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Points-Based Immigration System

I want primarily to speak on behalf of the Chinese community. I speak as the chair of the all-party Chinese in Britain group, and as a Member of Parliament representing a borough that has the biggest Chinese community in Britain. In particular, I want to speak on behalf of the hospitality trade. Traditionally, 51 per cent. of the Chinese work force have been employed in that line of work. From the very constructive meetings that we have had with the Minister, I think he is aware of the strength of feeling on the subject. However, businesses face considerable unease and fear for the future, which I hope that he can allay. I can tell my hon. Friend that, as of yesterday, 600 submissions had been sent to the migration advisory committee from people in the industry. The submissions contained a large number of very moving stories, although obviously there is not time to refer to them now. I hope that he will be able to reschedule his revisit to Chinatown, which was due to take place last night, so that he can see for himself what I am talking about, and particularly the impact of tiers 2 and 3 on businesses. The fear is that businesses will not be able to recruit the staff from China and Hong Kong required to keep themselves going. Of course, the issue is not just the points-based system; there are already recruitment problems, and it is feared that they will get worse. The Chinese community is high achieving, both academically and professionally, and those who are second or third generation do not want to work in the business. They are happy to be customers, but not employees. I can sympathise with that, having grown up in the hospitality industry. I was the third generation in that trade, and I was very happy to be able to go to university and qualify as a lawyer, rather than work in the kitchens and bars. The problems are evidenced by the fact that the cost of staffing has increased. I am told that in the past six months alone wages have gone up by between 30 and 35 per cent. Head-hunting and poaching are becoming real problems as people try to find staff from an ever-diminishing work force. Families are being called in to help. Children's education is being affected, as they are called in to help in the takeaways. Parents and grandparents are enlisted. In Doncaster, I heard at the Emperor restaurant, owned by Mr. Yip, that his 80-year-old grandfather is now doing the cooking. In Chinatown, Mrs. Lee, whom my hon. Friend the Minister knows, says that her 75-year-old uncle is now the wok chef in the Golden Dragon. People are working increased hours, and that inevitably affects the quality and range of dishes available. Businesses have closed, including the Furama restaurant in Chinatown and Dragon Springs in Doncaster. We are not talking just about catering establishments; the Loon Fung supermarket in Gerrard street closed because it could not find staff. A 10-year-old business in Doncaster, a noodle factory owned by Mr. Chan, has also had to close down. That is partly owing to the pressure on irregular workers, and the raids that have already been referred to. The real concern is the complete lack of respect for the businesses, the customers and others involved. I will not discuss the issue in detail, because it has already been referred to, but what has not been mentioned is that on 18 October—the week after the big raid in Chinatown—the whole of Chinatown closed down for three hours as a protest at the way in which people had been treated during those raids. Unfortunately, such raids continue; there have been six such raids elsewhere in the past two months. That has a significant impact on businesses. Relations with the Border and Immigration Agency have improved; there is better co-operation, and there is education and training for employers, but I am told that employers can never get through on the helpline number that they were told to use. There is no answer. They have been told that that is the way to get advice, but it simply does not work. I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to resolve that. One of the key issues is that of irregular workers. Frankly, they will not be sent home; they will never be caught, and the sensible thing to do is to find a way of regularising them under tier 2, otherwise they will remain in limbo. Occupation 5434, cooks and chefs, is a very broad category, and as I said to my hon. Friend earlier, it has to be broken down much further, particularly given the needs of ethnic restaurants, because there are significant differences between the western catering trade and Chinese and south Asian restaurants. That is why workers from China and Hong Kong are needed. There is not a single catering college in the United Kingdom that offers formal courses for Chinese chefs. There are eight main styles of cooking—each requires separate skills and specialised knowledge of ingredients, cooking methods and presentation—including Cantonese, Peking, Szechuan and dim sum. We have all tried them, and they all require special marinades and sauces—even the vegetable preparation involves specialist training. The Chinese community resents the fact that takeaways are regarded as on a par with burger joints and fish and ship shops under the system. Takeaways, too, require highly trained chefs, and provide dozens of dishes. There is rather more to Chinese takeaway cooking than flipping burgers or deep-frying chips. The language barrier is an important consideration. Cantonese is the language of the kitchen, and the lack of experience, skill and cultural awareness of indigenous and EU workers is a barrier to their employment. They do not have the knowledge of the utensils and ingredients, let alone the knowledge of what to do with them and which cooking methods to use. I saw for myself the special high-heat naked flame cookers specially imported from Hong Kong—they are like volcanoes. The kitchens have tried to use indigenous and EU staff, but that has simply not worked out: the work is unpopular, and the staff cannot stick it. The language barrier imposes physical demands in a pressurised environment. Formal qualifications are not required to become a Chinese chef, but we should remember that in the indigenous population, only 26 per cent. of cooks and chefs have level 3 NVQ or above. The apprenticeship for Chinese cooking is long, and begins at the age of 15 or 16. The best guide to skills is references, experience and ability in practice, and that must be reflected in the system. Recruits from Hong Kong and China do not speak English. I have heard an apocryphal story that