Andy Burnham
Main Page: Andy Burnham (Labour - Leigh)Department Debates - View all Andy Burnham's debates with the Home Office
(8 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
If we are to continue building an immigration system that is fair to British citizens and people who come here legitimately to play by the rules and contribute to our society, we must ensure that it is balanced and sustainable, and that net migration can be managed. When properly managed, immigration enriches this country, as we benefit from the skills, talent and entrepreneurial flair that people bring to our society. But, as I said in my recent speech, when net migration is too high, and the pace of change is too fast, it puts pressure on schools, hospitals, accommodation, transport and social services, and it can drive down wages for people on low incomes. So we must achieve the right balance, rejecting both extremes of the debate, from those who oppose immigration altogether to those who want entirely open borders. That is why, since 2010, we have worked to build an immigration system that works in the national interest, one that is fair to British taxpayers and legitimate migrants, and tough on those who flout the rules or abuse our hospitality as a nation.
Over the past five years we have taken firm action to reform the chaotic and uncontrolled immigration system we inherited, and to ensure that people are coming here for the right reasons. We reformed the immigration rules for migrant workers and students, while continuing to welcome the brightest and the best. We have struck off nearly 900 bogus colleges since 2010, and at the same time we have seen a rise of 17% in the number of sponsored student visa applications for universities and a rise of 33% for Russell Group universities. We transformed the immigration routes for migrant workers and introduced a cap of 20,700 for non-European economic area migrant workers, and we have seen an increase in sponsored visa applications for highly skilled workers. We reformed family visas, to prevent misuse of that route, and we have made sure that people can financially support family members coming to the UK. We have also protected our public services from abuse by making important changes to the way people access benefits and the NHS.
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
It will not have escaped the House’s attention that the Home Secretary has struck a markedly different tone in her opening remarks this afternoon from the one she struck at her party conference in Manchester last week. The change in tone is very welcome, but she said at her conference, in contrast to what she said just a moment ago, that the overall economic benefit of migration is “close to zero”. Can she today give the House some evidence to back up that claim?
Mrs May
Nice try, but perhaps the right hon. Gentleman should read the speech I gave last week, as he would see that I am saying exactly what I said then. In that speech, I also quoted the many reports, from the OECD and others such as the Migration Advisory Committee, that have made that judgment in relation to the economic benefit of migration.
The Immigration Act 2014 put the law firmly on the side of those who respect it, not of those who break it. We made it easier and faster to remove those with no right to be here, streamlined the appeals process in order to curb abuse, and restricted access to bank accounts and rental properties for people here illegally. Thanks to our reforms, more than 11,000 people who were in the UK illegally have now had their UK driving licence revoked.
New powers have already enabled us to deport more than 1,000 foreign criminals, requiring them to make any appeal from outside the UK after they have left. More than 8,000 proposed marriages have been referred to the Home Office, with 120 of them being identified as shams. More than £100 million has been injected into the national health service as a result of the new immigration health surcharge. Those achievements are helping us to build an immigration system that is fairer, stronger and more effective.
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House, whilst affirming its belief that there should be firm and fair controls on illegal immigration including new immigration enforcement powers and immigration status checks on current account holders, and particularly welcoming proposals for a Director of Labour Market Enforcement and to strengthen sanctions to be applied to employers of illegal workers, declines to give a Second Reading to the Immigration Bill because the measures overall in the Bill will not decrease illegal immigration, will reduce social cohesion and will punish the children of illegal immigrants for their parents’ illegal immigration, because the Government has failed to publish the report on the pilot Right to Rent scheme in the West Midlands which could cause widespread indirect discrimination and because the Bill enables the Home Secretary to remove from the UK migrants who are appealing against a refused asylum claim before the appeal has been determined, notwithstanding the slow appeal process and the high error rate in Home Office decisions.
