some came
originally as asylum seekers and were given permission to work, which had never
been revoked; they still had a piece of paper stating that they had that
permission. Others came with valid visas, got national insurance numbers and
started to work. Others came as students. Others came from countries that are
now on visa lists, but were not when they came, so they did not have to have a
visa to come. All those people have national insurance numbers, pay tax and have
been doing so in some cases for years and years. As my hon. Friend said, they
get no benefit from that, but they have absolutely no security.
Clare Short: People who were recruited on a bursary by the national health
service to train as nurses, and who have qualified, have then been told that
they are not entitled to work in Britain. Has my hon. Friend come across that?
We expensively train someone whom we need and then tell them that they should
leave the country.
Mr. Gerrard: Yes, I have certainly seen examples of that.
A lot of those people are effectively settled: they have houses and families,
and they pay rent or have mortgages. However, they have no security. Employers,
particularly large ones, are starting to carry out more systematic checks on
people's right to work, so the people whom I have mentioned may lose their right
to work at any time. The Home Office knows that lots of people are in that
situation; that is precisely why it has included data-sharing proposals in the
latest UK Borders Bill-to allow checks between records from the Inland Revenue
and those from the Home Office and throw up those examples.
There are also people in a completely different situation. They are in the
moonlight economy, have no national insurance number and work for employers who
know very well what they are doing. Such people are most open to the worst forms
of exploitation; I shall not repeat what has been said about that. They cannot
enforce any employment rights whatever-not the minimum wage, not working
conditions; all that goes by the board. That has an impact on other people
working in the same industry or similar areas of work; I do not accept the
argument that it does not.
If, as the Home Office says, we are to have a crackdown on illegal working-if we
are to try systematically to discover employers that knowingly employ people
illegally and if we are to cross-check Inland Revenue records with the Home
Office's and throw up all those people-what will then be done? I have never
heard a single word from the Home Office, which knows the numbers involved,
about how it intends to deal with the issue. I have heard arguments against our
proposed regularisation scheme, but have never heard a single positive word
about what will actually be done. If there are, as we suspect, up to 500,000
people, plus dependents, in the situation that I have described, the absolute
reality is that they are not all going to be removed. That is a simple fact; it
would be absolutely impossible. At the current rate of removals, doing so would
take 25 years. Even if that rate were stepped up, lots and lots of people would
be thrown up but would end up not being removed.
What would happen to them? Would they just be left destitute? Some will be if we
carry on doing nothing. They would lose their jobs, they could not claim
benefits and they could not get another job. They have families, and rent to pay
and so on. Are we going to leave them destitute? Is that the policy? Frankly,
that would be a non-starter and would not work.
If the Home Office is going to argue that it will not go for a systematic
regularisation scheme, it has to produce some other systematic way to deal with
those people. It is no good simply saying that we will deal with them
individually, because we know what will happen. We know the size of the backlog
in the Home Office, and how long it takes. People come to see us who have put in
applications 18 months or two years ago that are still sitting in the Home
Office and not being dealt with. Saying that we will deal with the problem by
dealing with these people individually is unreal.
The only way in which we can deal fairly with the problem is through a
regularisation scheme, whether it is one of the proposed schemes or something
else-we can argue about the details of what it should be. I do not believe that
the proposed approach would necessarily be a magnet if it was properly dealt
with and a one-off. Italy was mentioned, but it has notoriously lax border
controls and so it is not comparable. If the Home Office make the border
controls work, and make some things work better-such as when people are able to
get a national insurance number when they do not have the right to one-and if a
regularisation scheme is combined with the introduction of the sort of controls
proposed by the Home Office, I do not see any reason why such a process should
become a magnet.
Let me conclude by returning to an earlier point. If we are going to go for the
rogue employers and throw up all those individual cases, what does the Home
Office propose to do? I ask the Minister, please, not to tell me that it will
consider each individual case as it arises, because that will be a recipe for
chaos. There is only one sensible way in which to deal with the situation, which
is through a clear, one-off regularisation scheme that allows people to know
where they stand. People can then behave as citizens rather than living all the
time without knowing whether they will be out of a job and with no money next
week.
Mr. John Greenway (Ryedale) (Con): I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in
the debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Dagenham (Jon Cruddas) on
securing it. I have been closely following his campaign on the issue, not least
because in the two years since I was appointed to the Parliamentary Assembly of
the Council of Europe I have been an active member of the committee on
migration, refugees and population. I am its rapporteur for a major inquiry
into, and report on, regularisation programmes for irregular migrants. In
Strasbourg next week, I anticipate that my report will be approved by the
committee for debate in the plenary session in early October and that that
report will be supported by Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Labour Members of
this House as well as Members of Parliament from all political parties in 46
European countries.
