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Migrant Workers (Regularisation)

Like everyone else, I congratulate the hon. Member for Dagenham (Jon Cruddas) on securing the debate. I imagine that we are far enough through the process of his other endeavours for the last votes to be in the post by now, and I hope that I can wish him well without causing him undue damage. The hon. Gentleman made a powerful case and, indeed, I have been lobbied, as, I am sure, the Minister has, by the Strangers into Citizens campaign. It makes a plausible case, articulately put. As we have heard, it has attracted support from both sides of the House and from a number of people outside. It is particularly useful that my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) and his committee in the Council of Europe will produce its report shortly, because clearly it is important to put the debate in a global context. We all know that the economic forces of globalisation and the increasing ease of travel between many parts of the world are leading to a worldwide increase in migration, both legal and illegal, and it is clear that any sensible Government policy will have to be put in that context. Equally, however, the case advanced by the hon. Gentleman has its opponents in all parties. I was struck when first I heard him advocate his case publicly on a ““Newsnight”” debate between the deputy leadership candidates. They were split themselves, and some of his colleagues spoke against his idea. We have all had hard cases arrive at our constituency surgeries. I shall provide a vivid example of how this issue—not the point about regularisation or an amnesty in particular, but immigration generally—is rising up the agenda. In my constituency, which is a semi-urban, semi-rural one in east Kent, I recently held a surgery at which every case was about immigration. It was the first time that one issue had dominated an entire surgery completely. One might think that that could happen in some of our inner cities, but I was surprised that it happened in a constituency such as mine. On the issues that have arisen, hon. Members said that we need to have the debate on a factual and honest basis. In that regard, I am slightly dubious about the number of them who simply said, ““This is not an amnesty. We must not call this an amnesty.”” Actually, it is an amnesty. Let us be honest! That is the proposal. The debate would be held at a higher level if we based it not only on the numbers involved, but on what we are calling for. We need also to look at the context, which has been referred to several times. That context is the very large number of people in this country who have no right to be here. Inevitably, it is impossible to guess the exact number. Ministers have put a figure on it of something like 500,000—a slightly dubious figure based on an American technique of sampling from some years ago. I suspect that the figure is much higher than that. We must also ask ourselves, ““Who are these people and why are they here?”” Some of them have come here perfectly legitimately, but have simply overstayed, which will have been a rational and conscious decision. They will have decided to put themselves outside the legal process by doing that. My guess is that they will constitute the largest number. Some will have been smuggled here illegally, but others—this group has been referred to already—will have come here, claimed asylum, often in the late 1990s and early years of this century, but still not have had their cases registered. It is impossible not to have a huge amount of sympathy for the latter group. We all know that that is appalling, not just because of the inadequacy of the Home Office response, but because of the human effects. There will be children in this country getting on for eight, nine, 10 or 11 who have never known another country, but who have no legal status in this one. Surely that is unacceptable. Many of the adults will be exploited. I was struck by some of the evidence given by trade unions to the Public Bill Committee on the UK Borders Bill about the fact that groups of Portuguese workers in this country are claiming to be Brazilian so that they can take jobs illegally, and the only jobs available to them will be at wages below the minimum wage. They know that no unscrupulous employer will employ them if they are Portuguese because they will then have rights. Therefore, they pretend to be here illegally when actually they are here legally. Clearly that is unsatisfactory. I am sure that the Minister will acknowledge that the Opposition supported the Government through the passage of the UK Borders Bill to tighten up regulations against unscrupulous employers. We have heard many of the arguments for the amnesty and the financial argument put by the IPPR, which are plausible, but perhaps not overwhelmingly so. We heard about the need to stop people being exploited, with which of course we all agree. We heard also the argument that we must try to stop the rise of the extreme right. Again, everyone here approves of that. The question is whether this particular measure would help in any or all of those endeavours. In parenthesis, when discussing such issues, we must mind our language. I say gently to the Minister that she could have a word with some of her fellow Ministers, particularly the Minister for Industry and the Regions, who in recent weeks has not shown great care in her language and might have contributed to the inflammatory nature of some of the debate. I shall get to the nub of the counter-arguments. The claim is that the proposal would be a one-off amnesty. I agree with the hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. Browne) that that is, of course, what any Government would say, and it has been said by other Governments. My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone) rightly mentioned the cases of Spain and Italy. Spain has had five amnesties and Italy has had six. France and Belgium have had two each. It would be entirely rational for anyone to think that if an amnesty comes once, that country has crossed a line and will grant amnesties in the future. Although that would have a beneficial effect on those already here, of whom there are many, we must consider the effect on those not yet here, but who might be considering coming. We are not talking only about those who might be oppressed or wish to better themselves economically by moving to western Europe. We must think also about people traffickers, who are some of the nastiest and most evil criminals in the world. They wish to ““help”” those who desire to come here. We have all seen pictures of those small boats either coming across the Mediterranean or going across the Atlantic to the Canary islands. What we do not see are the tragedies of those boats that do not get there and the many hundreds, possibly thousands, killed in such endeavours. If this country took a public policy step that made it easier for people traffickers to persuade some of the most wretched and poorest people in the world that it is worth their while taking a boat across the Mediterranean or Atlantic, we would be doing something immoral and foolish. That is one of the factors that we need to consider. I have heard the arguments put by my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale about the Spanish case and how it does not act as a pull factor, but I shall wait to see the report in full before deciding whether that is the case. It is clear that we need much better control of our borders. That is why Conservative Members advocate a specialist border police force. Clearly, if we have open borders, the argument that we are having in this debate is irrelevant, because many more people will come here illegally. A final point of detail is the point made by Keith Best that we can consider an amnesty more sensibly when the e-borders system is in operation. Unfortunately, it will not be fully operational until 2014—a long way in the future. I agree that this is a difficult argument, because everyone wants to do the morally right thing, but acting morally does not mean that we should necessarily suspend our intellectual faculties. If the second-order effects of the proposal would be to encourage more illegal migration across the world, we could do more harm than good, so I am not convinced by the argument but, like everyone else, I am very grateful to the hon. Member for Dagenham for raising this important issue.