Brexit: UK-EU Movement of People (EUC Report)

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to be able to contribute, just for a short time, to a very important discussion of a report that I commend strongly. I want in that context to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, and all the clerks and researchers involved in the preparation of the report, and the high-quality witnesses who gave evidence for the report to be prepared.

I come from a background of having served as Immigration Minister in this country for a period in the 1990s, and I was also responsible on behalf of my party for such discussions in the European Parliament for a considerable number of years. I have to say that I am always concerned when the subject of immigration comes up in any political discourse. If we are not careful, it can lead to outbursts of emotion and concerns which sometimes are justified but sometimes are not. What saddens me greatly is that “immigration” is used to cover so many aspects of the movement of people. We are in a world anyway where people are moving for loads of reasons: sometimes for economic reasons, sometimes for cultural reasons and sometimes because they have to move under the pressure or repression that they are experiencing. We have to be able to tackle that if we are a society that believes in humanity and an economically strong society that believes in progressing our own economies.

We should always have had a separation between the different aspects of the movement of people. Certainly, the Immigration Rules, which I applied in 1990s and others have applied since, were quite clear in dealing with pressures and with opportunities for people to come to this country for various reasons. Most often, those pressures and challenges related to people who came to this country from non-EU parts of the world. That caused frictions and great difficulties. Whole aspects of community relations had to be developed in this country and we can be proud of the way in which we managed to deal with the arrival of lots of people of very different cultures and backgrounds from all kinds of places in the world. We can look at that with some pride.

There is also our relationship with the United Nations and asylum. Figures relating to asylum should always be separate. We are obliged under the 1951 United Nations convention to give sanctuary to people who comply with some very tight rules. But we do it, we have always done it and I hope that we always will do it. Again, that category should be separated. Then we come to the issue that the report is about: the freedom of movement of EU citizens. Of course, that is based largely on our economic interests and on agreements reached for the benefit of this country and other countries. I find it a little worrying when all these figures of people arriving here are lumped together into some kind of total and it appears that they have to be dealt with in a similar manner.

We are not very sure of our statistics when we come to the number of people coming here. When I was a Minister, we had internal and external checks on people arriving in this country. I have never been quite sure what actual effect knowing that information had on the plans we made for them or on the immigration legislation that followed. Those external checks were removed by the Labour Government in 1998 and were not restored until 2015. Restoring them was helpful to us, but, again—as suggested by evidence given to the committee by the Minister, my honourable friend Robert Goodwill—it was quite clear that the information obtained from 2015 was not sufficiently utilised or of much use to us in determining either numbers or types of people arriving. The International Passenger Survey has been the basis of a lot of the statistics on how many people have come to this country, yet of all the people coming here who could be identified in a recent survey, 12% were already British citizens. Allowing them to be included in the figures seems rather nonsensical and unhelpful.

I will add two other things. First, I mentioned definitions, which are very important. In relation to trade arrangements and any form of tariff-free areas, it would be right to suggest that, when you have freedoms in the movement of services, goods and capital, almost invariably the requirement would be for people to be able to move as well. There have been one or two instances, such as some recent trade negotiations—all of which, I might add, take many years to conclude—where there has not been an agreement on the movement of people. In nearly all those cases, they have been deficient—for example, by having no freedom in relation to services or the service industries. It seems that less is always less and more is more. If we want a free trade agreement that is as good as the one we have now, we will probably have to accept terms and conditions that relate to people moving as well.

Secondly, over the years we have had the power to change things and we have done so where there have been pressures upon us. My right honourable friend the former Prime Minister David Cameron took part in a somewhat derided negotiation, in which he tried to get some reforms out of the European Union prior to the referendum in this country. The derision was unfair, certainly in relation to the discussions he had on migration and benefits. Where there is a clear demonstration of pressures on any country, there was a willingness then—and I suspect that now there is probably an even greater willingness among other European countries—to adapt to change and reflect on those difficulties in the case of a member state. He was certainly offered in relation to the limitation on in-work benefits something that I thought at the time was very positive—although of course subsequently in the referendum campaign I am afraid that those things got somewhat lost.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I was struck by what my noble friend said about the absence of proper information and statistics. With his great experience, perhaps he could guide the House as to how it came about that we rely on the International Passenger Survey, which is a tiny sample and has a margin of error running to tens of thousands, for the data on net immigration figures; how it is possible to construct a net immigration policy based on information that is highly inaccurate; and why the Home Office, over the years—when he was involved and since—has not done something about that.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate]

I thank my noble friend for that point. I suppose that in a way this is an acceptance on my part of a failing when I was Minister: I actually did not realise until the statistics were gleaned recently that the main statistics were being obtained in that way. I am surprised by it. I say to my noble friend that, as somebody who believes very strongly that our borders are important and that we should control them properly, I was somewhat surprised. But that inaccuracy did show up statistics such as the ones I mentioned: the 12% British citizens included in immigration figures who come back to this country. That was of concern and, whatever else we do based on the report, we ought to ask the Government to look carefully at the way in which information is obtained to make sure that it is more accurate in future.

I will add just one more thing and then wind up. It is a very complex report—it has to be complex because the circumstances now are very complex indeed. But I urge that in the discussions we have from now on about this country and its economic relationship with the European Union, we do not forget that the actual physical presence of citizens of the European Union here and of UK citizens in Europe must continue to have massive priority.