In an intervention, the hon. Member for Elmet (Colin Burgon) made the point that
this is probably the most serious and intractable problem to face our society. I
have no doubt from what I have seen and learned over the past two years that
that is undoubtedly the case. Time does not permit us to go into all the detail
of what will be in my report, but I am more than happy to make a copy of it
available to any Member. My hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green),
who is our Front-Bench spokesman, and I have exchanged comments on the matter
and I have kept him informed of some of the work that we have done.
What we have to do, above all else, is to face the facts. At a conservative
estimate, there are probably between 5.5 million and 6.5 million irregular
migrants in the European Union alone, and considerably more in other European
countries outside the EU, with between 8 million and 10 million irregular
migrants living in Russia. It has become ever more clear that a large proportion
of those persons will remain in Europe, sometimes moving from country to
country, and that it will not be possible to return them forcibly or voluntarily
to their countries of origin. The question arises of how to deal with those
irregular migrants who live in Europe and are tolerated, for the large part, but
who do not have a legal status or a right to remain. The speeches made by the
hon. Members for Dagenham and for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard), as well as some of
the interventions, colourfully illustrated the problems that we all know exist.
Several member states of the Council of Europe have in the past undertaken
so-called regularisation programmes. My research shows that in the past 25
years, more than 20 regularisation programmes have been carried out within the
European Union alone, providing 4 million irregular migrants with either
temporary or permanent residence and work permits. A substantial regularisation
programme is under way in Russia, where 1.5 million people have been
regularised-600,000 are in jobs, and the other 900,000 are spouses and
dependants. A range of different programmes have been tried, including
exceptional humanitarian programmes, family reunification programmes, permanent
or continuous programmes, one-off or one-shot programmes like the proposal of
the hon. Member for Dagenham, and earned regularisation programmes. The trend is
towards earned regularisation for people who have been in the country and in
work for some time.
The matter is highly controversial, as the hon. Gentleman said. The arguments go
both ways. Some say that regularisation in effect encourages more irregular
migration. I have not found that to be the case. Spain was mentioned, and I was
in Madrid in February to talk to politicians of all parties, trade unions and
employers. They believe that the one-shot regularisation programme introduced
two years ago, which is now coming to an end and has regularised nearly 600,000
people, has not had any impact on encouraging more irregular migration. On the
contrary, the issue in Spain, which came as a surprise to me, is that although
we have all seen the tragedy of the boat people arriving on Spain's southern
shore and the islands, that is a tiny fraction of the migration problem in
Spain. Most of the people who come to Spain have a right to do so because they
are of Spanish extraction. They come from south America on work permits or
student permits, get jobs, overstay, and are therefore irregular migrants.
Regularising the people who are there is completely irrelevant to that
situation, in my judgment.
Mr. Hollobone: I am following my hon. Friend's comments on Spain with interest.
Spain has had, I think, six regularisation programmes since 1985. As in the case
of Italy, year after year the number of people on those programmes has
increased, from 44,000 in 1985 to 700,000 in 2005.
Mr. Greenway: The reason for that is that Italy's immigration policy is
completely different to ours. In Italy, 1.4 million people have been regularised
in the past 15 or 20 years, but that is the way in which it provides a route to
migration and everyone knows that. We have a different policy. One has to study
the facts and take the evidence, as I have done, but the idea that such an
approach might be a pull factor is an argument, and one that cannot be denied.
However, the push factor is the real reason for migratory flows in most of
south-east Europe. One has only to look at the crisis in the Balkans to
understand that. There are still some 500,000 internally displaced persons in
the Balkan countries despite all that we have done with our European partners to
improve the situation. One could debate the issue ad nauseam, but there is not
the time to do so and I want to put the other point of view.
Some say that regularisation rewards illegality, and I understand that argument.
I equally understand the concern that the longer we discuss whether or not there
will be a regularisation programme, the more some people might think they should
try to get into Britain so that they can become part of the amnesty. That leads
me to my next point: we need to distinguish between a regularisation programme
and an amnesty. None of the recent regularisation programmes has been an
amnesty, which is when all irregular migrants are legalised. That is not what
has happened. In Greece the regularisation programme introduced by the
Conservative Government elected 18 months ago is a combination of regularising
people who have earned their right to be there and have employment, many of whom
came from Albania and the Balkans, and forcibly returning people who should not
be there. There is a strong return policy in place. The arguments need to be
balanced.
The critical issue that we must face is that, as the hon. Member for Walthamstow
(Mr. Gerrard) said, on the Government's own analysis there are several hundred
thousand people in this country whom there is no prospect of returning. What on
earth are we going to do with and about them?
Clare Short: I have a lot of asylum seekers in my constituency whose
applications have been refused and who will not leave the country. They are
destitute, homeless and increasingly mentally ill. We cannot live with the
increased number of people in that desperate condition. We must do something to
sort it out.