Let me start by setting this debate in an essential and important piece of context and with a point that the Home Secretary skated over at the start of her speech: the most recent evidence is clear—immigration provides a net benefit to our economy. It is not, as was claimed last week, “close to zero” but, according to authoritative and independent research, can be quantified at around £25 billion. That migrants contribute more to the public purse than they take out is a simple fact that cannot be repeated often enough in debates such as this. Similarly, in the NHS, we are far more likely to be treated by a migrant than to stand behind one in a queue. The culture and identity of our country—for centuries an open, outward-looking, seafaring nation—has itself been shaped by centuries of inward immigration, and it is all the richer for it.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
When I was on the Home Affairs Committee a few years, I put that very point to experts and I was told that nobody had ever worked out the costs of migration—the costs of providing health care, education and all the other public services that people take for granted—and done a proper cost-benefit analysis. Therefore I should like to know where the report that the right hon. Gentleman refers to comes from.
Andy Burnham
I can refer the hon. Gentleman to it. It is research carried out over a number of years by Imperial College, and I will be happy to send it to him. I suggest that he should perhaps spend more time looking at the evidence about immigration, rather than resorting to rhetoric, as I know he is wont to do.
All of that having been said at the beginning, the nature and scale of immigration to the UK has changed in the past decade, particularly since the expansion of the European Union into eastern Europe. Anyone who spent any length of time on doorsteps in the first half of this year cannot dispute the fact that immigration remains one of the highest concerns of the public, and the truth is that public and political debate has failed to keep pace with public concern, resulting in a feeling that the political class is out of touch.
Mr Jackson
May I take the shadow Home Secretary back to academic evidence about the impact of immigration? Given that the labour force survey by the ONS in July found that 75% of eastern European migrants were in poorly paid work and that they were more likely to access benefits, can he point to any specific empirical data which support the concept that east European migrants do not have an impact on low wages, depressing them or pushing them down?
Andy Burnham
I shall come on to that. [Hon. Members: “Ah!”] It is a fair point and I shall come on to it. May I again refer the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues to the research? The UCL Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration talks about the positive economic benefit of migration overall. He needs to concern himself with the evidence before he intervenes in the House.
As I said a moment ago, the House has not kept pace with public concern, and as I said in my speech to the Labour conference, I want to change that. People listening to debates in the Chamber or in the media will often hear politicians and business leaders make the point that I made at the beginning—that immigration provides an overall net benefit. Although this is true, and to take the hon. Gentleman’s point on board, what such broad statements fail adequately to acknowledge is that the effect of immigration is not uniform across the country, but that it has a differential impact in different areas.
Some of the most rapid changes have been felt in the poorest areas and former industrial areas away from the big urban centres. In my constituency, immigration has had an impact on job security, wages, access to housing and public services, but Parliament has been far too slow to acknowledge and act on those concerns. The danger is that that creates a vacuum and allows myths to flourish.
Mrs May
The right hon. Gentleman says that Parliament has been slow to accept that immigration can have an impact, particularly on people at the lower end of the income scale, driving wages down, and it can have an impact on public services. For the past five years, I and the parties in government have been saying precisely this, and the Labour party has been objecting and opposing that.
Andy Burnham
I am afraid I have to point out to the Home Secretary that she was not entirely factual at the Dispatch Box this afternoon. She said that the previous Government did nothing to restrict access to the NHS by illegal migrants. As Health Secretary I brought through measures to restrict access to the national health service. What I am setting out in my remarks today is a balanced approach, which she failed to do in hers. I recognised at the beginning the overall benefits of immigration to this country, but I am acknowledging that there are specific and legitimate concerns that need to be dealt with, because a failure to do that creates a vacuum and allows myths to flourish.
Given that, the right response is certainly not to respond in kind with rhetoric, but instead with practical and proportionate measures to restore public confidence that our system and our rules are both firm and fair.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
Will my right hon. Friend expand on how many prosecutions there have been in relation to minimum wage regulations and so on in areas of migration where there is clearly an issue in relation to the depressing of wages? How proactive have the Government been when employers have not adopted best practice?
