Immigration

Mike Freer Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

The right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) articulated with great clarity and passion the importance of the debate, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore). The right hon. Gentleman clearly explained that this debate is not about bigotry, race or colour, but about the impact of unfettered migration on the economic and social fabric of the UK. Most members of the settled community whose doors I knock on—particularly those in the Indian community who came across in the ’70s—feel passionately about the impact of unfettered migration, because it is the settled community who tend to bear the brunt of the bigotry. As other Members have said, it is important that we should have this debate so that other, extreme parties do not fill that vacuum.

One reason I stood for election to this place was that I used to get rather irritated outside the House at what seemed to be good ideas that sometimes translated into—how shall I put it?—unintended consequences. I want to focus on what I believe to be a perhaps unintended consequence of placing a crude cap on business. I understand and fully support the need to manage migration. Skilled migrants can add to the success of our economy, and I am mindful of the quite proper desire of our Government to maximise employment. I am also conscious of the demographics of my seat, as the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) put it. I have the largest Jewish population of any seat in the UK. I also have large Indian, Muslim and Afro-Caribbean populations, many of whose members are first, second or third-generation immigrants who have gone on to become captains of industry or stalwarts of major charities, contributing hugely to the rich fabric of our society. I am therefore conscious of the contribution that immigration can make to the UK.

I want like to raise a number of concerns affecting a major employer in my constituency, Pentland Brands. Many hon. Members will say, “Who?”, but it is a major exporter in the UK, producing apparel and shoes, and brands that dominate the high street. Pentland Brands is a successful global company that we should encourage, rather than hamper its ambition to tap into the global market. The right hon. Member for Leicester East suggested that we have a window of opportunity before the statement, perhaps next week, and Ministers should amend the policy before it comes to the House.

On the specific issues that concern the company, the proposed rules seem to have created an inability to hire graduates from across the world, and I shall give two examples of that. Every year, the chief executive of the company seeks to employ an executive assistant who is a high-calibre graduate from a market that he wants to develop. During the past year, he has had two executive assistants: one from India, and one from China. They may well have technical skills that the chief executive could find in the UK, but they bring the nuance of the political, social and economic structures of those markets that the company is trying to break into.

A home-grown graduate, with the best will in the world, will simply not have those skills. Being able to speak Mandarin, Cantonese or Gujarati is not the same as understanding how the markets work and how to open doors—the subtlety of trading in a global economy. Will the Minister consider how to adapt the cap so that it is not a cork that stops all economic migration, but is flexible and allows specific skills to be recruited, even if those skills, superficially, can be met internally? The Prime Minister went to India and China because he recognised that we must tap into those two economies if the UK economy is to pull out of recession and remain a powerhouse in the world economy. Will the Minister look carefully at companies that seek to recruit graduates to help them to tap into developing markets?

It is not just the nuances of language and structures that matter, but specific skills. Commentators have talked rather crudely about why we import IT specialists. I shall give an example of how we could go seriously wrong. IT skills qualify, I believe, under tier 2, not tier 1. The company in my constituency is a specialist manufacturer of sports footwear. Sri Lanka is the world leader in developing the software that allows the design and manufacture of sports footwear. Not surprisingly, the company wanted to recruit IT specialists from Sri Lanka to help to develop its products, which provide huge export benefits for this country. The proposed rules suggest that the company could not do that.

These jobs do not involve low-paid IT skills; they command salaries in excess of £80,000 a year. The people involved are not tier 1 economic migrants who end up delivering pizzas. They have skills that a global company needs if it is to continue to attract business.

[Mr Frank Field]

I draw the Minister’s attention to what the hon. Gentleman just said; I am sure that he was listening carefully. There are no objections if the salary range is at that level, but there is an objection, certainly from me if no one else, to intra-company transfers when salaries are a quarter of that amount.

[Mike Freer]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comment. The company is not looking for an intra-company transfer, and that is exactly the problem. If it cannot recruit a Chinese national or an Indian national, it will have to recruit them in an offshore company, or not at all. Either way, we are hampering the expansion of a good UK company, and that cannot be the purpose of the cap.

The other issue is that if we continue to recruit offshore highly skilled technical migrants who are essential to UK companies, we may benefit from the exports of the UK company, but we will lose the benefit that that small number of highly skilled economic migrants bring to the economy through their personal taxation and spending.

[Keith Vaz]

I apologise for intervening on the hon. Gentleman’s excellent speech, but that company needs those people now because of the skills they possess. This is not an issue of settlement; it is an issue of ensuring that we can produce goods and therefore employ more British people in such companies.

[Mike Freer]

I accept what the right hon. Gentleman says. We need a long-term strategy to develop the necessary skills. We can already provide the technical skills, but the training in our British universities cannot provide a knowledge of foreign markets. There is a difference between training someone in the latest Sri Lankan IT software, which we can do, and teaching them the nuances of how to access the decision makers in the Chinese economy, which we cannot. There is a big difference between the two.

I understand that the Government might be thinking of relaxing their stance on visa extensions. The company has an Indian graduate who can no longer get a visa extension. The company will lose his skills and his contribution. I ask the Minister to think again, and perhaps to assess companies on a case-by-case basis to see whether an extension could be granted because of the contribution that certain individuals make.

[Mark Tami]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech. Bearing in mind all the problems that he rightly suggests could pile up, does he agree that the company in question and others like it might wonder whether the UK is really the right place to be? Might they not decide to offshore their whole business and work from somewhere else?

[Mike Freer]

I would hate to put words into the mouth of the company’s chief executive, but I doubt that that would happen. The mainstay of the UK operation involves not only administration but design, and its design capability is based in Finchley. The manufacturing already takes place offshore. I am talking about a very small number of specifically skilled individuals, and under the Government’s proposals, the company would no longer be able to recruit such people. So it would not recruit at all, it would not recruit locally because of the lack of that nuanced knowledge of the foreign markets, or one or two individuals would be recruited offshore. All three scenarios would be damaging to the UK economy.

I support the Government’s attempts to control immigration, and I support the right hon. Gentleman’s motion, but I want gently to ask the Minister whether the Government will consider introducing some form of mechanism under which global companies that are struggling and can prove that they cannot recruit the necessary skills in the UK can seek a remedy whereby they recruit offshore graduates for a period of time— perhaps one or two years, or longer—provided that they could make the economic case for so doing. I ask the Minister gently whether we can have a flexible policy, rather than a rigid cap.