Mr. Greenway: The right hon. Lady makes her point extremely well, and in many
ways I have a great deal of sympathy with what she says, but I want us to face
the reality that something has to be done with these people. My report addresses
the situation across the whole of Europe, and we can lessons from what I have
discovered. The report recommends a process whereby we clarify the issue,
particularly in European Union countries. We need more research and a proper
debate about what to do, and we need to learn the lessons and ensure that
whatever a member states does, it keeps other countries informed. One reason why
the Spanish regularisation was so unpopular was that it did not do that. The
matter can be resolved only in the form of partnership.
As the right hon. Lady said, we also need to evaluate the humanitarian issue. I
cannot for the life of me see how we can balance an argument that says, "All
these people shouldn't be here. They should all be sent back. It's all
terrible," with the fact that we cannot do that because we do not know where
some of them have come from. Apart from anything else, under Council of Europe
conventions we cannot forcibly return people en masse; we must deal with each
person individually. In my judgment, removal is not an option other than for
people who have recently arrived.
The need to strengthen our borders is without doubt, and the front door to
migration also needs to be examined. We must see how the points system works and
whether it provides business with a sufficient number of workers. That is
ongoing.
The issue is sensitive, difficult and controversial, and we know that public
opinion is not generally in favour of regularisation. What do we do about that?
It has to change or we cannot defeat those people who stand for the British
National party, not just in the constituencies of other hon. Members here, but
in mine, too, because there are BNP candidates in rural villages in Ryedale. How
are we going to deal with that? The only way is to tell the truth and establish
the facts, which means that we need to debate the subject and make a quick
decision about what we are going to do. The longer it drags on, the worse it
will get.
Above all else, we have to put humanitarian considerations at the top of our
agenda. I take great comfort from what my former colleague Keith Best of the
Immigration Advisory Service has said and is doing, which proves that we can
deal with the problem in a humanitarian and compassionate way across the
political divide. The people affected have lives and want futures, and we must
do something about it. I congratulate the hon. Member for Dagenham on furthering
the debate, and I am sure that there will be many opportunities to discuss the
issue in greater detail in the months ahead.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North) (Lab): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member
for Dagenham (Jon Cruddas) on getting the debate. Following the point made by
the hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway), nobody should underestimate the
large number of people who feel very strongly about the fundamental injustice
that is being done to twilight communities throughout the UK. We should not
necessarily measure public opinion by the screaming headlines of the Evening
Standard, the Daily Mail or the Daily Express. There are an awful lot of decent
people out there who take a different point of view. We should not approach the
threat of the BNP like a rabbit in the headlights of car; we should tackle it
head-on and say that it is leading us into a disgusting, nasty, divisive
society. We must stand up for an inclusive society that recognises the rights
and needs of everybody in our community, and be prepared to invest properly in
it.
On Monday morning, like other colleagues, I took part in a refugee week
awareness event in Islington. The council and the refugee forum produced an
excellent booklet describing not the disasters or failures but the successes of
migrant communities in coming into the area, promoting cultural diversity,
producing new businesses, work and educational achievements and developing the
strength of inner-city London an awful lot. I congratulate everyone involved in
that. We should examine the positive aspects of how migrant communities have
contributed and achieved so much in our society.
Without the level of migration to this country that we have had over the past 30
years, when, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham said, we have had a
falling birth rate, what kind of education service, science base and transport
service would we now have? An awful lot of the successes of the British economy
in the past 30 years have been built on people coming here and contributing
massively to our economic well-being and development.
The other side of the matter is the sadness of people having to flee from
oppressive regimes, some of which we supply arms to, and the tragedy of people
dying in boats while trying to cross the Atlantic to get to the Canary islands,
Italy or Spain. We should develop a foreign policy based much more on human
rights and an ethical dimension to deal with the problems that people are trying
to flee from in the first place.
Mr. Hollobone: I am following with interest what the hon. Gentleman says. Under
the proposals for regularisation, what would he do with asylum seekers whose
claims were refused?
Jeremy Corbyn: That is a simplistic way of looking at it, but I will come to it
in a second. I want to finish my point about the role that foreign policy can
play and the need to have a better human rights records around the world.
The proposal deals with the exploitation of people in our inner-city
communities. I used to be a union organiser before I came into Parliament, and I
noticed that when people had no regularisation of their position in the UK, they
hid. They did not join a union; they were frightened of getting a parking ticket
if they had a car; and they were frightened of any authority or of going to the
doctor. They were frightened in total. They were therefore grossly exploited. I
recall going to a union recruitment meeting for clothing workers in Hackney in
the early '80s. It was a large meeting and the union officials gave good
speeches about why those people, who all worked in local clothing factories,
should join the union. Not one person said a word throughout the meeting. There
was absolute silence-no questions, no contributions, no debate or discussion.