Andy Burnham
There have been barely any prosecutions because the Government have cut the resources devoted to enforcement. I welcome the Home Secretary’s proposal to create a director of labour market enforcement, but will she ensure that that director, whoever he or she is, gets to grips with the problem that my hon. Friend has just raised?
Ian Austin
The shadow Home Secretary is completely right to say that the costs and benefits of immigration are not shared across the country. Communities such as ours do not attract many millionaire American bankers, French City traders or German hedge fund managers; we have a completely different sort of immigration that puts pressure on public services. Does he agree that the benefits must be shared equally across the country to enable such communities to provide the housing, employ the teachers and all the rest of it so that we can cope with those pressures?
Andy Burnham
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The challenge is to capture the benefits and then have rules that make immigration work for everybody. Let me give him two practical suggestions that I have put forward. First, I believe that we need changes to the EU free movement rules, as part of the renegotiation talks, to stop the undercutting of wages and protect the going rate for skilled workers. Secondly, I believe that unspent EU structural funds, which this Government are not drawing down, should be made available through a rapid migration fund to areas, such as his and mine, that face the biggest pressures on public services, for example to employ extra primary school teachers and GPs. At the moment those areas get no help in dealing with those pressures, so no wonder they feel neglected.
Mr MacNeil
I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman saw yesterday’s edition of the Financial Times, which mentioned refugees—we know how some people react to refugees. It stated:
“By streaming into Germany, but not into other eurozone countries, the refugees”
will contribute to
“an improvement in Germany’s relative competitive position”
over the next 10 to 20 years. Refugees and migrants benefit the economy, the country and all of us.
Andy Burnham
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. Overall, refugees tend to be younger and not to have dependants. Consequently, the figures I gave at the beginning, which show that they net contribute, rather than take out of the public purse, must be borne in mind when we engage in a debate of this kind.
Several hon. Members rose—
Andy Burnham
I will make some progress before giving way again.
As our reasoned amendment makes clear, we are prepared to support practical, proportionate and evidence-based measures that will achieve the stated aims of tackling illegal immigration and illegal working.
Mrs May
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his generosity in giving way to me a second time. He refers again to the fact that he quoted the net benefit of migration in his speech. In 2014 the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration, when looking at the fiscal effects of immigration to the UK, estimated that migrants contributed around £25 billion to the economy between 2001 and 2011. However, looking at all the migrants who had arrived since 1995, the estimates produced by that organisation suggested a net fiscal cost of around £114 billion. There is some evidence for the right hon. Gentleman.
Andy Burnham
I am afraid that the right hon. Lady has not learnt the lessons of her experience in Manchester last week, when she made a number of assertions without having the evidence to support them. She has got the evidence that overall there is a net contribution—she just quoted it. She, more than anyone else in this House, should stick to the evidence at all times and not resort to rhetoric.
Several hon. Members rose—
Andy Burnham
I will give way in a moment, after I have made some progress.
I have said that we will support measures to create a director of labour market enforcement, building on legislation passed by the previous Labour Government, particularly the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004. We also support many of the measures set out in part 3 of the Bill to improve enforcement and equip immigration officers with all the necessary powers to do their difficult job in a more complex and changing world. I am pleased to see the Government acting to address the weak points in the UK border, particularly at smaller regional airports and seaports. We support the measures set out in part 6 to tackle problems before people arrive in the UK by extending the reach of the Border Force into UK territorial waters.
John Redwood
The right hon. Gentleman made a very interesting point when he accepted that EU migration was causing problems in the labour market and difficulties with wages. He said that we should limit or change free movement. Can he just flesh out how he thinks we should limit free movement, because I think I would be with him?
