Immigration Controls

I beg to move,"That this House notes that the Government's immigration policy has resulted in a quadrupling of net immigration since 1997; further notes that the European Commission predicts that the UK population will reach 77 million by 2060; further notes that the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government said in July that the pressure on resources as a result of this level of immigration 'increases the risk of community tensions escalating'; further notes that the Chairman of the House of Lords Committee on Economic Affairs said in April that 'the argument put forward by the Government that large-scale immigration brings significant economic benefits for the UK is unconvincing'; and calls on the Government to introduce a limit on economic migration from outside the EU, to ensure that immigration remains a real benefit to the country's economy and its public services and to reform the marriage visa system to encourage better integration into British society." My first task is to welcome the new immigration Minister to his job, and it is a real pleasure to do so. He has made an impact already; indeed, he has made such an impact on the Home Secretary that she has decided that it might be wiser not to let him open the debate for the Government. It would be useful for the House to discover what he has said that she disagrees with. The immigration Minister gave an interview on Saturday in which he said that he wanted a limit on the numbers coming to Britain. That sounds sensible. In fact, it sounds like every interview that I have given on the subject for the past two years. Sadly, he gave another interview on Sunday, in which he said the opposite, describing talk of a limit as nonsense. I can only assume that the second U-turn came after a talk with the Home Secretary, because she has spent the past two years energetically criticising the policies that on Saturday the Minister said he would introduce. She spent two years saying that any limit on immigration would be arbitrary and unworkable. Her immigration Minister now wants a limit. She spent two years saying that there are huge economic benefits to immigration at any level. He says that it has been too easy to get into this country. I do not want to be unfair on the Minister and accuse him of disagreeing only with the Home Secretary. He also disagrees with himself. There are so many contradictions in what he has said that I will ask her to comment only on the main one. In his now notorious interview with The Times on Saturday, he said:"““We have to have a population policy and that means at some point we will be able to set a limit on migration.””" He is nodding—that is Conservative policy, and that is a good thing. However, on ““The Politics Show”” on Sunday, the Minister was asked by Jon Sopel,"““don't you want to go further and put a cap on the total population?””," to which he said:"““Well I think frankly Jon, there's a lot of nonsense talked about the cap.””" Not unreasonably, Jon Sopel said:"““hang on, so there will be a cap or there won't be a cap?””," to which the Minister replied:"““Well you tell me what you mean by a cap Jon and I'll tell you the answer””." So on Saturday he wants a limit and on Sunday it is nonsense to want a limit. I am happy to say that there has been more clarity in the Minister's subsequent interviews. He is completely clear in The Guardian today, where he is quoted in the headline as saying, ““We have lost people's trust on immigration””. He is right about that, but the Home Secretary might care to explain why her junior Ministers are going around admitting that her policies are a disaster. Is she a little worried by this? If not, she should be. The Minister went further in the speech that he made yesterday. To give balance, I shall quote him this time in The Daily Telegraph. According to that newspaper, he said that the Government had"““implemented policies that had damaged both those moving to the country and the existing population.””" He also went a long way on asylum policy, saying that the Government's asylum policy had caused"““untold human misery and division””." He is right, although those are strong words. He made his best point while praising Dutch immigration policy, saying:"““We are about 10 years behind.””" Perhaps he would like to explain who has been in power during those 10 years in which immigration policy has been such a failure. I think that we can now leave the Home Office team to sort out their differences—[Hon. Members: ““More!””] I should love to give my hon. Friends more, but it is important to hear what the Home Secretary has to say about her junior Minister. It is also important to establish whether his candid admissions of failure have any substantial policy changes behind them. Even if we take the words in his Saturday interview at face value, there is a serious problem. Sometimes, he seems to be arguing that unlimited immigration was okay during the economic boom, but that it will not work for the economic bust that we are now experiencing. At other times, however, he argues that we need to treat this as a demographic problem. When he says that, he makes a lot more sense. My right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) made it clear a year ago that the Conservatives believe that population growth has been too fast and that it must be put on a more sustainable course. To achieve that, however, we need properly controlled immigration numbers at all times, not just in a recession. Without a limit, we cannot plan our public services properly, we should have little incentive to improve the training of unemployed people, and, most of all, we should make it more difficult for new arrivals to integrate easily and quickly into British life. I want an immigration policy that will help to make Britain a less tense, more cohesive society. One big charge that the Government must answer is that, over the past 10 years, they have achieved exactly the opposite.