Why?
Because there were employers at the back saying pretty loudly, so that the
people around them could hear, that anyone who joined the union or said anything
would be reported to the Home Office. That was the ultimate in exploitation and
that is the reality of life for people who have no regularisation.
I support what my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) said
about a one-off system of regularising people who have been here for, say, four
years. We can work out the details of that. Like many others in the Chamber, I
have constituents who are asylum seekers. Half of my advice surgery cases
involve asylum seekers who come to me, not necessarily to discuss the merits or
justice of their case, but simply to get an answer from the Home Office to
letters that have been unanswered-in some cases, for years. The Home Office is
in an appalling mess. It cannot respond to simple correspondence and give people
a degree of security. That has to be looked at.
When someone applies for asylum, they have to pass tests. Are they in legitimate
and genuine fear of persecution because of political, social, religious or
racial circumstances? All those issues are considered. Most asylum applicants
are turned down at first, many win on appeal and many subsequently get the right
to remain even though they have not necessarily been granted asylum status. The
prospect of removing large numbers of people from this country simply is not on,
particularly if they have been here for some years. Somebody who has been here
for five years will have children and relationships, and will be contributing to
the community. What will we do with them? Will we really uproot and deport them?
No. We must recognise that they are here and deal with the situation
accordingly.
I support the proposal of my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham, and I
recognise the boldness of the churches, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the
Transport and General Workers Union-now Unite-and other unions and individuals
who have been prepared to take up the issue. If we want to live in a decent and
cohesive society, our wealth and prosperity cannot rely on people who lead a
feral and twilight existence, and who are grossly exploited and subject to
criminal activities, drug dealers and prostitution. All those things happen
because we allow the situation to continue.
The hon. Member for Ryedale pointed out what is happening across Europe. The
United States is having this debate in an atmosphere that is very different from
the one here. Its politicians-not universally, but generally-are lining up to
say that the USA can no longer consider itself a decent, cohesive society if it
relies on the twilight existence of a large number of mainly Mexicans and
central Americans to do all its dirty jobs. It is time that all the western
nations woke up to the problem and recognised that if we believe in human
rights, decency and citizenship, we should grant them to everybody in our
society.
Sir Peter Soulsby (Leicester, South) (Lab): I congratulate my hon. Friend the
Member for Dagenham (Jon Cruddas) on obtaining this debate on what is,
undoubtedly, a matter of great concern to many Members of the House. That is
clear from the contributions that have been made. The debate deals with the
significant suffering and exploitation that are either unnoticed by the country
at large or, perhaps worse, grossly misrepresented by the media.
May I take the opportunity to join my hon. Friend and others in welcoming the
Strangers into Citizens campaign? As he pointed out, the debate is not, as often
portrayed, about offering an amnesty but about offering positive ways forward.
It is about offering pathways to citizenship for long-term migrants, many of
whom are in situations of absolute and abject hopelessness. For the most part,
they have the potential to contribute in an enormously valuable way to our
society, to our economy and to every aspect of our life, but, for far too many
of them, the hopelessness and despair that they face is very real, and their
situation must seem to them to be a tremendous waste of their lives and skills.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn), I see many
people in such circumstances at my surgery. They despair not just over the waste
and uncertainty but of any answer as to what the future might hold for them.
They are unable to see any clear path for the future. I pay tribute to the many
individuals and groups throughout the country who work so tirelessly and so well
with those who face uncertain or hopeless situations, particularly in my
constituency and in my city of Leicester. Tomorrow evening, I shall attend at
Leicester cathedral a presentation on the third survey of destitute and homeless
asylum seekers. The work has been undertaken by various groups in the city-faith
groups in particular but many individuals as well-that are committed to working
with those disadvantaged individuals and to bringing their plight and the
reality of their situation to local attention. Those individuals and faith
groups fill a gap that desperately needs filling, and often do so in a committed
and selfless way.
We have had a well-informed and thoughtful debate, and Members from all parties
recognise the need to end the waste that is so much a symptom of the present
situation. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond sympathetically, and
that she will recognise that a positive response is required from the Government
to the considerable momentum that is developing behind the Strangers into
Citizens campaign. The Government must respond to the needs of those who find
themselves in hopeless situations. Those people need a pathway to a positive
future that will enable them to make a positive contribution to the society of
which they wish to be part.
Mr. Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con): I congratulate the hon. Member for
Leicester, South (Sir Peter Soulsby) on his contribution. This has been an
interesting debate, but I have to say to him that it is not reflective of the
mood of the country as a whole. I shall probably be a lone voice in this debate.
I have a genuine interest in the proposals, and I hope that there will be many
other opportunities to go into them in more detail.