Andy Burnham
When I mentioned that, in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin), I said that we wanted measures to protect the going rate, and then I heard noises from the Government Benches. Where were they when we were trying to get through the agency workers proposals and the posted workers proposals? If Government Members now support putting a floor beneath all British workers, that is a major conversion, but one that I welcome. Let us have a renegotiation that strengthens the workers’ rights provided by Europe, rather than stripping them away. These are the changes that I want to see. Let us protect the wages of electricians and plumbers. Let us not allow them to be undercut by agency workers who come in and are employed on the minimum wage, beneath the wages of the skilled workforce. If we can agree on that ahead of the EU referendum, that would be a major positive consensus that we could take to the British public.
Several hon. Members rose—
Andy Burnham
I will give way to the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Ms Ahmed-Sheikh), who has been very persistent.
Ms Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I agree with much of the sentiment behind his remarks this afternoon. However, I recall during the general election campaign catching sight of the Labour party website, which appeared to be selling mugs stating, “Controls on immigration”. Is this another example of a Labour U-turn, or is he in a full 360-degree spin on this issue as well?
Andy Burnham
I am not responsible for all Labour party merchandise. I did not purchase one of those mugs and I am not particularly proud of them. However, if the hon. Lady is saying that there should be no controls on immigration, I am afraid that we will have to part company on that, because there do need to be firm and fair rules to ensure that our immigration system works in the public interest.
Several hon. Members rose—
Barry Gardiner
Does my right hon. Friend share my astonishment at the figures the Home Secretary quoted, because included in the figures that she quoted as costs were what most of us would regard as the investment in the education of children in this country who will in due course be productive in the labour force? To count that as a cost, rather than an investment, rather biases the figures in her favour.
Andy Burnham
I was surprised. A fact-check was issued on that very point, and it is quite clear that the central estimates in the paper by UCL’s Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration suggests that European immigrants have made a net contribution of around £20 billion, and immigrants outside Europe make a small net contribution of around £5 billion—[Interruption.] The Home Secretary seems to dispute this, but she got into trouble last week because she did not have balance in her speech. If she is not careful she is going to develop a reputation for lacking balance on this issue.
Andy Burnham
No, I am going to make some progress.
The other measure that we support in the Bill is the requirement for all front-line public service staff to speak fluent English, which of course is a sensible proposal. However, I believe that, in legislating on these matters, we all have a responsibility to bear in mind at all times that this is the most difficult and sensitive of policy areas. Unlike other issues that we debate in this House, this one has the potential to cause real harm and strife in our communities.
We will support the Government when they get the balance right, but I want to be clear about what we will not do. We will not support legislation that is introduced in haste or that is not backed up by clear evidence. That is the problem with the Bill. Parts of it appear to have been drafted on the same beer mat and in the same pub as the Home Secretary’s speech to the Conservative party conference in Manchester. It is legislation driven by a desire to be seen to be doing something and to get headlines.
Caroline Lucas
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that international student numbers should be removed entirely from net migration figures, because otherwise we risk losing key international talent as well as undermining many local economies, such as Brighton’s, that depend on them to a great deal?
Andy Burnham
I think that is where the Home Secretary is beginning to cut an isolated figure, as she did last week at her party’s conference. I understand that her own Cabinet colleagues are making the same argument to her—the Chancellor of the Exchequer got dangerously close to making the same argument on his recent trip to China. The hon. Lady is right. If we are looking for an area where there is economic benefit to the country in the long term, it is absolutely that of welcoming to this country students who will then commit themselves to the country for the rest of their working lives.
The critical response to the Home Secretary’s speech last week did not come just from the usual suspects on the Labour Benches. The Daily Telegraph called it
“awful, ugly, misleading, cynical and irresponsible”,
while the Institute of Directors, no less, dismissed it as
“irresponsible rhetoric and pandering to anti-immigration sentiment”—
serious words. They were not alone. The public can spot any attempt to play politics with this issue from a million miles away, and that is why the Home Secretary got the reaction she did. She claimed in Manchester that immigration was undermining social cohesion. I put it to her that legislating in haste without clear evidence and bringing forward half-baked, divisive measures is far more likely to do precisely that.
