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Immigration Controls

I am particularly grateful for that intervention and would like to emphasise the key words that my hon. Friend uttered. He was here as a child, newly arrived, when the economy was not booming. One of the things that I so welcomed about the speech by my hon. Friend the immigration Minister is that he was clearly looking at a country in which—let me put it euphemistically—a boom might not go on for ever. We have a duty to plan for the worst, but we should obviously hope for the best. I emphasise that it would be inconceivable for anyone in this House to argue that the levels of immigration we have experienced have had no impact on the chances of employment for many of our lowest-paid constituents, or that they have had no impact on wage rates. Of course we can see gains when we look at the global figures, but they look a lot more sparse when they are averaged out among all of us. Levels of immigration have given rise to a new servant class in this country.