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Home Affairs and Justice

Let me begin by apologising to my right hon. Friends on the Front Bench. I am going to talk about things that I know they have heard me talk about before, but if I stop talking about those things they might forget. It is just a reminder. The Queen's Speech refers to a draft Bill on citizenship and immigration. I ask for that Bill to contain a requirement for those who entered the country as husbands or wives for permanent settlement not to be allowed to act as sponsors of wives or husbands from abroad until they have acquired British citizenship—that is, five years after entry. At present, on gaining indefinite leave to remain, an incoming spouse or applicant can leave the spouse who sponsored him or her, immediately acquire a second spouse, and sponsor him or her to enter the country for permanent settlement. Many of my female constituents would go further and suggest that no one given leave to enter as a result of marriage should be allowed to sponsor a second wife, but I would not go as far as that. It is conservatively estimated that 70 per cent. of members of Asian communities in northern towns and cities have arranged marriages with spouses from the sub-continent—in the case of the Pakistani community, the spouse is usually a cousin—and that necessarily has a knock-on effect on society in the United Kingdom. It is estimated that only 3 per cent. of women are literate in the Mirpur area of Pakistan, where the overwhelming majority of the Pakistani community in places such as Keighley originate. It is therefore not surprising that primary schools in my constituency, along with those in many other northern towns and cities, face the challenge of 95 per cent. of their annual intake being unaware of the existence of English as a language when they first go to school. Satellite television and the increasing ghettoisation of communities, linked with an emphasis on transcontinental marriages and a lack of literacy on the subcontinent, has resulted in 50 per cent. of the Asian community in the Bradford district—including my constituency—having no English. That affects not only migrants but those born here. Bilingual or multilingual talent must be nurtured and developed as a great skill, but neglect of the common language in societies and economies is dangerous. The teachers and schools in Keighley, like many others throughout the north, do an exceptional job in difficult circumstances, but whatever the value added by their valiant efforts to help the children in their care, the fact remains that the start of those children's educational life has been impeded from the outset. From the very beginning, the level playing field that ought to be the right of every child is being denied to them. Such children are discriminated against by the tradition of their own community, and the results can be seen later in their lives. The Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities underachieve significantly at GCSE, in higher education and in employment compared with other migrant communities, or indeed the host community. According to ““Britain's Immigrants””, a recent report by the Institute for Public Policy Research, 50 per cent. of the Pakistani community and 48 per cent. of the Bangladeshi community in the United Kingdom are economically inactive. Migration from an area where poverty and illiteracy are the norm merely transfers the problem to the new area if it is not addressed or accepted to be a problem.