We all agree that there is a huge problem in this country with illegal
immigration, but I am afraid that it is largely of the Government's making. The
Home Office and Foreign Office procedures for visas are in complete and utter
chaos, and all of us, week in and week out, receive letters, e-mails and phone
calls from constituents who have not received the replies that they deserve to
their applications. The problem has become far worse in the past 10 years.
Regardless of someone's political persuasion, if they look at the matter
objectively, they would have to admit that the way in which applications are
processed is completely incompetent, and it seems to be getting worse and worse.
The public are angry about the level of immigration in this country. We now have
an unprecedented wave of both legal and illegal immigration, and, as far as most
people are concerned, they have not been asked for their view on it at all. I
quote from an opinion poll carried out in January by YouGov. To the statement,
* "There must be an annual limit to the number of immigrants allowed to come to
Britain",
83 per cent. agreed or strongly agreed. To the statement, "Britain is already
overcrowded", 76 per cent. agreed. To the statement,
* "Anyone admitted to Britain for settlement should first have to pass an
English language test",
78 per cent. agreed. On the statement,
* "Immigrants are of economic benefit to Britain",
the jury was split: 31 per cent. agreed or strongly agreed, and 32 per cent.
disagreed or strongly disagreed. As a political class, we have a very real
problem with the issue. There are not many of us here for this debate, yet this
is one of the big issues in the country. We need to have a major debate on the
Floor of the House to flesh out the question in far more detail.
Mr. Jeremy Browne (Taunton) (LD): I start as is customary and with genuine
sentiment, by congratulating the hon. Member for Dagenham (Jon Cruddas) on
securing the debate and on taking a sustained interest in this important topic,
despite the distraction of his potential elevation on Sunday and his other
duties. It has been an interesting debate and I welcome all the contributions
that have been made, including the brief contribution of the hon. Member for
Kettering (Mr. Hollobone). It is important that we should not allow the debate
to become lop-sided, as it should reflect the variety of opinions that I hear in
my constituency and across the country. It would not serve us well if all
opinions were not given an airing and considered when discussing such important
topics.
I say this with genuine sentiment: it is a difficult area for the Home Office
and I have some sympathy with the Minister. In a written answer on 23 January,
the Minister for Immigration and Asylum said
* "An estimate of irregular migrants working in the UK is not available. No
Government of the UK have been able to say with accuracy how many irregular
migrants are present in the country, and this is the case for any Government in
the world."-[Official Report, 23 January 2007; Vol. 455, c. 1698W.]
We are dealing with an amorphous issue and its precise scope is hard to define.
The breadth of views should be borne in mind, as it is not the case that the
arguments point emphatically one way or the other. I will spend the next five or
10 minutes discussing what considerations the Home Office needs to bear in mind
when examining the issue in greater detail.
A plus side of the argument advanced by the hon. Member for Dagenham is that, in
this country, some people have double standards. Many people who are illegal
migrants, particularly in big cities such as London, do jobs that many people
who have lived in this country for much longer are not willing to do. We take
their contribution for granted, and they are often employed, for example, as
office cleaners. I have no absolute proof that people who clean offices in
London are illegal migrants, but I would be surprised if a large number of
people who clean offices did not fall into that category. They turn up early in
the morning before most people go to work and make the offices look smart and
presentable.
Employers in those offices, who no doubt earn considerably more money than those
cleaners, take that service for granted. It would not be practical to do so, but
for the purposes of illustrating my point, if those illegal migrants were pulled
out tomorrow en masse and in one go, many people who had taken the work of
illegal migrants for granted would suddenly notice that their lives became more
difficult in practical terms. We would also have severe labour shortages.
The two factors that drive people to migrate and create an economic global
dynamic were mentioned at the outset of the debate. In western Europe, we have
had more than 15 years of continuous economic growth, and there is a low birth
rate among the long-standing indigenous population. Both those factors create
labour shortages and put pressures on the economy, particularly in low-skilled,
low-paid jobs at the bottom of the labour market. The Government's
administration of the migration system is far from perfect, but they are working
against a bigger backdrop of global economic factors that go beyond the
immediate scope of any particular Government. That feeds into the wider debate:
for example, many people who work in my constituency and are not United Kingdom
citizens come from eastern Europe, particularly the new accession countries such
as Poland. They fall into a different category from the people whom we are
discussing but, none the less, they fill labour shortages in agriculture,
fruit-picking, slaughter houses and other such jobs. They do not directly take
work from people who have lived in the community for a long time but fill labour
shortages that employers would otherwise be unable to fill.
The second point to be entered on that side of the ledger concerns
practicalities. Last year, the think-tank, the Institute for Public Policy
Research, estimated that the cost of forced deportation, if we wished to go down
that path, would be £4.7 billion. It is fair to say that that is an extremely
unlikely, if not impossible, course of action for the Government, given the
practicalities and the cost. We are therefore in a strange situation: an
unsatisfactory state of affairs that has left a large number of people in a
state of limbo is official Government policy by default because no alternative
proposals are practical or financially viable. In its report, the IPPR states
that regularising the work status of people who are illegal immigrants could
annually
* "net the Treasury £1 billion."
