Immigration

Debate between Christopher Pincher and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Thursday 18th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

I am pleased to respond to my hon. Friend, and I think it depends on the jobs that people are coming here to do.

I was pleased to hear that the Minister was prepared to look at intra-company transfers to ensure that we do not disbenefit companies that want to bring employees into Britain to help the outsourcing industry—for example, by transferring employees into companies through the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations. We need to bring into Britain people from the Asian subcontinent, for example, who have good IT skills and understand the ethos of the companies to which they belong in order to train up those employees transferred through TUPE. It is important to recognise that the outsourcing industry needs transferable people with transferable skills moving around the world to help British businesses do business wherever they need to do it.

We also recognise that immigration can bring economic problems, and infrastructure is another issue, to which other hon. Members have alluded. Anyone reading the House of Lords Economic Affairs report, to which the noble Lord Lawson contributed—it shows the effect of large-scale immigration on housing, transport, health care and so forth—would realise that there are real issues that must be addressed.

Still another issue is social tension. We have all engaged in electioneering over the last six months. We have been knocking on doors and meeting our constituents. Cumulatively, we must have met thousands of them. Since then, we have received e-mails and letters from our constituents running into the thousands. If we are honest with each other, we will surely admit that one of the key issues that constituents continually raise with us is their worry about immigration. They are frustrated and concerned. They are frustrated because they believe that the last Government refused to recognise their legitimate concerns about large-scale immigration; and they are worried, frankly, that the new Government will also ignore them.

Having read the coalition agreement, I can say in all candour that the new Government are moving in the right direction when it comes to listening to people’s concerns. I do not mean that simply because we are introducing an immigration cap, which sends a message to the country and beyond that we are serious about immigration controls; because we are tightening up the student visa system, which was badly abused under the last Government; because we are introducing a border police force to protect our borders and ensure that those parts and ports of the country that lack protection will subsequently have it; or because we are insisting on minimum language skills so that people who come here can work and integrate. The most important thing the Government are doing as part of the coalition agreement to meet the challenge of uncontrolled immigration is to take control of the welfare system.

Our welfare system—“system” is a neat word to describe what is really a mess—costs us £194 billion a year, and it has locked hundreds of thousands of people into dependency by making it economically senseless for them to work. As a result, there are vacancies. To fill them, employers look for employees in all sorts of places, including abroad. The vacancies act as a magnet for people abroad to come and try their luck in Britain. It makes absolutely no sense to make hundreds of thousands of people not work—effectively, to pay them not to work—while importing hundreds of thousands more people to fill the gap in the labour market. As we know, those people place a strain on our social infrastructure, the fabric of our country.

I think that the Government are doing exactly the right thing with the Work programme, which aims slowly, steadily and surely to return people to work, to choke off the demand for labour, and at the same time to introduce stringent controls to stem the supply of immigrant labour. Getting that balance right is the way to deal with our uncontrolled immigration, and the Government have got it right. They are introducing a workable, fair system which, crucially, emphasises the importance of British workers getting into work and British businesses acting responsibly, as well as the importance of controlling inflow.

When he was Leader of the Opposition, the Prime Minister said that he wanted to take control of the immigration problem and deal with it quickly and effectively, so that we would no longer describe it as an issue. That is a sound and sensible aim. I believe that the approach that the Government are now taking is correct, and I commend it. I look forward to hearing less about this issue in future, but if we do have to talk about it, I hope that we will talk about it in the same sensible way.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Will my hon. Friend say a little more about European emigration into this country, about how he thinks the Government ought to cope with new additions to the European Union, and about whether their entry could be rather more staged?

[Christopher Pincher]

As my hon. Friend will know, article 21 of the EU treaty means that we are unable to stop the free movement of EU citizens to countries that are already members of the EU. As for new entrants, we need to establish transitional rules to ensure that we do not have to admit the hundreds of thousands of Poles, Romanians and Bulgarians whom we have unfortunately had to accept in the past five or six years because the last Government did not introduce such controls.

The steps taken by the Government so far are fair, workable and balanced. As I said, I look forward to hearing less about this issue in future, but if we do have to hear about it, I hope that it will be discussed in the same sensible, balanced way in which it has been discussed today.