Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Toby Perkins and Damian Green

Wednesday 12th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I am delighted to echo my right hon. Friend’s call for a welcome for the new statue of Jane Austen in Basingstoke. I am genuinely astonished that there is not a statue of Jane Austen anywhere else in the country, given that she is one of our greatest authors and is still popular 200 years after her birth. I am also happy to echo my right hon. Friend’s desire for more statues of Britain’s greatest women to be spread around the country.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Q12. Politicians are said to be here today and gone tomorrow, but whatever tomorrow may bring, the Prime Minister is not even here today to mark the end of her first year in power. I also note that, for the first time since she became Prime Minister—[Interruption.] Listen: you might like to hear this. For the first time since she became Prime Minister, her image has been removed from the front page of the Conservative party website. Can the First Secretary tell us why she has gone from being the next iron lady to “The Lady Vanishes”?

[Damian Green]

The hon. Gentleman is ingenious in asking very personal questions, and I commend him for it. Unfortunately, he has his own record on this subject. As recently as June last year, he said that the leader of the Labour party was

“not destined to become Prime Minister”,

and called on him to resign. I suggest that he might want to make peace with his own Front Benchers before starting to be rude about ours.

Border Checks Summer 2011

Debate between Toby Perkins and Damian Green

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

rose—

[Damian Green]

Do sit down; you have not been in the debate.

If Brodie Clark had not admitted that to his immediate superior, he would not have been suspended. That is why he was suspended.

Let me turn to some of the points raised by hon. Members. The serious point that the shadow Home Secretary made was about staffing cuts, so let me quote for her from the UKBA business plan produced at the end of the previous Government’s term in office. This was her Government’s policy, and it says:

“Our workforce projections indicate that there will no longer be a business need for the same number of staff in certain locations by the end of March 2011…within Border Force it is imperative that frontline services are maintained but changes to the way we work mean that this will be achievable with targeted reduction across the grade range.”

In other words, the previous Government were planning to reorder the way the border force works so that it could be effective with fewer people. That is why I said that the hon. Member for Rhondda was walking the line between opportunism and hypocrisy—I was not referring to him personally at all.

Indeed, my predecessor, Phil Woolas, said:

“Providing more flexibility and powers for the deployment of officers in tackling those threats at the border will enhance border security and therefore the protection of our country.”––[Official Report, Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2009; c. 5.]

That is what Labour’s last Immigration Minister said, and I agree with him. It is pretty disgraceful that his successors are now attempting to say that it is somehow improper to follow that example.

For many years, the UKBA has needed to be reformed. We have reversed Labour’s open-door immigration policy; we have capped economic migration; we have clamped down on student visas; we have restricted family migration; and we are breaking the link between temporary migration and permanent settlement.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Toby Perkins and Damian Green

Monday 6th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question, which reflects the concerns of many millions of people of all political views all over the country. Britain can and has benefited from immigration, but not from uncontrolled immigration. The levels of net migration seen under the previous Government were unprecedented. That is why this Government are committed to bringing immigration down to sustainable levels by steady downward pressure on all routes to migration.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

The Minister spoke about “uncontrolled” immigration, but is not the whole point of the Australian-style points system to provide sensible controls on immigration while also allowing the country to attract the skills it needs? Is it not the case that the immigration policies pursued by this Government are all about the soundbite and how the measures will be reported rather than about having effective measures to ensure that we continue to attract the skills we need while maintaining the controls put in place towards the end of the previous Government’s tenure?

[Damian Green]

If the hon. Gentleman accuses me of engaging in soundbite politics, may I be allowed to use the Dispatch Box to advertise my Royal Commonwealth Society lecture this evening, in which I will make quite a long and detailed speech on immigration policy, to which I invite him—[Interruption.] I will have a word with the doorman and get him in. The points-based system was indeed a step forward, but he fails to recognise that it was nothing like enough, as we saw in the immigration figures that came out during the summer recess. Despite the assurances of Labour Ministers during the election campaign, net migration is up, at 196,000. That is too high a level and is unsustainable for this country.