I am very conscious of time, so I am going to get stuck in straightaway.
I want to try to cover as many of the Lords amendments as I can, but I want to start by looking at social care. I represent an area where 16,000 people work in social care. I just want to pick up on one of the comments made by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson). She made a very eloquent speech, but I will say this. I care about my social care workers. I care about making sure they get the wages they deserve. I care about making sure they have the conditions they deserve. However, the amendment runs a real risk of tagging the social care debate—which we need to have, gloves off, because there are issues we need to discuss in
an adult and appropriate way—into the migration debate. If we do that, we run the risk of pigeonholing it and not having the full broad-brush debate we need that covers everything from conditions to pay to the expectations we have of the sector.
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Hon. and right hon. Members across the House have been absolutely right when they have said that during these times our social care workers have been heroes and it is about time we start giving them the respect they deserve—no more so than in my area of Sandwell, which has been one of the boroughs hardest hit by the pandemic. They have been on the frontline. I do not support the amendment because I think we run the risk of pigeonholing our social care workers in that way. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Gary Sambrook) is not in his place at the moment, but he raised the point that the Government have valued their commitment to social care. It was in the manifesto. We have seen the start of that through the £1.5 million promise, but, again, we need to keep having that debate.
On Lords amendment 2, look, my constituency voted 70% to leave the European Union. One reason it did so is that it wanted an immigration system that was a fair playing field. How is it fair when we create a two-tier immigration system that favours one group over another? That is my concern. Under the EU system, I could go to Paris and meet someone, have a family and bring everyone over, but if I met someone from outside the EU or the EEA, they would be under the points-based system. I do not understand how that can be perceived as fair.