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I spotted this speech made last week by Lord Waddington
which he gave on the fourth day of the debate on the
Queen's Speech.
I am not a Tory, but imagine if we had Lord Waddington,
a former home secretary, to replace the present holder,
Jacqui Smith.
Lord
Waddington (Conservative) | Hansard
source
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, will forgive
me if I do not follow her in her remarks, although I
found them interesting. I know that noble Lords will
appreciate it if I do not add to the sea of words about
Damian Green, but perhaps I will be forgiven for saying
something about policing.
These days, the priorities of the police do not seem
to correspond very neatly with the priorities of the
public. Chasing around the country to arrest a man for
making a tasteless joke at a country fair, questioning
a woman for doubting the wisdom of gay adoption, investigating
remarks made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop
of Chester and arresting a man the other day for making
a bonfire on bonfire night and charging him with arson
all seem a daft use of police time.
Of course the police have to respond to complaints
and follow procedures, but a little common sense along
the way might come in handy. The enthusiasm with which
in recent years the police have set about responding
to the Government's often zany priorities and the massive
resources employed to hunt down those responsible for
leaking government documents that in no way damage national
security but expose government incompetence sit rather
oddly with the reluctance of the police to deal with
offences such as burglary, which really do concern the
public, with a plea of a lack of resources. All is not
well. I make only one suggestion today, perhaps with
my tongue in my cheek. Perhaps it would help if there
were fewer sociologists at the top and more down-to-earth
coppers such as those whom we are privileged to have
in this House.
In these stirring times, people may be surprised to
hear that I have some sympathy with the Home Secretary.
She must have been pretty horrified by the latest revelations
of incompetence in the Home Office, particularly coming
so shortly after she had gone into her office and found
the shambles of immigration control there. It is about
that shambles that I should now like to speak. I am
afraid that I do not at all agree with the remarks made
by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth.
Let us go right back to 1997. Labour's 1997 election
manifesto stated that all modern countries,
"must have firm control over immigration and Britain
is no exception".
That was a clear promise that the control would continue,
but Labour abandoned its promise and abandoned the control,
doing its best to conceal from the public what it was
up to. In fact, it was a lot worse than that. Decent
people who expressed concern about what was going on,
and who fully recognised the great contribution made
by newcomers over the years but doubted whether we could
continue with an almost open door, were branded racists
and the Government made every effort to stifle debate.
I do not know precisely why things happened as they
did. The Government may have concluded that it was easier
to import people to fill vacancies than to take unpopular
steps to get back to work the millions of economically
inactive people already here. Probably they just allowed
the Home Office to become so inefficient and demoralised
as to be incapable of operating the control effectively.
They allowed it to become, in the words of John Reid,
"unfit for purpose".
Whatever the reason, the control collapsed, and the
figures are there to prove it. There should be no room
for argument about this. In the 1980s, net immigration
was below 50,000 a year and in 1997 it stood at 48,000,
but by 2004 it had soared to 586,000. A lot of people
left in that year, but even if we take account of the
leavers the net number of permanent entrants was an
enormous and unprecedented 244,000. The net figure for
2006 was a little lower, but last year it was back to
237,000, even though by then there was a pronounced
downward trend in people coming from eastern Europe.
I am talking about legal immigration. Like Mr Blunkett,
we do not have a clue how many are here illegally, but
there must be hundreds of thousands of them because
285,000 failed asylum seekers are unaccounted for.
A few weeks ago there was an outbreak of common sense,
but it was very short-lived. Mr Phil Woolas said that
there was a need for a cap on immigration and that he
would not let Britain's population go over 70 million.
The next day, after, apparently, having received a rocket
from the Secretary of State and after a Labour colleague
had accused him of "pandering to right-wing extremists",
he recanted. However, he started a debate that will
not be so easily stifled this time.
Recently, this House debated a report of the House
of Lords Economic Affairs Committee and its conclusion
that Britain had not benefited from the influx of newcomers
over recent years. Even if we reject the committee's
conclusion, we still have to ask ourselves whether in
the long run it is really in anybody's interest for
the population of our tiny island to continue to grow
at the rate at which it has been growing recently. In
October 2007, the Office for National Statistics predicted
that Britain's population, which grew by 2 million between
2001 and 2007, would, with 70 per cent of the increase
due to new immigration, surge to 71 million by 2031,
75 million by 2051 and 85 million by 2081, making us
by then by far the most densely populated country in
Europe.
How will we house these people? What will be left of
our countryside when we have done so? Between 1997 and
2005, the last period for which figures are available,
no fewer than 592,000 houses were needed solely for
new immigrants. According to the Library of the House
of Commons, 41 per cent of the 3 million houses that
Mr Brown says he is going to have built by 2020 will
have to be built only because of the new immigration
that is at present forecast—that is, new immigration
from now.
According to the CPRE, 3 million more houses by 2020
means our having to lose an area of greenfield land
the size of Birmingham to accommodate them. That would
be an environmental disaster, but it is one that can
still be avoided. We have to stop saying, "X number
of people are going to come, so Y number of houses must
be built". Instead, we must ask ourselves whether the
vast number of new homes that we are told immigration
policies require is not in itself an argument for stemming
the flow. If we can bring immigration and emigration
into a rough balance—if we can achieve a situation in
which those coming match those leaving—the need for
additional housing identified in the Barker report will
largely be removed.
There is nothing in the gracious Speech that is calculated
to achieve a result remotely like this. Let us be clear:
the Government's points system, which places no limit
at all on work-related immigration, actually guarantees
further immigration growth. How can it be otherwise
when, as newcomers fill vacancies, their demand for
services creates others? How can it be otherwise when
the Government boast of 800,000 jobs being available
to non-EU immigrants without their even having to be
advertised here? These are not highly skilled jobs,
but jobs such as care workers and cooks—not Gordon Ramsays,
but people capable of earning £8.20 an hour. How can
it be otherwise when the government scheme allows people
with skills to come here on spec and then take unskilled
work?
There is only one answer, which is an annual limit
on non-EU immigration designed to achieve a rough balance
between leavers and entrants—the cap on immigration
that Mr Woolas advocated. So one or two cheers for Mr
Woolas and a plague on his bullying detractors.
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