It is a great delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. It is something I have never done before. This is also a great opportunity to commend the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard). I prefer his speeches when he is attacking the Prime Minister rather than the Opposition, but he put his argument very well and, although I hate to embarrass him, I agree with quite a lot of what he said.
I agree also with a lot of what the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) said, and I will go through some of the issues line by line. His last sentence, however, slightly antagonised me, because although he commended the staff working in the local services in Peterborough who, he said, did not foresee the deluge that was coming, I think that quite a lot of the people who came ended up working in those same public services. It is not, therefore, quite a dichotomy between them and lots of people from outside the UK who have ended up doing nothing for this country because, in many cases, those are the people who have worked the hardest.
One thing that I think everyone who has spoken thus far has said—and I am sure the Minister will do the same—is that migration and migrants have brought a great deal to this country, economically and culturally, and not just in the generations that we have been part of but in many before. The Rhondda would certainly not be the constituency it is today, with rugby players with
surnames such as Sidoli, if it were not for migration from Italy in the 19th century when people came to work in the mines. We actually allowed an awful lot of people to come from England too, which was a moral dilemma for us but, seriously, migration has affected every element of our country.