We could have a debate about that and dispute the accuracy of the IPPR figures,
but there is an economic consideration to be borne in mind.
As mentioned by the hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn), while we
should bear in mind the fact that many illegal immigrants have chosen to be
here, regardless of their immigration status, we should feel uncomfortable about
the way in which they are routinely exploited. I have mentioned some of the
reasons why the current situation is hard to sustain and some of the perfectly
sensible factors, economic and otherwise, that are driving the phenomenon. It is
worth looking at the other side of the ledger in my remaining few minutes. The
economy and the declining birth rate are significant factors that have helped to
drive illegal immigration. However, if one accepts that that is the case, one
cannot argue that if the status of all illegal immigrants was legalised it would
solve the problem. Economic factors and pressures on the birth rate would
presumably drive another generation or successive numbers of illegal immigrants
to fill labour shortages created by ongoing periods of economic growth, greater
transport mobility and other factors that are hard for a single Government to
control.
We must consider the need for proper border forces, proper entry and exit
checks, proper surveillance at ports and other factors. People shy away from the
word amnesty, but if the current status of illegal immigrants was legalised, the
Government might say that it was a one-off decision that would not be repeated
in future. However, people who have come here as illegal immigrants might reach
the entirely rational conclusion that although that was what was previously
said, the Government could change their mind and there is no reason why they
would not do so in the future. Of course any Government would say that such a
decision was a one-off. They would not say, "Well, we're doing this now and we
will probably do it again in future". People who came here would be making not
only a rational economic decision, but a rational citizenship decision, as they
might think that when the Government said they were going to do it only once,
they did not mean it as they had no choice but to give that impression.
People may be concerned, too, that legalising the status of illegal immigrants
would be an award for illegal behaviour. Some individuals might have wished to
come to the United Kingdom to live and work and become a citizen, but were
deterred from doing so because they did not wish to undertake an illegal
activity. It might be considered unfair that those who sought to avoid doing
anything illegal should be penalised while people who made a different decision
would not be penalised. People who have lived in this country for a long time
might be unhappy about the pressure on services as a result of giving legal
status to people whose immigration status is currently illegal. In conclusion,
we all agree about the malign effects of the British National party. I feel as
strongly about that as anybody, but the debate is nuanced. There are reasons why
the Home Office could go down the path advocated by the hon. Member for
Dagenham, but I can see that there are serious considerations that the Minister
and others must bear in mind. However, today's debate is a good starting point
for reaching those conclusions.
Damian Green (Ashford) (Con): Like everyone else, I congratulate the hon. Member
for Dagenham (Jon Cruddas) on securing the debate. I imagine that we are far
enough through the process of his other endeavours for the last votes to be in
the post by now, and I hope that I can wish him well without causing him undue
damage.
The hon. Gentleman made a powerful case and, indeed, I have been lobbied, as, I
am sure, the Minister has, by the Strangers into Citizens campaign. It makes a
plausible case, articulately put. As we have heard, it has attracted support
from both sides of the House and from a number of people outside.
It is particularly useful that my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr.
Greenway) and his committee in the Council of Europe will produce its report
shortly, because clearly it is important to put the debate in a global context.
We all know that the economic forces of globalisation and the increasing ease of
travel between many parts of the world are leading to a worldwide increase in
migration, both legal and illegal, and it is clear that any sensible Government
policy will have to be put in that context. Equally, however, the case advanced
by the hon. Gentleman has its opponents in all parties. I was struck when first
I heard him advocate his case publicly on a "Newsnight" debate between the
deputy leadership candidates. They were split themselves, and some of his
colleagues spoke against his idea.
We have all had hard cases arrive at our constituency surgeries. I shall provide
a vivid example of how this issue-not the point about regularisation or an
amnesty in particular, but immigration generally-is rising up the agenda. In my
constituency, which is a semi-urban, semi-rural one in east Kent, I recently
held a surgery at which every case was about immigration. It was the first time
that one issue had dominated an entire surgery completely. One might think that
that could happen in some of our inner cities, but I was surprised that it
happened in a constituency such as mine.
On the issues that have arisen, hon. Members said that we need to have the
debate on a factual and honest basis. In that regard, I am slightly dubious
about the number of them who simply said, "This is not an amnesty. We must not
call this an amnesty." Actually, it is an amnesty. Let us be honest! That is the
proposal. The debate would be held at a higher level if we based it not only on
the numbers involved, but on what we are calling for.
We need also to look at the context, which has been referred to several times.
