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Points-Based Immigration System

That is a common argument. It is so common that economists have a name for it: the ““lump of labour”” fallacy, which is the idea that the number of jobs in an economy is fixed. We have to recognise that during the past 10 years, the employment rate among British nationals has gone up, which has happened at the same time as average wages have gone up each year, and while productivity has gone up. A rather good article in The Economist a few weeks ago showed that GDP per capita had gone up by something like 2.4 per cent. in each year during the past decade. That is well above the figure for the economies of the United States, Canada, France and Italy. Where I agree with the direction of the hon. Gentleman's question is on whether we should admit low-skilled migration from outside the European Union. I do not think that there is a need for low-skilled migration from outside the EU, but I shall talk about that in a moment.