My Lords, I have put my name to Amendment 193. I last spoke at 11.04 pm and it is now 1.30 am, so I understand that I need to push on.
My noble friend has made the case for Amendment 193 and the importance of data. As some Members of your Lordships’ House know, I am very interested in demography and the overall shape of the population of this country: how it is growing and the impacts of that, and the long-term impacts, because these things take 25 or 30 years to reach their full impact. In judging the population growth of this country, there are really only two hard numbers: the number of births and the number of deaths and the natural increase. The rest are, to a greater or lesser extent, all estimates.
My noble friend referred to the International Passenger Survey. It is of course voluntary, so people do not have to answer. It is a statement of intent when they do answer, so they may say, “I am going to be carpenter in Birmingham”, but end up a carpenter in Cardiff, because that is where the jobs are. It is very imprecise in the quality and quantity of its data. We need a major drive on getting accurate figures, because that would dispel some of the accusations, allegations and anecdotes that tend to bedevil discussion of these matters. In that sense, I support what my noble friend wishes to achieve in Amendment 193.
I also support what the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, is trying to achieve, particularly in Amendment 141A, on overstay. That is another issue about which the public is very concerned and we do not have a clear picture. A clear picture would be really valuable in lowering the temperature and getting some transparency.
I also want to speak to his Amendment 138. When I first saw it, I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, had had a damascene moment. Then I saw that he had swerved away from the real implications of what he could have sought to achieve with this amendment. If we are to have a sensible discussion about immigration, population change and impact, it needs to be wider than what the noble Lord is seeking to achieve in Amendment 138. It needs to think about the impact on our demand for housing, as referred to by my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe. We live 2.1 people per dwelling, so if we have 40,000 asylum seekers, we will need 17,000 homes; and if we have 250,000 immigrants, as we have at the moment, we will need 100,000 homes. There are wider implications which our fellow citizens are rightly concerned about. There is also the impact on our environment, building, the green belt, farmland and our ability to feed ourselves, and our ability to reach our climate change goals, all of which are of great concern to different interest groups around the country.
I have just had some polling done ahead of my Private Member’s Bill. Some 71% of the people questioned feel that this country is overcrowded. Some 63% think
the Government do not have a plan in place to do anything about it. If the polling is rescheduled just to address the minority population, 64% of them think it is overcrowded and are concerned about what may lie ahead during the coming years.
1.45 am
The idea in Amendment 138 is interesting. It proposes that an outside body should comment on some aspects of this problem. I am disappointed that this is essentially what the Migration Advisory Committee is doing—not exactly, but very close. It would be hugely important if the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, were to reframe it to take in the broader impacts on our society. People are interested in and worried about this. They are concerned about what is happening in their community—to housing, the green belt, farmland and our climate change goals.
Amendment 193 says that we need the numbers. We need to know about the overstayers, as Amendment 141A proposes. If the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, could find it in his heart to broaden this issue out and consider it in its widest sense, it would address the in-built concerns that many of our fellow citizens have and would like to see addressed. I should like to see my Government address it, but if the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, is able to persuade this Committee some other way, he will have my support.