Mr Charles Walker
I know that the right hon. Gentleman is concerned about immigration, but the Leader of the Opposition, his boss, has said that there should be no borders in this country anywhere—forget the European Union. He said during the Labour leadership contest that we should have open borders. Does the right hon. Gentleman share that view?
Andy Burnham
I stood alongside him and he said no such thing, so I will move on from that pointless intervention.
A number of organisations—Amnesty International, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Justice, the TUC and the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants—have expressed serious reservations about the Bill. They believe it could damage social cohesion, force children into destitution, undermine efforts to tackle human trafficking and modern slavery, erode human rights and civil liberties, and lead to widespread discrimination.
Let me take those issues in turn, starting with the potential for discrimination. Clause 12 in part 2 amends the Immigration Act 2014 to make it a criminal offence for a landlord to rent premises to an individual with no immigration status, punishable by five years in prison. The measure is intended to underpin the national roll-out of the Government’s right to rent scheme, as the Home Secretary said. I am not against asking landlords to carry out reasonable checks of identity documents, as they already do, but there are a couple of points to make. First, landlords are not border or immigration experts, they are not trained in reading official paperwork from around the world, and they are not experts in spotting forged documents, so on what basis are we planning to outsource immigration control to them? Will not the regulatory burden that this will impose on landlords be way beyond the capacity that many can manage? Secondly, given all that, is it really proportionate to threaten them with jail, and will not that have a major impact on the housing market and the way it works?
The House will recall that in the previous Parliament the Government tried to bring forward the same proposals, but given the huge implications, not least for private landlords, they were forced to back down and pilot them. A commitment was given to this House that the findings of the pilot would be presented to us before the Government proceeded any further. That was the commitment given by those on the Front Bench. We learned yesterday that that commitment will not be honoured. Although the Home Office has conducted its study, it will not present its findings until the Committee stage. That is not good enough. This House should not be in a position where it is being asked by the Home Secretary to vote tonight on measures that could have a huge impact in every constituency represented here today without evidence for what those measures might do. It is not just a discourtesy; it is downright dangerous. She is asking us to be complicit in legislating in haste, and this House should have none of it.
Let me explain why. We know that right to rent could cause widespread discrimination, not just against migrants but against British citizens. In the absence of the Government’s study, an independent survey was carried out by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants. It found that in the west midlands, the pilot area, 42% of landlords said that right to rent had made them less likely to consider someone who does not have a British passport, while 27% were now more reluctant—as my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) has said—to engage with those with foreign accents or names. Those are very serious findings. Why on earth is the Home Office not presenting its own information to the House so that we can establish whether it is correct?
Barry Gardiner
The shadow Home Secretary will know that my constituency was the first in the UK to have more people voting at the last election who were born outside the UK but now had the right to live and vote here. The panic that these measures is causing among landlords in my constituency, and the fears that they have because of the uncertainties of this Bill, will mean widespread discrimination for incoming students and other people who landlords fear may get them into trouble. They simply will not rent these properties. That is a major problem for this Bill and for good community relations in this country.
Andy Burnham
The JCWI believes that the figures I quoted are likely to underestimate the scale of the problem because of the nature and timing of the survey, but also because the problems are likely to be magnified much further in London, where there is a much bigger private rented sector and many more migrants. It says that
“these proposals will only…deepen the discrimination”
that already exists against people like those in my hon. Friend’s constituency who are seeking a tenancy.
When is the Home Secretary going to publish these conclusions, and why are we in this position today? In failing to produce the evidence, she has simply not made the case for the measures that she wants the House to vote on tonight. This is a major change in the law and she has not made the case for it.
