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Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

No, I must make some progress. What is the point of the system if there is no limit? Once again, the Government’s policy seems half-baked. I hope that the Home Secretary, or the Minister when he winds up the debate, will tell us when the points system will be brought in, whether we shall have a chance to debate in full how it should work and how many points he thinks someone should have before being allowed into Britain, and how that will work. We need to know whether there will be a cut-off, and therefore a de facto limit. It must not be another example of the Government promising one thing before an election but doing something else after it. The Government were elected on a manifesto that promised to introduce the scheme. I hope that they will go ahead with it quickly, but I also urge the Home Secretary to think seriously about how they will limit the number of people coming into Britain—or is he simply going to recognise that there will be no limit, and will he tell the British people so if that is the case? We cannot continue to have an open-ended immigration policy, driven by the need to prop up key areas of our economy—by stripping other countries, incidentally, of people with important skills. At the end of the day we must focus on improving our own skills base so that we no longer have to rely on the immigration lottery. A responsible Government would put a limit on immigration. The consequences of an uncontrolled, unlimited immigration system are potentially too great. It is the glaring hole in the middle of the Bill and it is the glaring hole at the heart of the Government’s five-year strategy. Over the past two weeks we have witnessed the Government trying to meet the debts that they ran up during the election campaign. First we had the unnecessary plan to limit freedom of speech by criminalising people who question religious belief—a debt that they promised to Labour voters in marginal seats. Then we had their illiberal Identity Cards Bill, to change for ever the balance of the relationship between the citizen and the state—a price they paid for playing political games before the election. Today we have a Bill that genuinely addresses an issue of serious public concern, yet it contains very little that will repay the faith that the people placed in the Government on 5 May. On that day, the people gave the Government one last chance. They believed that they would take their concerns seriously. They believed what they said about getting the system under control. They trusted them to get the job done. For that to happen, we need a sea change in the way that the Government approach the issue. We must break the two-year cycle of announcement, headline and failure; break the complacent approach of a Home Office characterised by chaotic management and administrative failure; and break the web of distortions and half-truths that seems to surround this important issue. If, over the coming years, the Government prove capable of doing that and taking the tough decisions necessary, they will have our support. If not, the debt that they owe the British public will be called in. Then no amount of spin and cover-up will be able to hide the truth that they have failed in a basic duty of any Government—that of securing our borders, protecting our communities and keeping our country safe.