Immigration Controls

I begin by doing something that is very unusual for me—defending a Manchester United supporter; I understand that the Minister is one. I am not requesting a job by defending him, but I watched his performance on the TV and I thought he was straightforward. The proposals are to be welcomed. The debate is also to be welcomed because, as several Members have said, the issue is very important among our voters. We do it a disservice by not bringing it to the attention of the House and speaking about it in a much more detailed and vigorous way. We must have the debate, and it is being conducted constructively. That is particularly true of the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field). His proposals offer us a way of developing some consensus on the issue. It is also right to want to discuss, consider and debate the question about the optimum population of the country. We have heard comments about the growing population in the south-east of England, the various environmental pressures that it gives rise to, and the population per square mile. It is legitimate to ask what numbers we think that the country, as a given area on the plant, can sustain. It is right that such a legitimate discussion should be held in the context of the policies of a nation state. The debate about what is legitimate and what is within the realm of a nation state is critical at the moment. Over the past 20 years or so, we have seen the concept of a nation state denigrated by globalisation and the forces that have been unleashed by neo-liberal ideology. I would argue that in the past few weeks we have seen a classic example of what unregulated markets can do and of the chaos that spins out from markets being unregulated. Unless we manage migration, it has the same potential to cause massive repercussions and problems in our society. As I said, the concept of the nation state has been undermined by the supremacy of the neo-liberal theory that the world exists simply as a place in which the free movement of goods, capital and labour is to be supported at every turn. Let me pick up on some of the comments made by the Conservatives. We have, in effect, had an incomes policy in this country for the past decade. That incomes policy is a migration policy. It has hit not the big earners, but the unskilled and the semi-skilled. If we refuse to accept that, we refuse to come into contact with reality. Any MP worth their salt gets out and about, and that is what they pick up. Evidence has already been quoted from the House of Lords Committee that was set up and from various Trades Union Congress reports showing that the net effect of mass migration has essentially been to drive down the wages, terms and conditions of the unskilled and the semi-skilled. Some people trot out the argument that we have always had migration into this country. Let us stop and consider the historical examples. We are moving in completely different times from those that we have had before. Earlier, the example of the Huguenots was quoted. The edict of Nantes, as we all know, was revoked in 1685 and the Huguenots were faced with a choice—either they stayed in France or they left. It was a matter of life and death. I owe my presence here to the large migration of the Irish community in the 1840s, following the failure of the potato crop. At the same time, the British empire was exporting food from Ireland, even though people were starving. The Irish came here because it was a matter of life and death. Similarly, one could argue that for the Jewish population that arrived at the turn of the century, following the pogroms in Russia, it was a matter of life and death. Commonwealth immigration in the 1950s and 1960s was essentially part of the political deal. We had exploited those countries for 100-odd years, and the deal was that they could have access to this country, too. What drives the current movement? We have heard it expressed: people want to develop some form of capital to go back to their original country and set up a business. If the migration that we are experiencing at the moment is driven by no more than the ““honourable”” desire to drive a Mercedes, build up a little capital, get a big business and acquire the latest electrical goods, I will not be won over by that. That form of movement will be fought in the last ditch. What steps can we take to address the huge population movement? I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, South-West (Mr. Davidson), with his absolute obsession with asking everybody about their policy towards the EU, has left. If he were present, I would tell him that I think that we should be raising the point in the EU that nation states ought to have the ability to control migration, even within the EU. That is a sensible policy. If the institution is not flexible enough to respond to that, there must be question marks against it. We cannot divorce mass migration movements from global inequality. People seek to migrate to the UK, to other countries in western Europe and even to the United States because they cannot have well-paid jobs in their own countries, because they have no proper health service and because they have no proper education. The role of the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation in determining the outcomes in their states has been particularly injurious. In accepting that this is a global issue, we need fairer trade and more aid. This is a global issue, but the essential instrument for addressing it is the nation state. We should focus on that in the future.