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Migrant Workers (Regularisation)

It is good that we are having a debate about what we should do about a problem that everyone knows exists. There is the context of the Government agenda, which says that migrant workers bring economic benefits and considers managed migration. However, it also says that it will crack down on illegal working. Some of the proposals in the UK Borders Bill, which is still progressing through the House, are related to that. We know that very significant numbers of people are working here illegally. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Jon Cruddas) said, we should consider what that means. Out there, the common concept of those who work illegally is that such people work in the moonlight economy. However, a lot of people are illegal in the sense that they do not have permission to work, but work in the mainstream economy. Over the years in constituency advice surgeries, I have seen lots of people who have come here through a variety of means. Some came originally as asylum seekers and were given permission to work, which had never been revoked; they still had a piece of paper stating that they had that permission. Others came with valid visas, got national insurance numbers and started to work. Others came as students. Others came from countries that are now on visa lists, but were not when they came, so they did not have to have a visa to come. All those people have national insurance numbers, pay tax and have been doing so in some cases for years and years. As my hon. Friend said, they get no benefit from that, but they have absolutely no security.