there are more people in China who speak English than in England, but the fact that Chinese chefs cannot speak English. However, they must be able to speak Chinese in the restaurants for health and safety and efficiency reasons. Indeed, most indigenous chefs do not have grade C GCSE English, so I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Minister is looking at that in more detail. There must be a relaxation of the rules on language. The best answer is to allow people to learn English when they are here, through the total immersion system of language learning, and test them when they try to renew their permit; otherwise the requirement will impose an insurmountable obstacle to recruitment. Last night, I visited Chinatown, not just to have a meal, although I was pleased to do so, but to meet chefs and talk to staff. I visited the Golden Dragon in Gerrard street—an excellent restaurant; I will give it a plug—to see the differences between Chinese and western restaurants. I very much appreciate those differences, given my background in the trade, and I was surprised by how different that restaurant was. I met Mr. Wong, the manager, who said the restaurant serves 500 covers a day, although I think that that is probably an underestimate. Some 50 per cent. of the restaurant's customers are Chinese, and it employs 15 waiters, two supervisors and two managers front of house. They all have to speak Cantonese, Mandarin and English. Mr. Wong is originally from Hong Kong, and has worked in the restaurant business in the UK for 30 years, 10 of them as manager of the Golden Dragon. He was worried about the impact of the new rules and their enforcement, as were many other restaurateurs whom I met last night. Most interesting of all was my visit to the kitchens, where I met the head chef, Mr. S. H. Wong—no relation—who has no English to speak of, so I had to speak to him through an interpreter. He has 40 years' experience in catering, and his apprenticeship in Hong Kong lasted five years. He had to do a further five years' on-the-job training before he could be considered for the position of head chef, and he told me that he was still learning. He was hired from Hong Kong seven years ago, and he has worked in China and the Philippines. He had no problem obtaining a work permit, and has permanent residency status. However, as things are currently configured, the chances are that he would not qualify to come here under the points-based system. He is an expert in Cantonese cooking, but he said that he can only do ““a little bit”” of Szechuan cooking, which makes the point about the differences in cuisine. Indeed, the restaurant employs a different chef to make dim sum. There are 100 dishes on the menu that Mr. Wong has to be able to make, and he mixes marinades and sauces from his own ingredients, making them from scratch. He is in charge of a staff of 20 in the kitchen. He said he is four or five short—he cannot find the right number of people—so the staff have to work harder and longer hours. I watched what I can only describe as a military operation. There was no shouting in the kitchen, and everyone was quietly getting on with their work—the only noise was the cooking sounds in the incredible heat. There was an incredible degree of organisation under Mr. Wong's control, and it was very different from trying to cook a Chinese meal at home or the pastiches one sometimes find in western restaurants. Mr. Wong insists that his staff speak Cantonese, which is the language of the Chinese kitchen. He said that it would create confusion and be very dangerous from a health and safety point of view if people did not speak Chinese. His staff are mainly from Hong Kong—some are from China—with little or no English. He says that without basic communication in Chinese, it would be difficult to create a 10-course banquet, which is a team effort and requires maximum co-ordination. The orders from the restaurant are written in Chinese. The suppliers from whom he buys his ingredients use Cantonese as their language. He is a hard-working member of our community but would probably not qualify under the present system. The customers expect authenticity. They expect to see Chinese staff in a Chinese restaurant. They want the quality, variety and distinctive Chinese character of the cuisine, which would be significantly under threat without migrant chefs, and the quality would suffer. The techniques and ingredients are important, but the range and methods of cooking distinguish one chef from another. The erosion of that distinctive character would inevitably result in a reduction in quality and impact on the business. There must be a common-sense approach. We must recognise the serious problem of recruitment and regularise existing staff. The points-based system must allow some flexibility with respect to experience, qualifications and the language requirement, otherwise we will see our popular Chinese takeaways and restaurants across the country closing down. When people cannot get their favourite meal, or they see the range and quality in decline, my hon. Friend will get the blame. Irrespective of what people say about immigration numbers, if one asks them whether they want their local takeaway or restaurant to close down as a consequence of clamping down on immigration, they would probably all say no. I had wanted to make one or two quick points on human rights as Chairman of the Select Committee, to follow up concerns about my hon. Friend's evidence to us recently, but I shall have to write to him about that. I shall simply say, in relation to the highly skilled migrants programme, ““We told you so””, and I hope we do not see those problems repeated. Finally, an agency in Edgware which hires au pairs would like to know when tier 5 is to start, which countries it can recruit from, and how the scheme will affect au pairs' free time and pocket money, bearing in mind that they are outside the existing tax, national insurance and minimum wage arrangements. That is a little tailpiece added on at the end, but my main plea is that we should get real and use some common sense in the way that we approach our ethnic restaurants. We all enjoy Chinese and south Asian food, and if there are no changes or common sense, we will see those restaurants closing down, with a real impact on the wonderful variety of cuisine that we have in our country. The diversity will be lost and our regular Friday or Saturday night's enjoyment will be spoiled. I do not want my hon. Friend to get the blame for that, and I am sure he does not want that either. I look forward to his coming down to Chinatown and seeing what I saw last night.