Devolution (Immigration) (Scotland) Bill

Debate between Ian Murray and Gareth Snell

2nd reading
Friday 25th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Ian Murray]

I did not accuse the hon. Gentleman of being dishonest. Those are his words. Maybe he is reflecting on his own contribution. Let me take that intervention straight on and give the House the actual quote from the deputy leader of the Scottish Labour party, not what Members have determined that she may have said. I will come on to why what she said is really important and completely aligned with UK Government policy. The quote from the deputy leader of the Scottish Labour party was:

“there would be dialogue and discussion but we need to recognise that growing home-grown talent is really important.

At the moment there are no plans for”

A Scottish visa,

“but I think if you have governments taking common-sense approaches”

to skills shortages, as

“an incoming Labour Government would do,”

that helps resolve the problem. That is what she said, and what we are working on.

Let me conclude my remarks with some clarity on the Scotland Act 1998. As I said, if something is in the Scotland Act and is mentioned in schedule 5, it is reserved. If it is not, it is deemed to be devolved. The Bill would devolve immigration to the Scottish Government and Scottish Parliament. I make that point strongly at the start because it leads into all the other arguments we have heard from hon. Members from across the House about what the requirement would be at Berwick, on the border between Scotland and England.

[Gareth Snell]

I, too, have read the very short sentence in the Bill, which does not talk just about immigration. It states:

“including asylum and the status and capacity of persons in the United Kingdom who are not British citizens”.

My understanding—I am happy to be corrected—is that if the issue was devolved to the Scottish Government, they could, essentially, grant indefinite leave to remain and all sorts of British citizenship statuses through their powers in Scotland. That could distort the entire immigration system of the United Kingdom.

[Ian Murray]

And the consequence is that we would require checks in both directions. As the Minister for Independence—did my hon. Friend know that the Scottish Government had a Minister for Independence?—clearly said, as we have heard, that a hard border would be required in particular cases. Scottish Ministers, incidentally, have just awarded themselves a £20,000 pay rise—certainly not on the basis of their performance.

It is important to acknowledge the complexities of immigration as a cross-cutting policy area. SNP Members do not want to talk about it as a cross-cutting policy area, because many of the policy areas around immigration are devolved to the Scottish Government. This is not simply about numbers. It covers issues of social cohesion, as we heard this morning, economic stability and public services. Ensuring we have a fair and properly managed immigration system that takes account of those complexities is a priority for this Government. We have made clear that the immigration system we inherited is not working. Indeed, the previous Government, which the shadow Secretary of State served in, said that the immigration system in the UK was broken. Under the previous Government, between 2019 and 2024, net migration almost quadrupled, heavily driven by a big increase in overseas recruitment.

I have the net migration figures here, and they have been a key part of the debate. In 2023, the net migration figure for the United Kingdom was 906,000. If there was a proportionate share of that net migration going to Scotland, then the immigration to Scotland would be somewhere in the region of 80,000 to 85,000. Indeed, it was below 60,000, so a huge number of net migrants who are coming to the UK are not going to Scotland. The big question has to be why. We had a huge tirade from the hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry about Brexit and its consequences, but those lower figures are still higher than before the UK left the European Union. The big question has to be asked: why are people not going to Scotland to work and live?

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[Ian Murray]

This UK Labour Government are determined to reset our relationship with the European Union, have a much closer trading relationship and do what is in the UK national interest. The biggest impediment to growth in the economy in Scotland is the SNP Scottish Government, and that has been proven through time.

[Gareth Snell]

I thank the Secretary of State for giving way once again. He will know, because he was here with me when it happened, that this House came within six votes of coming to a settled position on customs union membership, which I appreciate is no longer the Government’s policy. When they became aware of how close the vote was going to be, 48 Scottish National party Members abstained, so that it would fail and they could pursue their hard Brexit grievance, to try to make sure Brexit failed, because that is what they wanted to put on their party leaflets.

[Ian Murray]

We should not rerun the Brexit debate in this House, but it is worth acknowledging that the Bill is written in a different way from what the hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry wants to deliver. He wants to pretend that it will go to Committee, and we will all sit around the campfire with marshmallows and decide on a wonderful way forward, but that is not what the Bill says.

My hon. Friend gets to the heart of the problem, because ultimately this is all to do with the advancement of the Scottish National party’s independence agenda. Nothing else gets them out of bed in the morning. I get out of bed in the morning to try to make sure that everybody in this country, including in my constituency, has better lives and better opportunities. SNP Members get out of bed to push for independence. That is the difference. When the Division bells rang on that occasion—I remember it very well—everybody thought that the vote would be carried. Those SNP Members sat on their hands and the vote was lost by six. All their credibility in trying to push something else through was completely shot at that moment—and do not forget that they also pushed for the 2019 general election at the same time.

I will now canter through page 2 of my speech. It is important for us to work together to ensure positive integration outcomes and improved processes overall. Let me turn to the valuable contribution that workers from overseas make to our economy, our public services and national life throughout the United Kingdom. As the hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry has highlighted, the remote parts of Scotland face depopulation issues, and they have for a long time—I talk to my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton) about this on a regular basis. Skills shortages also remain across Scotland, as they do in different places across the UK. Indeed, according to the latest population projections from the National Records of Scotland, the factors driving population change are exactly the same across the whole United Kingdom.

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[Ian Murray]

The flippancy with which SNP Members deal with these relevant and serious issues is there for all to see. I hope that a lot of our non-Scottish colleagues who are here today have seen how utterly deplorably they operate in this Chamber and how rude and patronising they are when we are dealing with serious issues for our constituents. Brand Scotland is there to do exactly that: to ensure that we get inward investment into Scotland, to sell Scotland to the world and to have a much more thriving economy for our communities.

