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Managed Migration

I very much agree with that, and I guess that the Minister will want to return to the point later on. Although I praise the Government’s efforts to make the system simpler, and believe that they have largely succeeded in that respect, the process of economic migration into Britain will remain fairly complex. Indeed, the Command Paper praises the fact that the new arrangements will be what it specifically calls ““sophisticated””. That is why a detailed assessment of the pilot scheme will be necessary, and why lessons must be learned. There will be many links in the overall chain making up this policy and a weakness at any one of them could undermine the system as a whole. Any such problems will need to be ironed out during the phasing process. Anyone who has dealt with the points system for local authority housing—and I guess that that includes many hon. Members present for this debate—will know that it is not necessarily a panacea, and that it certainly does not always produce the right or logical result. I believe that the Government are on the right track with the proposals. If they can implement the system efficiently and effectively in the way outlined in the Command Paper and if they can follow up the policy with effective action on illegal entry into Britain, they will have gone a long way to restoring confidence in the system of economic migration. Those are big ifs and the pilot scheme will need detailed scrutiny over the coming months and years if we are to restore confidence in the system.