That context is the very large number of people in this country who have no
right to be here. Inevitably, it is impossible to guess the exact number.
Ministers have put a figure on it of something like 500,000-a slightly dubious
figure based on an American technique of sampling from some years ago. I suspect
that the figure is much higher than that. We must also ask ourselves, "Who are
these people and why are they here?" Some of them have come here perfectly
legitimately, but have simply overstayed, which will have been a rational and
conscious decision. They will have decided to put themselves outside the legal
process by doing that. My guess is that they will constitute the largest number.
Some will have been smuggled here illegally, but others-this group has been
referred to already-will have come here, claimed asylum, often in the late 1990s
and early years of this century, but still not have had their cases registered.
It is impossible not to have a huge amount of sympathy for the latter group. We
all know that that is appalling, not just because of the inadequacy of the Home
Office response, but because of the human effects. There will be children in
this country getting on for eight, nine, 10 or 11 who have never known another
country, but who have no legal status in this one. Surely that is unacceptable.
Many of the adults will be exploited. I was struck by some of the evidence given
by trade unions to the Public Bill Committee on the UK Borders Bill about the
fact that groups of Portuguese workers in this country are claiming to be
Brazilian so that they can take jobs illegally, and the only jobs available to
them will be at wages below the minimum wage. They know that no unscrupulous
employer will employ them if they are Portuguese because they will then have
rights.
Therefore, they pretend to be here illegally when actually they are here
legally. Clearly that is unsatisfactory. I am sure that the Minister will
acknowledge that the Opposition supported the Government through the passage of
the UK Borders Bill to tighten up regulations against unscrupulous employers.
We have heard many of the arguments for the amnesty and the financial argument
put by the IPPR, which are plausible, but perhaps not overwhelmingly so. We
heard about the need to stop people being exploited, with which of course we all
agree. We heard also the argument that we must try to stop the rise of the
extreme right. Again, everyone here approves of that. The question is whether
this particular measure would help in any or all of those endeavours. In
parenthesis, when discussing such issues, we must mind our language. I say
gently to the Minister that she could have a word with some of her fellow
Ministers, particularly the Minister for Industry and the Regions, who in recent
weeks has not shown great care in her language and might have contributed to the
inflammatory nature of some of the debate.
I shall get to the nub of the counter-arguments. The claim is that the proposal
would be a one-off amnesty. I agree with the hon. Member for Taunton (Mr.
Browne) that that is, of course, what any Government would say, and it has been
said by other Governments. My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr.
Hollobone) rightly mentioned the cases of Spain and Italy. Spain has had five
amnesties and Italy has had six. France and Belgium have had two each. It would
be entirely rational for anyone to think that if an amnesty comes once, that
country has crossed a line and will grant amnesties in the future.
Although that would have a beneficial effect on those already here, of whom
there are many, we must consider the effect on those not yet here, but who might
be considering coming. We are not talking only about those who might be
oppressed or wish to better themselves economically by moving to western Europe.
We must think also about people traffickers, who are some of the nastiest and
most evil criminals in the world. They wish to "help" those who desire to come
here. We have all seen pictures of those small boats either coming across the
Mediterranean or going across the Atlantic to the Canary islands. What we do not
see are the tragedies of those boats that do not get there and the many
hundreds, possibly thousands, killed in such endeavours.
If this country took a public policy step that made it easier for people
traffickers to persuade some of the most wretched and poorest people in the
world that it is worth their while taking a boat across the Mediterranean or
Atlantic, we would be doing something immoral and foolish. That is one of the
factors that we need to consider. I have heard the arguments put by my hon.
Friend the Member for Ryedale about the Spanish case and how it does not act as
a pull factor, but I shall wait to see the report in full before deciding
whether that is the case.
It is clear that we need much better control of our borders. That is why
Conservative Members advocate a specialist border police force. Clearly, if we
have open borders, the argument that we are having in this debate is irrelevant,
because many more people will come here illegally. A final point of detail is
the point made by Keith Best that we can consider an amnesty more sensibly when
the e-borders system is in operation.
Unfortunately, it will not be fully operational until 2014-a long way in the
future.
I agree that this is a difficult argument, because everyone wants to do the
morally right thing, but acting morally does not mean that we should necessarily
suspend our intellectual faculties. If the second-order effects of the proposal
would be to encourage more illegal migration across the world, we could do more
harm than good, so I am not convinced by the argument but, like everyone else, I
am very grateful to the hon. Member for Dagenham for raising this important
issue.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Joan Ryan):
Like other hon. Members, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham
(Jon Cruddas) on securing the debate. It is on an important subject and one that
is very important to our constituents. Whether we can reach consensus on the way
forward or not, it is crucial that we debate these issues.
