Immigration

Henry Smith Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, and to the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax), because that is exactly the point. The idea that immigration is out of control is nonsense. We know that the Government’s ambition is to reduce immigration from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands. It is not going to happen. What the right hon. Member for Mid Sussex and Members on the Government Benches fail to appreciate is that we live in an interconnected and globalised world where knowledge, ideas, creativity and talent are an international commodity. That of necessity means a transfer of people across continents and countries, and that is good for the global economy; it is good for our economy.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Pete Wishart]

I will not give way any more because I have not got any more time.

We are in the fantastic city of London, the most dynamic and prosperous city in the world. A third of the people who live and work in London come from outwith the UK. It is like in Monty Python—“What has immigration done for us?” It has made London into a fantastic, dynamic, prosperous city.

Conservative Members talk about the Olympics. What I saw was a fantastic celebration of multicultural Britain. I saw the little tweet of the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) and how he got a Twitter monstering for what he said—deservedly so. He could not have been further from the national mood when it came to how we see what immigration and multiculturalism brings to our country and our nation. It is something that is welcome and is celebrated, and so it should be.

I do not go along with this 100,000 Daily Mail petition that we are now debating. There is a mood change in this country and people are coming to accept and celebrate what we have and see that immigration is a good thing. That should be welcomed—not this nasty, authoritarian little motion.

I will come now to Scotland. I am sorry if I am boring people by restating that Scotland occupies just over a third of the land mass of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland but has only 8.4% of the population—less than a tenth. Our issue is not immigration throughout the decades and centuries, it is emigration. We lose people instead of attracting them. Scotland is not full up; Scotland is one of the most under-populated parts of western Europe. Yet we are asked to accept an immigration policy that could almost be designed to be the opposite and contrary to what we require.

[Henry Smith]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Pete Wishart]

I cannot give way to the hon. Gentleman; I have no more time left.

Scotland’s population currently stands at a record 5.2 million. For years we feared that our population would sink below the iconic 5 million mark for the first time since the mid-20th century, but we now have 5.2 million, which is good. What distinguishes Scotland from the rest of the United Kingdom is that the Scottish Government issued a press release welcoming the fact that our population was at a record high. Can we imagine even the new Minister issuing a press release welcoming the fact that the UK population was at an all-time high? We have to put up with an immigration policy that is designed not for us but for another country. Thank goodness that in a few years we will have an immigration system in line with our own requirements.

Our requirements are huge. We have an ageing population with an ever smaller active work force. We need to address that. We need to attract the best and the brightest to fill our skills gap. Current immigration policy is creating havoc with our education sector. In Scotland we are reliant on overseas students. About 19% of the total student body in Scotland comes from overseas, and that is worth about £500 million to the Scottish economy. Almost 10% of all the teaching staff come from overseas, too, because we have three universities in the top 100. People want to come to Scotland because we have a culture, history and heritage of invention and creativity. The Scots practically invented the modern world so of course overseas students want to come to Scotland to study.

Students observe what is happening at the London Metropolitan college and think, “If I go to the UK there is a good chance that some Minister will decide that my college is not worthy of status and I will not get a course.” The Government’s policies are putting people off coming to our universities and colleges, and I urge the Minister to stop them now because they are harming our universities and higher education institutions.

In Scotland we need our own immigration service that will address our needs. We do not need harsher immigration policies. I bet the Minister that he will never get to these suggested levels of immigration. This is the world we live in, and there is no point in trying to address it. The Migration Observatory wrote to every Member of Parliament to give its view, and even it could not agree with the right hon. Members who have proposed the motion. It pointed to variations throughout the United Kingdom in people’s perception of immigration. I am proud that we in Scotland do not perceive immigration as a dreadful, negative thing as so many Conservative Members seem to do.

I, like the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), would like to come to debates such as this to have a proper discussion about immigration. Hon. Members always protest that we do not discuss it properly, but when they get to their feet all we ever hear is that immigration must be curbed or stopped, that it is not a good thing, that it must be reversed.

We have a new Minister in his place, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper). I hope that we will have a better understanding of the issues than the previous Minister because what we are observing just now is not positive or good. As a Scottish National party member, I hope that he will understand that Scotland’s immigration requirements are different. I do not know if he will acknowledge that, but just a cursory recognition that Scotland is lumbered with a system that is not appropriate for our needs would be welcome and then we could make some progress in how we address this. I live in hope that that might happen, but I have my doubts. Scotland would reject this silly, authoritarian and nonsensical motion, and I hope that the House does too.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I should like to start by paying tribute to the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) for their courage, conviction and determination in tabling the motion. I also thank the Backbench Business Committee for ensuring that the debate was held today; it is a debate that the vast majority of people in this country want us to have.

I have been involved in local politics and parliamentary politics for some years. My constituency of Crawley is multi-ethnic, and one of the most important issues that people raise with me—regardless of their ethnic background, although it is often raised by people from an ethnic minority—is the concern about the sheer number of people coming into this country over the past decade or so. If people continue to enter the country in those numbers, the situation will be unsustainable. A population in excess of 70 million would certainly be unsustainable.

It is worth repeating that, for far too long, the main political parties and the political establishment in this country have not addressed people’s concerns about the sheer level of immigration, particularly over the past decade or so. As a result, reasonable people who are not prejudiced or racist have found themselves supporting racist organisations and parties such as the British National party and the so-called English Defence League. That is a great shame, in a country that has traditionally been—and still is—one of the most tolerant nations anywhere in the world. It is appalling that our lack of willingness to address the situation has led to those thoughts being held by reasonable people.

