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Points-Based Immigration System

I welcome the fact that we have been able to have this debate. I said at the outset that I thought I would learn a great deal this afternoon, and I have not been disappointed. I have learned a great deal. I am glad that almost all the speakers started by recognising the extraordinary social and cultural contribution that newcomers to this country have made. I am glad that the House has put that issue beyond question. We have also had a helpful debate about the economics of the subject. I hope that we shall have a further opportunity to deconstruct the House of Lords report in more depth. The Government will have to publish their response to it quite soon; perhaps that will be our next big opportunity. I appreciated the position that the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) found himself in today. He has done a great deal to try to moderate the immigration policy that he inherited from the 2005 manifesto, but he is none the less a member of the party that he represents. However, he did a good job—if a little churlishly at the edges—of accepting that there are economic benefits to migration, although that was disputed a bit by some of his colleagues. He and I traded quotations and statistics, and I cannot resist the temptation to pop in just one more quotation. Somebody once said that"““it is true that immigration contributes to a higher GDP””." Those were, of course, the words of the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), who is not in his place at the moment, in a speech that he made on this subject last year. The hon. Member for Ashford accused me of a lack of radicalism before refusing to lay out his own policy in detail. I accept that the questions will come to him, rather than to me, about precisely where the beef is in his policy, and that is a subject that he will have to contend with. None the less, he also said something extremely significant that I have not heard him say before. Indeed, I have not heard it said on his side of the House in the past couple of years. He said that he welcomed the points system and called it a step forward. That was a delayed confession, but a welcome one none the less, and it was echoed by the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) as well as by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), which I appreciate. My right hon. Friend's words were echoed, to some extent, by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, East (Kerry McCarthy). They have both been extraordinary champions for the arguments that they put across this afternoon. I say to my right hon. Friend that I note the comments that have been made by the Immigration Law Practitioners Association and by the Bangladeshi Catering Association. I, too, have heard the estimates that they have made of the importance of the industries that they represent in this country. Those figures really are a testament to the hard work, entrepreneurialism and flair of the migrant communities in this country. I listened especially carefully to my right hon. Friend's arguments about the need to retain rights of appeal. He will know that that is a subject on which we have a couple of consultations running at the moment and, before we conclude our responses to those consultations, I will reflect carefully on the remarks that he has made this afternoon. I hope that he will also be happy to hear that I have ordered a review of the way in which we use and work with ethnic minority media to get across the messages about some of our reforms. I have also listened carefully to what hon. Members have said about the manner and conduct of enforcement operations. I very much welcome what they had to say about the need for enforcement operations. It is an area on which I think there is a degree of consensus throughout the House. Alongside a policy of stronger border protection, it is vital to have a policy for preventing illegal immigration. That means preventing illegal working, because it is illegal jobs which cause illegal journeys. That is why we have doubled the budget for enforcement and why we have stepped up operations to deal with illegal working by 40 per cent. over the last year. My right hon. Friend may not know this, but raids are not authorised by Ministers; they are conducted on the basis of independent operational judgments and based on available intelligence. I listened carefully to what he said, some of which was echoed by my hon. Friends the Members for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) and for Brent, North (Barry Gardiner), particularly the need to be sensitive in the way in which we conduct those operations. I will ensure that that message is conveyed to the regional directors responsible for overseeing them. The hon. Member for Eastleigh started off with an argument about projections of movements from east Europe that was not new. I always say, when that argument is made, that although the Home Office may have written the cheque for the report—enabling the House to question the value for money that the Home Office achieved—it was a university of London report. Indeed, when the Immigration Minister at the time—my right hon. Friend who is now the Secretary of State for Defence—was questioned in the House about estimates for the future, he assiduously refused, on the record, to make any projections of his own. I welcome some of the other remarks of the hon. Member for Eastleigh. I welcome his welcome for the points system and I am glad that he said that enforcement operations were important—I think he said that they were vital. The vote against the rises in visa fees that will help us double our enforcement work over the years to come was made before he became the Liberal Democrat spokesman. I hope that he will feel able to change that policy. I want to pick up particularly on one point that the hon. Member for Eastleigh made. It is about the need for English as a foundation for integration. I absolutely concur with that analysis. When I spent three months going around the UK, talking to people all over the country about the values that they thought we needed to put at the heart of the immigration system, the need for everyone to be able to speak English was absolutely the first value that they thought was important. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, North that I do not think that officially we have stated the standard of English that we believe will be important in tier 2. All I would say to the House this afternoon is that I do not think that we should see command of English as an issue simply in the context of the workplace. People come to this country and do not just work. While they are here, they are also members of British society. It is therefore important if we believe in an inclusive society that people are able to function as members of it. I think that some command of English would help, so we see the policy as important not just in the context of the points system but to those who want to make the UK their long-term home. The second set of points that my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, North made concerned the definition of skilled work. That was also very much the substance of the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, who is a powerful voice for the Chinese community in this House. He will be pleased to know that I discussed with the Chinese Government in Beijing last week the subject that he raised this afternoon. I have discussed it too with the Chinese ambassador in London. I am very much looking forward to our field trip to Chinatown, which I hope can be reorganised quite soon. My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon underlined the key point: how do we define a skilled job in the points system? The House will not know this, but my cooking is terrible and my grip on English is shaky enough, never mind my grasp of foreign languages, but if I had the ability to speak another language and to cook well, some in the House might accuse me of having some kind of skill. The question is how we recognise that skill in the points system. We cannot do it on the basis of some macroeconomic analysis; we need a more granular picture, which I hope the migration advisory committee will give us. The hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) made some points about numbers, and the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) injected a bit of nuance into the issue. We must take a national approach to the question of numbers. Although there may be pressure in some parts of the country, in others there will be a need for more entrants, not just for the benefit of society but for the benefit of the economy. Overall, we have had a good debate. It is important that we continue to debate these matters, not least the points made by— It being Six o'clock, the motion lapsed without Question put. Resolved,"That this House has considered the matter of a points-based immigration system."