Immigration

Debate between Chris Philp and Nick Timothy

Wednesday 21st May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman was listening very carefully. I expressly said that highly skilled migrants do make a contribution and should be welcomed, and when I referred to issues involving social housing, economic inactivity and criminality, I was reading out facts. I was reading out census data published by the Office for National Statistics. Those are facts. The right hon. Gentleman may not like the facts, but they are facts none the less. [Interruption.]

[Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Burnley (Oliver Ryan) has just said, from a sedentary position, that my right hon. Friend was “race-baiting”. My right hon. Friend was simply reading out official statistics in contributing to an important debate about the future of our country. Does my right hon. Friend think that the hon. Gentleman should stand up and put his views on the record, and tell his constituents what he thinks about their legitimate concerns?

[Chris Philp]

I think he should do that, because the British public have expressed very clear views on this issue, and if we cannot, in this House of all places, lay out the facts—published data—as a way of having an honest debate about it, I do not know where we have got to. That kind of shouting down, saying that it is somehow beyond the pale to discuss these facts, is precisely why we ended up in this mess in the first place.

Let me come on to some of the steps taken late in the time of the last Government—[Hon. Members: “Too late!”] Yes, they were too late: that is right. Those steps took effect in April 2023 and April 2024, and they included preventing social care workers and students from bringing dependants, and raising various salary thresholds. The official forecasts published by bodies such as the Office for National Statistics and the Office for Budget Responsibility show that, thanks to those measures, net migration is likely to fall by 500,000 compared to the peak—and those measures are already having an effect. If Members compare the number of visas issued in the second half of last year with the number in the second half of 2022, they will see a 76% reduction in the number of social care visas, a 21% reduction in the number of student visas, an 89% reduction in the number of student dependant visas, and a 45% reduction in the number of skilled worker visas; many of those people were not, in fact, skilled.

The truth is, however, that we need to go further, and the White Paper published last Monday does not go far enough. On the Laura Kuenssberg programme, on the Sunday before last, the Home Secretary said that the Government’s measures would have an impact of only 50,000 on net migration, whereas the number accompanying the White Paper was 100,000. Whichever number we take, however, it represents only between one tenth and one fifth of the impact of the measures taken by the last Government. That simply does not go far enough.