Immigration has played a big part in the history of this nation. There have been various waves of immigration, but we are now, for the first time in a millennium, seeing unsustainable numbers. Some estimates mention 3 million people, but the important point is that we do not actually know the figure because the numbers of people coming to this country are not properly recorded. That has put enormous pressure on our infrastructure. That is evident in my constituency, where the pressure on housing is immense. Areas that were originally designated for commercial development have had to be re-designated as residential development to support the numbers of people coming to live there. That results in pressure on infrastructure—not just the physical infrastructure such as the highways, but, perhaps most acutely, the schools. Many have had to expand their classroom capacity in quite difficult circumstances to accommodate the numbers.

Mention was made earlier of the pressure that immigration has been putting on the national health service. Next Tuesday, I am pleased to be presenting a ten-minute rule Bill on this issue, which will seek to require a proper audit to be carried out in order to recover reciprocal costs incurred in the treatment of foreign nationals by the national health service. At the moment, the figures are not properly recorded or monitored, but they suggest that the health service is paying more than £1 billion a year on supporting foreign nationals who would otherwise not be entitled to free care.

[Kate Green]

I note what the hon. Gentleman says about the use of the national health service, but does he also recognise the substantial contribution made by immigrants who are employees of the NHS? How does he think the NHS would manage if we were unable to attract migrants to come here and do that work?

[Henry Smith]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for using the word “manage”. That is what has been missing from our immigration system up to now. My wife was an immigrant to this country, and she used to work in the national health service. The hon. Lady is quite right to say that the NHS has relied on people coming to this country to support it.

However, we need an immigration system in which we know who is coming into and leaving the country, and in which those who come in use a fair and lawful route. When the so-called accession eight countries became part of the European Union in 2004, only the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and Sweden did not exercise their right to a period of controlled immigration. As we were the largest country not exercising the right to control immigration, and as we are an English-speaking country, we saw millions of people coming here in a rapid and unsustainable way. That has resulted in many pressures in communities up and down the country.

Let me start to conclude by congratulating the Government on the work they have already started to do. I very much welcome the new Minister to his post, and I am sure he will continue the excellent work of his predecessor over the past two and a half years. I am encouraged that the number of net migrants to this country has come down, as recently reported, from more than 250,000 to just over 200,000—but we still have to go much further. I congratulate the Minister’s predecessor—I know that this good work will continue—in closing down the sham marriage route and the illegal routes to entering this country through bogus college courses. Again, the action we have seen over the past week is to be welcomed, but we need to continue our pressure and our determination to get a grip on this situation. As we heard earlier, it would need eight cities to be built outside London over the next 15 years to accommodate the projected rise in population as a result of immigration, which is clearly unsustainable. I echo other hon. Members in saying that we have a duty to the British people to ensure that we address this issue for our future harmony and prosperity as a nation.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

In opening the debate, the right hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) talked about the need for honesty and open and candid discussion. I regret that many of the contributions so far have, I think, thrown more darkness than light on the subject. I want to concentrate on one specific thing, which I believe unites many Members on both sides of the House—the way we address the issue of students. We need to recognise the important role of UK higher education. I welcome the new Minister to his post and hope he will bring an open mind to this issue. I am sure he will be lobbied by Government Members as much as by Opposition Members.

As we were reminded by the Minister for Universities and Science in this morning’s Business, Innovation and Skills questions, UK higher education is a major export earner. It contributes something like £7.9 billion to our economy annually. It is not just about money—we recruit some of the best and the brightest to our universities and they add to the intellectual rigour and to the overall educational experience of UK students, as well as play a vital role in research and innovation, which is greatly recognised by British business—but the direct financial contribution is significant. The money spent through tuition fees is matched by the money spent in local economies. In all our major towns and cities across the country, tens of thousands of jobs are dependent on international students. In the city I represent, Sheffield, they are worth about £180 million to the local economy and involve more than 2,000 jobs. It is a major success story, but it could be even better.

Driven by the world’s growing economies, international demand for university education is expanding rapidly, and BIS estimated that we could double the number of international students in this country by 2025. That would mean another couple of thousand jobs in Sheffield and tens of thousands across the UK. With the world’s strongest higher education offer after the United States, we should be seeing huge growth, but we are losing market share. The reason for it is the message we have been sending out to prospective students around the world as a result of changes to the student visa system. The Home Office’s own impact assessment of the student visa changes, published just over a year ago, estimated that its proposal would cost our economy a massive £2.6 billion.

At a time when we need growth and should be encouraging our major export earners, I have to say that the situation has been made worse by the handling of the London Metropolitan university issue. Clearly, we need to act if universities are failing in their obligations, but we need to act appropriately and proportionately. How this has been handled, however, has done huge damage. A Google search reveals something like 700 stories in the international media about this issue, and a deeply damaging message is being sent out. They are saying “You can come to the UK, you can comply with visa requirements, you can pay thousands of pounds for your course and contribute to the local economy, you can be making a success of your studies, and, through no fault of your own, you can still be deported at any time on the whim of Government.” What would a prospective international student choose to do when confronted with that situation?

[Henry Smith]

Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that enabling overseas students who are investing considerable sums to come here to feel confident that they are coming to a college or higher education institution that is complying with the law is fairer to them than the random, haphazard system that has existed up to now, which can leave genuine overseas students vulnerable?

[Paul Blomfield]

I think that genuine overseas students were left vulnerable by bogus colleges that were recruiting them to fairly bogus courses, but London Metropolitan university is not one of those. There may have been failings in its processes and systems—the situation is still being investigated—but the issue is that bona fide students who are succeeding in their courses are being threatened with deportation at a critical stage of the academic cycle.

We should bear in mind the message that that sends to prospective students around the world who are considering their options. They will say to themselves, “Shall I go to the UK? Thanks, but no thanks. I shall go to the United States”—or Canada, or Australia—“because I shall not be deported from that country on the whim of Government.”