Immigration Controls

The hon. Gentleman took a very long time, and I am anxious that other Members should get a chance. The reintroduction of a servant class for those of the upper middle class has clearly meant very big gains for them, and has significantly changed their standards of living. It has not been so good for those at the bottom of the pile who have been competing for those jobs. My first point is that at least there is now some agreement among all parties that we have experienced record levels of migration to this country, and although that has had some beneficial effects, it would be absurd to argue that it has not had some less beneficial effects, particularly for the poorest members of society, which is my second point. My third point is that we ought to be careful about the idea of the society to which we belong. My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Mr. Dhanda) raised that point just now. We do not know the consequences for people's sense of identity, and that of those around them, when they have been subjected to levels of immigration that we have never experienced in our history. We are talking about 25 times what we have normally experienced. Perhaps we have the most extraordinary ability to adapt, but I wonder about that. I want to come back to this point, if I have time. At a time when the Government are developing a positive view of citizenship, I hope that that view embraces my constituents who are as English, or British, as I am. All of us need our sense of national identity defined and reaffirmed. It is not merely something that we want newcomers to our society to embrace; there is a real loss of identity, regardless of immigration, among the host population itself. I would like the idea of an earned citizenship to be extended to all of us. We should not take it automatically that just because we are born here, we know what it is like and what is expected of us as citizens in our society. The hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) looks puzzled by that, which shows the extent of the problem. If we had been in this Chamber in Edwardian times, we would have all had a clear idea that one of our central duties was to teach ourselves and the population the idea of being a good citizen. For 50 years in this country, we have somehow assumed that people get that idea by osmosis. It is quite clear, when we look at the disorder in our streets—the rise in levels of violence and so on—that ideas of citizenship do not automatically pass from one generation to another. While it is crucial for the question of immigration that we look at how we earn our citizenship—the Government call it positive citizenship—we need to extend the idea to embrace all of us. The last factor that my constituents would want represented in the debate is that we have experienced, since the end of 1992, growth that this country has never experienced before. Sadly, it looks as if that growth is now faltering. It is foolish to think that the policies that may have been appropriate during the most rapid economic growth that we have ever experienced will also work during a downturn. Therefore, I applaud what the immigration Minister said in sounding a note that the Government realise that in an economy where there might be fewer jobs, we might need a very different immigration policy from the one that we have pursued in the recent past. That brings me to my second, crucial point, which is one that the cross-party group on balanced migration has tried to make. In the past, we have assumed that the needs of the economy can be served in a way that allows people who come here to work automatically to gain citizenship. The Home Secretary made a very important point in her speech, which was lost in some quarters of the House. It was that we ought now to put up for question the idea that someone who has been here for five years should automatically gain citizenship. If that is so, I do not see much difference between the speech that we have heard today from the Home Secretary and the two speeches that we have heard so far from the immigration Minister. The main point that the cross-party balanced migration group has been trying to introduce into the debate in this place and in the country is that the immediate needs of the economy for people to come here and fill vacancies that cannot be filled by people who are already here do not necessarily mean that those people ought automatically to get citizenship. The main thrust of our argument is that the needs of the economy are different from the needs of citizenship and the wider society. What I hope we will hear from the Government—perhaps we will hear an even clearer statement when my hon. Friend the Minister winds up later—is that earned citizenship here will be capped. We would not expect the Minister to say what that cap should be at this early stage of the debate, given that although the Opposition claim that capping the number of people coming here to work has long been their policy, the hon. Member for Ashford could not tell us where that cap might be set.