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Economic Migration (EUC Report)

My Lords, I apologise to your Lordships. I am in a quandary as I have a long-standing engagement with some young people at 8 pm. I beg your Lordships’ indulgence of my speaking directly from my script to speed up what I say. As a Member of Sub-Committee F, I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak to the two reports. The first report stresses the importance of enhancing the legal protection for economic migrants. The second report stresses the importance of Her Majesty’s Government to maximise protection for children and families in enforced returns. I agree wholeheartedly with the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, and my noble friend Lord Wright of Richmond about the benefits of economic migration. Indeed, most of your Lordships have commented on that. I echo, too, what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester said. We should make health and social care more attractive to people, and offer staff better support and remuneration so that we can recruit more of our own people in this country to the work. One caveat, to which the right reverend Prelate alluded, was the need to avoid at all costs the use of cheap migrant labour—there is some evidence of this in the United States construction industry—to avoid investing in and training our workforce. I am particularly anxious that those of our young people who have been unsuccessful at school should not be permitted to waste their potential without every effort on our part to avoid that. We have a troublingly high number of 16 to 19 year-olds not in education, employment or training. It is widely acknowledged that we have failed to adequately develop the educational courses that might engage many of these young people. I was grateful to Margaret Hodge, a Minister in the Department for Work and Pensions, for her reassurance and evidence on that point. Nevertheless, we need to be vigilant. As the right reverend Prelate pointed out, the current high rates of employment have not been the norm for the past 50 years. The best protection that we can offer our indigenous population at risk of exclusion are strong rights for our migrants—particularly employment rights. That will put indigenous labour and immigrant labour on as equal a footing as possible in the labour market. I recognise the profound challenge of housing in many areas. I was gratified to hear Ruth Kelly, the new Minister responsible for housing, saying that social housing would be her first priority. Her Majesty’s Government, in working together with local government, need to be highly responsive to addressing any pressure on housing from migrant labour. I hope that the Minister can tell us that the Government are now considering signing up to all the European Union legal instruments to protect migrants. We recommend that in our first report. One area where increased economic migration might be of significant benefit to the welfare of our children is childcare. Her Majesty’s Government recognise the dearth of experienced level 6 childcare workers to supervise day-care settings. With increasing numbers of under-twos being place in group day care, it is vital to ensure quality by good leadership. There is considerable expertise in some of the EU accession states and their neighbours in this area. Will the noble Baroness inquire of her colleagues in the Department for Education and Skills whether a recruitment drive in central and eastern Europe for level 6 qualified childcare workers might be feasible? A brief investigation would be very welcome. Our second report regrets the opportunity that the European Union directive misses out on securing high minimum standards across the European Union. I hope to look in some detail at our immigration removal centre at Yarl’s Wood. The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, has already spoken eloquently of conditions there. I want to illustrate the importance of some of our recommendations for the whole of the European Union. On the positive side, we found that Yarl’s Wood has improved the training of its custody staff and has introduced Criminal Records Bureau checks. It has appointed a social worker and is reviewing its weight of security measures since the highly critical report by the Chief Inspector of Prisons made shortly after its opening in spring of last year. On our visit, we saw well motivated staff caring for a vulnerable population. I was grateful to the Minister’s colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton of Upholland, for arranging for me to meet with the children’s champion at the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, Jeremy Oppenheim. I was impressed by his plans to improve Yarl’s Wood and the supervision of case managers. I think I can say that, as a committee, we were all impressed by his achievements as director of the National Asylum Support Service when he gave evidence to us. My one concern is that, with great respect to him, he may seek to do too good a job on returns. I ask the Minister to give him clear guidance on the limits his efforts should go to. On the other hand, returning to Yarl’s Wood, it was lamentable that the authorities did not recognise the need to develop a partnership with the local authority where the converted grade C prison was open for families. If the report of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, on Victoria Climbié has told us anything about safeguarding vulnerable children, it is that all agencies must operate together to secure their welfare needs. It is unacceptable that 15 per cent of the children there spend more than three weeks in the centre. On my second visit, in the small group of families I spoke to, one mother had been there for five months, together with her eight and 16 year-old daughters. Another, with a two year-old, had previously spent two months in detention there, and had now spent a further two weeks. The prison-style barred gate in the reception area remains. No wonder a mother asked me what she was to tell her five year-old when she was asked ““What have I done wrong to be placed here?””. A social worker resigned a couple of weeks ago for personal reasons. On our visit, however, she expressed her concern that the case managers who determine when a family is to be detained were not attending to her concerns that families were being detained unnecessarily. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury—I much regret that he is unable to be with us today and hope that he will shortly return to your Lordships’ House—drew our attention to a particularly disturbing case where a mother still breastfeeding her infant had been detained while her child was left in the community. Fortunately, she was released after a few days, after much lobbying from the noble Lord. Finally, I quote from the Council of Europe’s guidelines 10 and 11:"““care should be taken in the design and layout of the premises to avoid, as far as possible, any impression of a ‘carceral’ environment . . . Staff . . . should be carefully selected and receive appropriate training . . . Children shall only be detained as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time””." I shall write to the Minister with my final comments.