Thankfully, the days when landlords displayed unwelcoming notices in the windows of their lodgings are gone, hopefully for good, but these document checks could legitimise a new wave of discrimination which, by being hidden, could be far harder to challenge. Only last week at the Conservative party conference, the Prime Minister highlighted how young people from black and Asian backgrounds face discrimination when they send out their CV, purely on the basis of their name. He was right to do so, and it was refreshing to hear it from a Conservative Prime Minister. But if he was really genuine, this question follows: why is he legislating to create exactly the same situation—the same everyday discrimination—in the housing market against people with foreign-sounding names? If he really believed what he said, he should ask his Home Secretary to think again.
Let me turn to employment—another area where there could be major unintended consequences if the Bill passes in its current form. I said earlier that we support measures to tackle illegal working that build on the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006, which I helped to take through as a junior Home Office Minister, but we have major reservations about the new offence of illegal working in clause 8. In the words of Justice, “it is unnecessary and risks undermining important efforts made over recent years to address issues such as trafficking and modern-day slavery.”
Justice does not believe the assurances that were given to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) by the Home Secretary. The sanctions that could be applied to an individual range from confiscation of wages right up to imprisonment. Justice says:
“Fear of prosecution and imprisonment is likely to deter the vulnerable, such as trafficked women and children, who are working illegally from seeking protection and reporting rogue employers and criminal gangs.”
What evidence can the Home Secretary give the House to show that that would not be the case? More broadly, this new offence will merely strengthen the arm of unscrupulous employers and reduce the likelihood of any employee coming forward to report them. For that reason, rather than tackling illegal working, is not the Bill likely to have the opposite effect and potentially increase the size of the black economy?
Lady Hermon
May I push the right hon. Gentleman’s party colleagues a little further? When campaigning to change the worst bits of this Bill—and there are some really dreadful bits—will they include the provision of guarantees whereby those who are trafficked as slaves through human trafficking and end up in the United Kingdom are given the same defences as those who are protected under the Modern Slavery Act 2015? Those defences must be replicated in this Bill. Will he confirm that his party will support those changes?
Andy Burnham
Justice does not accept the assurances that were given by the Home Secretary. I can therefore tell the hon. Lady that we will co-operate with her in Committee, if she takes part in it, to get those assurances into the Bill, because she is right to call for them.
Let me turn to human rights and civil liberties. The Bill extends the power of the Executive in a number of troubling ways. Part 4, as the Home Secretary said, proposes a major extension of the “deport first, appeal later” approach from foreign national offenders to all human rights claims. What case has the Home Office made to persuade Members that it can safely be given such sweeping powers? It has hardly covered itself in glory over the years with the speed or quality of its decision making. Let us remember that this is a Department that today has a backlog of over 300,000 immigration cases—a Department where up to 50% of the initial decisions that it makes are found to be wrong on appeal. With these figures in mind, are we really ready to give the Home Secretary much greater powers to remove migrants before their appeals have been determined? Again, the Government are asking us to legislate before the impact of the last extension has been fully evaluated. The Equality and Human Rights Commission says that, by denying people the ability to be present at their own appeal, the Bill is potentially in breach of articles 6, 8 and 13 of the European convention on human rights.
I ask all colleagues on both sides of the House to think, before they vote tonight, of the genuine cases they have dealt with and the people they have got to know at their surgeries whom they have rightly helped to stay here in challenging a Home Office decision. They should think of them before they legislate to allow people in a similar position to be removed without being able to attend their own appeal.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
I can give my right hon. Friend exactly such an example. One of the many cases my office is dealing with at the moment is that of a Sri Lankan Tamil whose application has been refused and who bears the mental and physical scars of torture. His application is now on appeal. If the Home Secretary’s proposals had been in place, he would already have been returned to Sri Lanka, where, given the human rights situation there, his life would potentially be at risk. I cannot support those measures and I do not understand how the Home Secretary can propose them.
Andy Burnham
I think that in their heart of hearts a lot of Government Members are not able to support the measures, because they have seen in their surgeries cases similar to that mentioned by my hon. Friend. They will know people who would have been deported if this Bill had been in place and who would not have been able to exercise their legitimate right to be present in person at their own appeal. That is why my hon. Friend is right to say that this is wrong.
