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Migrant Workers (Regularisation)

I start as is customary and with genuine sentiment, by congratulating the hon. Member for Dagenham (Jon Cruddas) on securing the debate and on taking a sustained interest in this important topic, despite the distraction of his potential elevation on Sunday and his other duties. It has been an interesting debate and I welcome all the contributions that have been made, including the brief contribution of the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone). It is important that we should not allow the debate to become lop-sided, as it should reflect the variety of opinions that I hear in my constituency and across the country. It would not serve us well if all opinions were not given an airing and considered when discussing such important topics. I say this with genuine sentiment: it is a difficult area for the Home Office and I have some sympathy with the Minister. In a written answer on 23 January, the Minister for Immigration and Asylum said"““An estimate of irregular migrants working in the UK is not available. No Government of the UK have been able to say with accuracy how many irregular migrants are present in the country, and this is the case for any Government in the world.””—[Official Report, 23 January 2007; Vol. 455, c. 1698W.]" We are dealing with an amorphous issue and its precise scope is hard to define. The breadth of views should be borne in mind, as it is not the case that the arguments point emphatically one way or the other. I will spend the next five or 10 minutes discussing what considerations the Home Office needs to bear in mind when examining the issue in greater detail. A plus side of the argument advanced by the hon. Member for Dagenham is that, in this country, some people have double standards. Many people who are illegal migrants, particularly in big cities such as London, do jobs that many people who have lived in this country for much longer are not willing to do. We take their contribution for granted, and they are often employed, for example, as office cleaners. I have no absolute proof that people who clean offices in London are illegal migrants, but I would be surprised if a large number of people who clean offices did not fall into that category. They turn up early in the morning before most people go to work and make the offices look smart and presentable. Employers in those offices, who no doubt earn considerably more money than those cleaners, take that service for granted. It would not be practical to do so, but for the purposes of illustrating my point, if those illegal migrants were pulled out tomorrow en masse and in one go, many people who had taken the work of illegal migrants for granted would suddenly notice that their lives became more difficult in practical terms. We would also have severe labour shortages. The two factors that drive people to migrate and create an economic global dynamic were mentioned at the outset of the debate. In western Europe, we have had more than 15 years of continuous economic growth, and there is a low birth rate among the long-standing indigenous population. Both those factors create labour shortages and put pressures on the economy, particularly in low-skilled, low-paid jobs at the bottom of the labour market. The Government’s administration of the migration system is far from perfect, but they are working against a bigger backdrop of global economic factors that go beyond the immediate scope of any particular Government. That feeds into the wider debate: for example, many people who work in my constituency and are not United Kingdom citizens come from eastern Europe, particularly the new accession countries such as Poland. They fall into a different category from the people whom we are discussing but, none the less, they fill labour shortages in agriculture, fruit-picking, slaughter houses and other such jobs. They do not directly take work from people who have lived in the community for a long time but fill labour shortages that employers would otherwise be unable to fill. The second point to be entered on that side of the ledger concerns practicalities. Last year, the think-tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research, estimated that the cost of forced deportation, if we wished to go down that path, would be £4.7 billion. It is fair to say that that is an extremely unlikely, if not impossible, course of action for the Government, given the practicalities and the cost. We are therefore in a strange situation: an unsatisfactory state of affairs that has left a large number of people in a state of limbo is official Government policy by default because no alternative proposals are practical or financially viable. In its report, the IPPR states that regularising the work status of people who are illegal immigrants could annually"““net the Treasury £1 billion.””" We could have a debate about that and dispute the accuracy of the IPPR figures, but there is an economic consideration to be borne in mind. As mentioned by the hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn), while we should bear in mind the fact that many illegal immigrants have chosen to be here, regardless of their immigration status, we should feel uncomfortable about the way in which they are routinely exploited. I have mentioned some of the reasons why the current situation is hard to sustain and some of the perfectly sensible factors, economic and otherwise, that are driving the phenomenon. It is worth looking at the other side of the ledger in my remaining few minutes. The economy and the declining birth rate are significant factors that have helped to drive illegal immigration. However, if one accepts that that is the case, one cannot argue that if the status of all illegal immigrants was legalised it would solve the problem. Economic factors and pressures on the birth rate would presumably drive another generation or successive numbers of illegal immigrants to fill labour shortages created by ongoing periods of economic growth, greater transport mobility and other factors that are hard for a single Government to control. We must consider the need for proper border forces, proper entry and exit checks, proper surveillance at ports and other factors. People shy away from the word amnesty, but if the current status of illegal immigrants was legalised, the Government might say that it was a one-off decision that would not be repeated in future. However, people who have come here as illegal immigrants might reach the entirely rational conclusion that although that was what was previously said, the Government could change their mind and there is no reason why they would not do so in the future. Of course any Government would say that such a decision was a one-off. They would not say, ““Well, we’re doing this now and we will probably do it again in future””. People who came here would be making not only a rational economic decision, but a rational citizenship decision, as they might think that when the Government said they were going to do it only once, they did not mean it as they had no choice but to give that impression. People may be concerned, too, that legalising the status of illegal immigrants would be an award for illegal behaviour. Some individuals might have wished to come to the United Kingdom to live and work and become a citizen, but were deterred from doing so because they did not wish to undertake an illegal activity. It might be considered unfair that those who sought to avoid doing anything illegal should be penalised while people who made a different decision would not be penalised. People who have lived in this country for a long time might be unhappy about the pressure on services as a result of giving legal status to people whose immigration status is currently illegal. In conclusion, we all agree about the malign effects of the British National party. I feel as strongly about that as anybody, but the debate is nuanced. There are reasons why the Home Office could go down the path advocated by the hon. Member for Dagenham, but I can see that there are serious considerations that the Minister and others must bear in mind. However, today’s debate is a good starting point for reaching those conclusions.