Pete Wishart
Main Page: Pete Wishart (Scottish National Party - Perth and Kinross-shire)Department Debates - View all Pete Wishart's debates with the Home Office
(1 day, 21 hours ago)
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Dame Angela Eagle
It is important that all of us acknowledge the humanity of people who come to our country to work, and the contribution that they make. But we also have to have rules: we have to decide who comes to our country and why, and we have to explain those rules to the electorate. That is what I shall go on to try and do.
We inherited a system in total chaos. The Conservatives allowed criminal gangs to take hold across the channel, which saw the numbers arriving rocket from 300 in 2018 to more 30,000 in a few years. They crashed the asylum system, with a 70% drop in monthly decision making and an 80% drop in asylum interviews in the run-up to the election. There was a 34% drop in returns compared with the last Labour Government, and they spent £700 million sending four volunteers to Rwanda. Their handling of legal immigration was no better. Net migration quadrupled in the space of just four years to nearly a million—that is their record.
Those numbers tell a wretched story of a system spiralling out of control; an entire criminal industry building up along our borders with terrible consequences; ruthless smugglers sending desperate people on dangerous, sometimes deadly, journeys and making a fortune in the process; basic rules not being enforced; and a collapse of trust and confidence in the state’s ability to perform one of its most fundamental functions: keeping our borders safe and secure.
So bad was the Conservatives’ record that the public simply stopped believing anything they said—and who can blame them? For all the talk about stopping the boats and stopping this crisis, the crisis carried on. Unsurprisingly, strong words and grotesquely expensive gimmicks make little impact against sophisticated smuggling networks. The task of ending this chaos falls to this Government.
Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)
The Minister knows that I have long believed that this Government are harbouring their own ambitions for a Rwanda scheme. It started with the idea of a returns hub in Albania, but that seems to have been rejected by the Albanian Government. Does the Minister have any further plans to introduce some sort of son of Rwanda on behalf of her Government?
Dame Angela Eagle
When we came into office, we ended the Rwanda scheme. The scheme was about deporting people, processing their asylum in another country and never letting them back here. [Interruption.] But it did not work—[Interruption.]
Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)
I have to say that I was amazed to see a Conservative motion on immigration on today’s Order Paper. I think all that most of us in the House require from the Conservatives is a full and sincere apology for the mess and chaos that they left behind, and then for them to go away for a long period of self-ordained silence. They thought that they were reducing immigration, but what they did was quadruple it. They did not even understand their own immigration policy. They were letting hundreds of thousands of people come into this country. So please, do not get to your feet and have the temerity to lecture this House about immigration after the mess that you made.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. The hon. Gentleman did rather incite me to get to my feet, and I am somewhat stunned at his allegation that I have played any part in this.
Pete Wishart
That was not like me, Madam Deputy Speaker. It was very lax, and I apologise.
The Conservatives are currently languishing in fourth place in the opinion polls, and it is a well-deserved position.
Cameron Thomas
I am making this intervention from the Reform Bench, in the absence, apparently, of their own interest in immigration.
Another thing that I think the Conservative party might answer for is the fact that Vladimir Putin weaponised immigration in 2015 through his terrorist tactics in Syria. I wonder whether the Conservatives have given much thought to how the Conservative Friends of Russia group continued to operate for nearly a decade thereafter.
Pete Wishart
I do not think the Conservatives give much thought to anything in this particular field, so I would not even venture to give an opinion on that.
As I was saying, the Conservatives are in fourth place in the polls, and their entire vote has practically gone wholesale to Reform. This scrappy, desperate motion represents a vain attempt to stop that leakage and get some of their vote back. Let me also say to the hon. Gentleman that it does not matter how hard they try—and they are trying—because they will never outperform Reform, who are the masters of nasty rhetoric. The Conservatives are mere amateurs compared with the hon. Gentlemen of Reform who just so happen not to be in their places again.
The whole debate about immigration is descending into an ugly place which seems to fire the obnoxious and the unpleasant. I am talking not only about those two parties but about the Government too, and I am now going to direct my blame at some of the things they are doing. A new consensus is emerging in the House. For all the faux arguments and fabricated disagreements, the three parties are now more or less united in a new anti-immigrant landscape in the House. The only thing that seems to separate them is the question of who can be the hardest and the toughest in this grotesque race to the bottom on asylum, refugees and immigration.
The fear of Reform percolates through every sinew in this House. It dominates every single debate, and everything that is going on. Reform is killing the Conservatives, but Labour seems to want a bit of the self-destruction action too. Everything the Government do on immigration is now looked at through the prism of Reform, and they have even started to get the Prime Minister to use Reform’s language. The hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) could not have been more generous in his tribute to the Prime Minister for his contribution to nasty rhetoric. The thing is, the “island of strangers” speech could have been made by any one of these three parties.
Sir John Hayes
I reassure the hon. Gentleman that I have not changed my mind about this; I have believed it forever. I only change my mind about anything about once a decade. The truth of the matter is that he must know that, according to the ONS, the scale of population growth will be equivalent to the population of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Peterborough, Belfast, Cardiff, Manchester, Ipswich, Norwich, Luton and Bradford added together. That cannot be reconciled with the quality of life and standard of living that his constituents and mine expect.
Pete Wishart
I know the right hon. Gentleman does not change his mind, and it is something that we all love him for in this place. Maybe we should look forward to what is on its way in a couple of decades. I think he knows that a spectacular population decline will start to kick in around the mid-part of this century. Spain and Italy are already doing something about it. All we are doing in this place is stifling population growth through the two-child benefit cap—something that works contrary to what we require.
All Labour is doing is climbing on the anti-immigrant bandwagon, and that is alienating its supporters. I am sure that everybody saw the Sky News report this morning on the intention of former Labour voters. Sky News found that only 6% of lost Labour voters have gone to Reform. Labour has mainly lost votes to the Liberal Democrats and the parties of the left. In fact, Labour has lost three times as many voters to the Liberal Democrats and the left as it has to Reform, and 70% of Labour voters are considering abandoning the Labour party to support the parties of the left.
Pete Wishart
I cannot give way any more.
In chasing Reform voters by using its language and appeasing Reform, Labour is only further alienating its supporters. One can only wonder at the political genius that is Morgan McSweeney, who has managed to chase voters away in a search for voters who do not exist.
Pete Wishart
I cannot give way—I have no time.
Ordinary Labour voters have good, liberal values, but just now they have a party that is not representing their views. That is why they are moving on.
In Scotland, we take on Reform. We are one of the few parties across the United Kingdom that has steadied its own position, and we have even improved it slightly. There is a big gap between us and Reform. That is because we take on Reform’s arguments and we do not appease the party or go on to its agenda. I encourage Labour colleagues to think about that.
We now have an immigration policy that is the exact opposite of what we need in Scotland, and it is contrary to our national interest. Scotland is in the early stages of the population and demography crisis, and it will only get worse because of what this Government are going to impose on us. We will soon have too few working-age people available to look after an ever-increasing older population.
For all three parties—Labour, the Conservatives and Reform—immigration is a burden and is out of control. For us in Scotland, it is essential to the health of our workforce and our economy. That is why we will never stop calling for a separate Scottish visa. We need the tools in our country to face up to our crisis. I will leave the Government to get on with their grotesque race to the bottom and to pander to Reform in a vain attempt to get some votes, but Scotland does not need their new “island of strangers” policy. It is contrary to what we want, so please leave us right out of it.