The Bill also extends the power of the Executive to override the independent decisions of the first-tier tribunal with regard to immigration bail. It also allows the Home Secretary to impose bail conditions, including Executive electronic tagging. That raises important issues about the rights of people in our judicial system, and it could undermine the independence of our courts. Again, what confidence has the Home Office given us that it can be trusted with those powers? There is evidence that, under the coalition Government between 2011 and 2014, £15 million was paid out in damages for unlawful detention and abuse of the powers the Home Office already has.
Richard Fuller
Does the Labour party intend to table amendments to set a time limit for keeping people in immigration detention and to protect pregnant women and victims of torture, rape and international conflict from detention in this country?
Andy Burnham
Personally speaking, in my view those people and children should not be in detention. We need to take a look at how this country has approached these issues over a number of years. I would be happy to work with the hon. Gentleman on a cross-party basis, to address those issues. That is what we should do.
My final concern with the Bill relates to vulnerable children. [Interruption.] These are important issues and the hon. Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) would do well to listen to them before rushing into the Lobby to vote for the proposals without any evidence to support them.
Clause 34 proposes to remove support from families with children. Let me be honest—that was piloted by our Government, but it was rightly abandoned because of the effects it had. In a parliamentary debate in 1999, when those provisions were suggested, it was said that
“all children on British soil should be given the same protection…no child should go without protection…We are concerned about the welfare of children, who should not suffer under any circumstances, whoever their parents are and whatever their basis for being in the country.”—[Official Report, 16 June 1999; Vol. 333, c. 418-421.]
Those are fine sentiments, and they came from the then Conservative Opposition. I say to Government Members that what was right then is right now. No child should face destitution in our country, whoever they are, wherever they come from.
One of the most powerful moments in the Prime Minister’s conference was when he talked about his response to the photograph of Alan Kurdi. It was powerful because it spoke to our common humanity and our instinct to protect children, whatever their circumstances. That is why the Bill is not supportable until those measures have been dropped.
In conclusion, the House will notice that we have not gone down the route of outright opposition in framing our response. As I said at the beginning, there are measures we support and we have set them out in our reasoned amendment. However, when balanced against the other concerns that I have highlighted in my speech, the scales tip towards preventing the progress of the Bill.
If the Government are prepared to change the Bill to address the fundamental problems I have outlined, I would be prepared to reconsider our position. As long as they stay in, however, we will take a stand against them for what is right and for what we should represent as a country.
The truth is that the Bill is driven by the wrong motive—a desire to be seen to be doing something, to generate headlines. That is the problem that lies behind it. Such is the scale of the Government’s failure on immigration, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North said, and such is the size of the gap between the rhetoric and the reality, that they are now resorting to ever more drastic, desperate measures to give the impression of action.
The Government promised to cut net migration to tens of thousands. It currently stands at a record 330,000 and there is no evidence to suggest that anything in the Bill will bring that down. There is evidence, however, to suggest that it could cause real harm in every constituency represented in this House.
Government Members might be happy to legislate without evidence, but we will not follow them. We will give no support to a Government pandering to prejudice and legislating in haste to make Britain a more hostile and unwelcoming country. That is why I move the reasoned amendment standing in my name and those of my right hon. and hon. Friends. If it falls, I will ask the House to oppose this unpleasant and insidious Bill.
Stuart C. McDonald
That is precisely the sort of work that the Government should support, rather than going through the motions of pursuing their impossible net migration target.
Andy Burnham
I am grateful for the spirit in which the hon. Gentleman has introduced his remarks and for what he has said. He talked about right to rent. Does he agree that, in the absence of any evidence from the Government on the pilot, we have to accept what has been produced by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants? As I said in my speech, its findings are extremely troubling. If we accept those findings, it is impossible to support the Bill tonight because of its potential to cause widespread discrimination against British citizens too.