[Gareth Snell]

The Secretary of State is being exceedingly generous with his time. SNP Members keep saying, “Don’t talk about the Scottish Government”, but the Bill’s aim is to devolve power from this place to the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government, so I think the competence of the Scottish Parliament is in scope. Immigration is neatly and importantly linked to our national security. We have one system, which is an important layer of our national security. The Scottish National party wishes to frack that situation. Has the Secretary of State had any guidance from the Ministry of Defence or the Home Office on the implications of the immigration system changes that SNP Members are attempting to achieve?

[Ian Murray]

We have not yet examined this in any great detail in this debate, but defence and our national security are huge issues. We heard a bit about boat crossings; nobody wants to see those. We want to smash the gangs and stop the crossings. One person crossing by small boat is one too many, because they are putting in danger their life and the lives of others, and that has to stop. There is a huge defence and national security issue here, because the small boats crossings are run by criminal gangs in Europe and on the streets of constituencies all around the country.

The answer to the question my hon. Friend just posed is not in the Bill. This is a short Bill to devolve the whole immigration and asylum system to the Scottish Parliament. The Bill does not actually say what it will do. I have no doubt about the honesty and integrity—and any other word we might pluck out of the sky—of the hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry, but we cannot take the Bill at face value. He says, “Pop it into Committee and everything will be wonderful,” but we do not know the implications of his Bill. If he wanted to, he could have brought in a Bill that addressed that point.

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[Ian Murray]

Absolutely, and I hope that my hon. Friend would say that this contribution from the Government Dispatch Box is a very good use of the Government’s time.

[Gareth Snell]

The very best!

[Ian Murray]

I thank my hon. Friend very much—I hope Hansard heard that. I did say that the attractiveness of Scotland as a place to live and work is down to policy delivery, and let me mention one policy in particular.

Duties of Customs

Debate between Ian Murray and Gareth Snell

Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 20th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Ian Murray]

Indeed, and I will come to more of those arguments later in my speech. The Foreign Affairs Committee, of which I am a member, visited the border regions in Ireland and Northern Ireland just last week, and one of the key concerns we heard from the businesses that employ many thousands of workers on both sides of the border was that they use the UK as the transit route into the European Union. We are the landing strip for all the goods they export through the United Kingdom into the European Union, because it is the fastest way; the alternatives are not suitable for their businesses. It will be exactly the same for businesses in Coventry, in Aberdeen and in Edinburgh South. The hon. Member for Aberdeen South spoke eloquently about the Scotch whisky industry, which we all defend and champion. That industry needs easy access to the markets in which it sells its products, so it too is pushing for as close a deal as possible to the customs union.

[Gareth Snell]

My hon. Friend will be aware that the finest Scotch whisky in the world is sold in ceramic bottles made in my constituency. Exiting the European Union without a proper trade deal will result in not only the price of the whisky but the cost of the bottle going up, which will threaten jobs in my constituency. What does he make of the Government’s proposals so far on market and trade remedies?

[Ian Murray]

I am glad my hon. Friend makes that point because the Scotch whisky industry is not just a Scottish industry. It is a UK-wide industry involving bottling, packaging and delivery companies—a whole UK supply chain. If the main driver of that supply chain, which is the whisky coming out of Scotland, is disturbed, the jobs in my hon. Friend’s constituency are potentially disturbed, too.

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[Ian Murray]

I am happy with the intervention—I am delighted with it—because it allows me to say three things: first, the reason the Scotch whisky industry is doing so well is partly because of EU free trade arrangements, particularly with countries such as South Korea; secondly, we are already in 57 free trade agreements; and thirdly, the hon. Gentleman’s Government have failed wholeheartedly to start to negotiate just one free trade agreement, despite all the bluff and bluster about being at the front of the queue, about their happening easily, about our seamlessly entering into these wonderful free trade agreements all over the world.

I say also to the hon. Gentleman that his intervention completely contradicts his first intervention. If he votes against my amendment and we end up trading with WTO rules, and we end up without tariffs with the EU, we will have tariffs with no one and we will ride the waves—rule Britannia—setting up more than 57 free trade agreements with every country banging at our door to trade with us. He is not listening to his Foreign Secretary or Trade Secretary when they say this is becoming much more difficult, if he thinks that free trade agreements with more than 57 countries will just appear as low-hanging fruit from this magic money tree the Government seem always to produce.

[Gareth Snell]

To pick up on the point from the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), of course free trade is to be welcomed, but in certain sectors, such as the ceramics industry, what we need is protection against the illegal dumping of tiles and white goods, which affects our industry and puts our jobs at risk. In some sectors, the unilateral free trade and open markets that some talk about would harm employment and make my constituents poorer.

[Ian Murray]

Absolutely. Illegal dumping is something that the House will have to come back to and debate at length, because it is one of the key issues around what might happen when we leave the EU and do not have that bloc to defend us. On my hon. Friend’s point about free trade, I have a great idea for how to advance free trade in this country: we could have a customs union and a single market, and that would certainly advance free trade, would it not? Or we could come out, as the hon. Member for Gainsborough wants, and end up with no free trade agreements, rather than 57.

I wanted to mention a whole list of sectors, but I will not in the interests of time. I will briefly mention two or three of the very big ones that have raised concerns. Pharmaceuticals is a key area bringing a lot of tax and corporation tax into the public purse. The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry has called for free trade with the EU on terms

“equivalent to those of a full member of the Customs Union”.

I would rather believe the pharmaceuticals industry, an industry that has brought so much economically—in terms of jobs and growth—than the Minister, and it says it wants free trade on terms equivalent to those of a full member of the customs union. Well, the Government will be ruling that out tonight when they pass the motion, so what will he say to the pharmaceuticals industry, which says it needs it to trade as it does now?