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Migrant Domestic Workers (Visas)

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship in this important debate, Mr. Benton. The traditional congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter) on securing the debate would clearly be inadequate today. I suspect that this will be his last Adjournment debate, so it is right and timely to pay tribute to him, as I did on the day that he announced his retirement from Parliament. His work as a Member of Parliament has been incredible. I am thinking of the successes he has had from the positions he has held on the Home Affairs Committee and the all-party group on Gurkha Rights, where he played an incredibly helpful role. His membership of Amnesty International has guided his work. I checked before the debate and my hon. Friend's declarations of political interest included India and Pakistan, so I have narrowed it down, but it was useful that he clarified the matter, especially as next week is Pakistan day. I have a detailed prepared speech, but I think that hon. Members want me to answer two questions: one on domestic workers and one on domestic workers in diplomatic households. The hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) has had to leave us, but I undertook to provide answers to his questions. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) had a detailed list of questions that I might not cover now, but if he remains unsatisfied on those questions, I will of course write to him with the information. Let me clarify something. On the route for domestic workers that we have discussed with Unite and Kalayaan, which are represented in the Chamber today, the commitment was to look at the system within two years of the introduction of that aspect of the rules. That will take us to November 2010, which is slightly before the date that hon. Members were looking at. Let me make it clear that the Government's policy objective is to review how the system is working. We have been given some figures today, and hon. Members will remember that the original fear was that there would be a pull factor and that the ability to transfer the visa might encourage people to use that route. The hon. Member for Ashford made a valid point about evidence, because there are two other criteria that one would need to look at. One is the effect on settlement applications and the desire in the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 to separate residency from automaticity of settlement rights. At the moment, people in the category we are discussing have rights to apply, but one needs to look at the effect of any proposals. The hard information that my hon. Friend has given us shows, however, that the numbers using the domestic worker route are actually going down. There may be wider factors at play, including economic factors, although I have seen no evidence of that. Of course, that analysis assumes a rather little Englander view of the economic recession, because we remain a relatively wealthy country.