Stuart C. McDonald
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. I, too, have read the JCWI report and will refer to its findings shortly.
In summary, the Bill pursues the wrong goals by the wrong methods and at tremendous cost, so we should decline to give it a Second Reading.
I shall outline briefly our views on the key clauses and my hon. Friends will expand on those views in the course of the debate. Not wishing to be relentlessly negative, let me turn first to one part of the Bill that is positive. We welcome the provisions at the start of the Bill that will establish a director of labour market enforcement. We have questions about resourcing, powers and whether all the necessary agencies will be involved, but the principle has our support. We agree that the focus of our attention should be on employers who exploit undocumented labour to the detriment not just of undocumented workers, but resident workers who are competing for jobs and businesses that comply with the rules.
Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
The Home Secretary made her notorious speech in Manchester just a few minutes from my constituency. Had she come down the road, she would have seen tens of thousands of people who came under the contemptuous label she uttered this afternoon: “these people”. “These people”, of whom there are tens of thousands in my constituency, originate from south Asia, east and west Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere. We are a city of diversity and integration, and the two go together.
The hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) referred to Romanians. Recently in my constituency, an organisation has been set up by people of Romanian origin to integrate further into this country. Next Saturday in my constituency, we will be celebrating Nigerian independence day. This is a country of diversity that ever since the Romans has had people of overseas origin becoming part of its functioning. The Bill attacks them. It is an attack on anybody who is not what might be referred to as a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant.
I got a letter from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs about a constituent who had been asked to clarify his Christian name. To anyone of any intelligence, the man was a Muslim. That kind of approach happens under this Government: it has never happened before, even under previous Conservative Governments. The Bill creates a new subterranean, pseudo police force to carry out Government policy without being members of the Government’s staff.
Landlords have been recruited, whether they want to be or not—the National Landlords Association has issued a document expressing considerable resentment—to impose a law that they had no say in creating. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees says that landlords are less likely to rent to those with foreign accents or names, or those who do not possess a British passport. That is my parents. They never learned to speak English fluently; they never got British passports —yet they were part of this country and part of a community. Landlords and bank staff are being turned into Government agents. Under this Bill, we have a new bail system that has nothing to do with judges or magistrates and nothing to do with the law—except the law created by this Government.
The national health service wants to bring people from India to be nurses in Manchester, but they cannot get the certificates because the process is so opaque. People coming here as refugees are scared stiff for their lives—something that, thank God, we in this country are not—and are subjected to all kinds of interrogation.
Andy Burnham
As well as providing him with a little more time, I would like my right hon. Friend to consider the effect on his constituency and mine of the changes to the immigration rules that the Government want to introduce with respect to earnings. This could force a lot of nurses currently working in the NHS to leave the country. Nurse training has been cut and the NHS is over-reliant on agency staff; now the Government are about to force thousands of nurses to go back. Does he agree with me that we need a rethink and a change of heart on this issue?
Sir Gerald Kaufman
When I go, as I no doubt shortly shall, for my flu jab, the person who gives it to me would not be regarded by many people who support this Bill as British, but services are being provided for people in this country. The work situation is going to be made more difficult, with potential employees afraid that they will be prosecuted for recruiting people illegally.
I do not know whether the Home Secretary went to any of the many wonderful Asian restaurants when she was in Manchester. My constituency has a “curry mile”, which is one of the best places to go to in the whole of the world for an overseas diet. I wonder how many of them will be under suspicion by the Home Office trying to decide, minutiae by minutiae, whether people are the “right kind” of British, who seem to be the only kind of British that they want to welcome into this country.
As the TUC says, huge poverty will be created by this Government. The children of asylum seekers will live in houses for which the amount of money being made available is £30 and a little bit more. I am proud of this country; I love this country. I do not know, however, whether the Government who are introducing this Bill love the country that Britain really is rather than the country into which they would like to transform it.