I associate myself with the remarks made by many hon. Members in entirely
rejecting the extremism of the British National party and any who align
themselves with its views. That is linked to why I think that it is so important
that we debate the issues. If we do not address people's concerns and we leave a
vacuum, and if we are not honest about debating the subject, that will open the
door to people feeling that perhaps the only groups that are addressing their
concerns are those such as the BNP, so it is our responsibility to discuss these
things. Even if we do not reach consensus, I accept that everybody who has taken
part in the debate has shown genuine care and concern about the problems and
finding a way forward.
That said, I reject what the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) said about
my right hon. Friend the Minister for Industry and the Regions. I do not see her
remarks as inflammatory. They were in the context of being honest and open in
the debate and reflecting the concerns of her constituents in an open and honest
way. She has the right to do just that. If we categorise those remarks, which
were about something that concern her constituents-housing-as inflammatory, we
are doing the BNP's work for it by closing down our ability to address our
constituents' concerns honestly. Whether or not people agree with her
conclusions, she has the right, and was right, to make those remarks.
My own view is that a fundamental British value-a value that really
characterises British people-is fairness and the belief in fairness. Immigration
and asylum issues go to the heart of our society. Our approach to those issues
must reflect our values and therefore must be a fair approach, and our
constituents must believe that we are dealing with the issues fairly. In
addition, I see no point in having asylum and immigration legislation if we do
not implement it.
For the Government, an effective and managed immigration system is fundamental
to the interests of the United Kingdom. Migration has provided an economic gain
for this society, as well as bringing diversity to us. I make no bones about the
fact that controlled legal migration is critical for our security and our social
and economic well-being.
I shall set out clearly the Government's position on the proposal by the
Strangers into Citizens campaign for a new pathway from illegal status through a
work permit stage to settlement, as that was the crux of the argument advanced
by my hon. Friend. I accept that there are other similar models. I need to be
very straight with him. He would expect nothing less, and I do appreciate the
way in which he put his arguments. However, for the following reasons, the
Government do not accept that the proposed pathway to regularisation is either
necessary or appropriate. Incidentally, I have some sympathy with the question
asked by the hon. Gentleman: when is regularisation regularisation and when is
it an amnesty? Even if it is partial and it depends on people having been here
for a certain number of years illegally or whatever, it is still a partial
amnesty, so I do not draw a particular distinction between those two terms.
The first reason for not accepting the proposal is that there is no legitimate
argument that our labour market needs to be supplemented by regularising people
from the illegal population. Our existing immigration rules provide clear and
fair routes for people to come to the UK for employment and settlement, and they
fully meet our needs. We are committed to a system of managed migration to
ensure that economic migration routes are available to admit people selectively
to maximise the economic benefit to the UK and are responsive to labour markets,
skill needs and the interests of the UK.
In addition to the work force available as a result of freedom of movement
within the EU, the introduction of the new points-based system will open up
legal migration routes. Those who want to apply to come to work in the UK can do
so on the basis of informed choice and with access to the rights and freedoms
available to other workers. The points-based system will be further supported by
increasing resources to increase enforcement capacity. To create a new route to
regularisation for people here illegally would disrupt the transition
arrangements for EU accession nationals.
Secondly, I simply do not accept the contention that the proposal would have a
neutral impact on uncontrolled economic migration to the UK. Many hon. Members
addressed that. It would send a message across the world that the UK legitimises
illegal migrants. In effect, we would be throwing aside our immigration controls
and ignoring our rules and managed systems. I do not think that that would
strike anybody as fair. If we do it once, that will create a very real
expectation that we will do it again-the Rubicon will have been crossed.
I am aware that we have had amnesties in the past under previous
Administrations. There is no evidence that that has resolved the problem, and
hon. Members are again asking for regularisation. If one-off regularisations or
amnesties worked, Spain would not have had five, Italy would not have had six
and Belgium and France would not have had two. We have had the same situation
and there is still a call for regularisation.
The figure of 500,000 was mentioned. We have been very honest about the fact
that there is a backlog. The 500,000 relates to the number of cases. It could be
lower than that, because people die, return home, or go through the system in
another way and get the right to remain through a different route. The 500,000
figure refers to cases as opposed to individuals, and we have already started
dealing with that backlog, which is a very good thing. It is important that it
is being dealt with.
Hon. Members will know that we are now dealing with initial claims for asylum
within two months and we are seeking to complete claims within six. They will
also know that we have the lowest level of asylum applications since 1993. We
have hugely speeded up the system, which is important, and made it much more
efficient. We have tightened up our borders. We have sent the right messages and
we have therefore reduced the pull factor. The other side of the argument is
that by increasing enforcement and bearing down on those who knowingly and
deliberately employ illegal migrants, we cause harm to those migrants and put
them at risk. I accept the arguments-
Mrs. Janet Dean (in the Chair): Order. We must now move to the next debate.
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