That this House regrets that the Statements of changes to the Immigration Rules (HC813, HC1043 and HC1248), published respectively on 22 October 2020, 10 December 2020 and 4 March, do not provide clear and comprehensible descriptions of the changes proposed, nor of their likely effect. Special attention drawn by the Secondary Legislation Committee, 33rd and 40th Reports, Session 2019–21.
My Lords, I originally laid three Regret Motions in protest at the Government bouncing through a huge change to the immigration system with minimal discussion in this House. In the new Parliament, they have now been consolidated into the single Motion before us. Statutory instruments have long been used for the endless and minor adjustments to the Immigration Rules that become necessary from time to time, but this was a massive reform of the entire system. Furthermore, it was a matter of considerable public concern and should therefore have been properly scrutinised.
I will focus on the trenchant report by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee on HC813, which deals with immigration matters; I will not deal with asylum today. This report considers the statement of changes in Immigration Rules, which runs to 500 pages, with an Explanatory Memorandum of 50 pages. My Motion declares that these documents do not provide a clear and comprehensible description of the changes proposed, nor of their likely effect.
The scrutiny committee had three major criticisms: first, that major developments of policy should not be included in such instruments; secondly, that it had proved difficult to identify the actual intent of the policies; and thirdly, that it was difficult to see whether any important protections had been lost. On the first point, these are not just major policy developments; they amount to the most significant change in our immigration system for half a century.
On the second point, the actual intent of these new policies is now clearer from the Government’s New Plan for Immigration, which was published two days ago. It is, indeed, a cause for concern. For example, the level of skills required is to be reduced from degree level to A-level. At a stroke, this massively increases the pool of labour from abroad on which employers can draw. The Migration Advisory Committee has called this requirement “very important” in practice. Furthermore, the general salary threshold is to be considerably reduced to £25,600 a year. An even lower threshold—£20,500—will apply to so-called new entrants. That salary is only just above the national living wage. The effect, therefore, can only be to reduce the incentive for employers to train British replacements.
As for the loss of important protections, one example is that employers will no longer be required to advertise in the UK before looking to fly in workers from around the world. This comes at a time when UK unemployment, especially among the young, may well be increasing rapidly. Overall, the scale of the changes to the work permit system is simply huge. They involve opening up approximately 7 million UK jobs—I have said that before, and I say it again: 7 million UK jobs—to new or increased international competition from all over the world.
The Government have declined to say the number of people worldwide who would meet the new and lower requirements, but it must run literally into hundreds of millions. Obviously they will not all come, but the Government’s impact assessments have, in our view, rather limited credibility. Nor does any of this take account of the Government’s undertaking to accept, including for settlement, as many as 5.4 million British nationals overseas now in Hong Kong, who might decide to move to the UK at some time in the future.
My Lords, I agree with the wording of the Motion in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Green, although not with many of the views that he expressed. He is surely right that such major changes to our Immigration Rules, whether for immigrants or asylum seekers, require proper and constructive debate that is not carried out in an hour and a half in the late afternoon, without our ability to come to terms with the real issues involved.
From my experience of both Houses, the Immigration Rules have always been difficult for Parliament to deal with, but we have never had such a problem as the noble Lord described. They have been difficult because they are normally unamendable, which means that we cannot properly engage with the issues. We cannot easily identify the changes or make our voice heard if we disagree. My plea, which I have expressed before to the Minister, is that if there are to be changes to the Immigration Rules—I assumed that they would be more modest than the ones we face today—they should be published in draft and debated by the House before they are presented in their final form. That gives us a slight chance, at any rate, of influencing the outcome. These proposals should never be put forward in a way that such major changes have to be taken, as it were, in one gulp.
We await the sovereign borders Bill, but it is not totally clear which of the Government’s proposals will be only in the rules, in the Bill or in both. That is another cause of confusion. Are we to await the sovereign boarders Bill in the hope that we can make more impact? That would be when the noble Lord, Lord Green, would be able to have his say on the arguments he has put forward.
There can be no doubt that people smugglers are vile, and that catching them and preventing them from doing what they do—risking people’s lives—is very important. But I have to take a different view from the Government. I do not think that the proposals put forward to us will deter traffickers; indeed, they may well encourage them. This is now a well-worn argument, but if we close legal routes to safety for people seeking asylum, the only recourse they have is to go to the traffickers. The traffickers will be rubbing their hands with glee at the Government’s proposals.
My Lords, many of your Lordships will have had great pleasure from reading a book by the American author Bill Bryson called Notes from a Small Island. It is an apt title: we are a small island. When the American forces came to England in the Second World War, the troops were briefed about our country. The first line of the briefing was, “Think South Carolina”—because it is exactly the same size as England. Of course, the big difference is that South Carolina, even today, has only 5 million inhabitants; we have 56 million inhabitants in England.
We are a very crowded country, so population policy is very important to us. Since net immigration accounts for about two-thirds of population growth, immigration policy is especially important. That is one reason why I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Green, has put down his regret Motion today, and I support him in doing so.
The UK has always had a substantial amount of immigration, and many people who originated overseas, or whose parents did, have made brilliant contributions to this country in many different fields—business, academia and, most recently, healthcare. Until 20 years ago, all this was accomplished with a net immigration level of no more than 50,000 a year which, although there were a few incidents, was largely accepted. The change came when the Blair Labour Government introduced, without consultation, a whole raft of measures to increase immigration, as a result of which the net annual rate soared from less than 50,000 to over 300,000 a year. This is not just immigration; it is mass immigration.
The difficulty has been that the new immigrants went into poorer, working-class areas, because that is where housing was affordable. The result was devastating for many working-class communities. The effects on Dagenham, for example, are described by the Labour and trade union activist Paul Embery, a native of that area, in his book, Despised: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class. The local people appealed to the Labour leadership for help, but it did not listen—which is one reason why the Labour Party has lost so much working-class support.
My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, for securing this important debate on his Motion to Regret. Last year, several Members of your Lordships’ House cautioned against the major extension of the Government’s capacity to make law with minimal recourse to Parliament in the Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Act. Today, at the initiative of the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, and not of Her Majesty’s Government, we have 90 minutes to examine three statutory instruments relating to the Immigration Rules, one of which runs to 507 pages. All three were subject to the negative resolution, which involved little or no scrutiny of such important areas of life. Your Lordships’ House last defeated Her Majesty’s Government by praying against a negative resolution 21 years ago. Is the Minister satisfied with the level of scrutiny that these statutory instruments have received? Would she agree with me that it would have been better to publish them first in draft and to seek the views of both Houses in a debate?
My detailed comments are confined, because of time, to HC1043. They revolve around three questions to the Minister. First, do these rules meet the Home Secretary’s aspirations for her department’s handling of cases post Windrush? Secondly, are they feasible to implement? Thirdly, are the rules in HC1043 consonant with our obligations under the convention and protocol relating to the status of refugees?
We read in the Explanatory Notes to HC1043 that the purpose of this instrument is to
“Enhance our capacity to treat as inadmissible to the UK asylum system asylum claims made by those who have passed through or have connections with a safe third country.”
I should be grateful if the Minister would explain how an automatic presumption of refusal is compatible with the Home Secretary’s ambition, in her response to the Windrush Lessons Learned Review, for a Home Office that
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, has ploughed a lonely furrow on immigration for many years; not just a lonely furrow but a furrow that many Members of your Lordships’ House think it is quite improper to plough. But outside, in the real world, the issues that lie behind the noble Lord’s prayer and his comments reflect the real concerns of our fellow citizens, as repeated surveys and opinion polls have shown. It is always easiest to run with the crowd and bask in the rumbles of approbation from around your Lordships’ House, but I fear that, from time to time, we have to be prepared to consider inconvenient truths. That is why I am speaking this afternoon in support of the noble Lord.
I have two points to make, the first of which flows from my chairmanship of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and picks up some of the points that other noble Lords have made. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and our sister committee, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, under my noble friend Lord Blencathra, have a number of concerns about the way that secondary legislation is being handled, not just here—I am not trying to get at my noble friend on the Front Bench—but generally in the Government. These are skeleton Bills; they are unduly long and complex regulations; and there are inadequate Explanatory Memoranda and impact assessments. And, as the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, said, these regulations introduce changes that should more properly be introduced in primary legislation, with its higher level of scrutiny.
I am also afraid to say that the statutory instruments that the noble Lord has prayed against have a number of deficiencies in them. We have already heard about the length of HC813 and the range of subjects it covers. We have heard about HC1043, and the fact that the guidance was put on the government website only one hour before the regulations came into effect. We can, do and should argue and discuss immigration and its implications, but not many people around your Lordships’ House would disagree that it is an important subject. As has been pointed out by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark, five and a half months after these came into effect, we have 90 minutes to discuss them and no chance to make any changes—we are to just wave them away after a 90-minute debate. We can and we should do better than that.
My Lords, I agree with a substantial amount in the speeches that have preceded me, and I agree wholly with the process objections to the way these statutory instruments are being handled. I think there is merit in trying to stimulate the wider debate about what the Government’s immigration policy actually is, which the noble Lords, Lord Horam and Lord Hodgson, have both launched into.
I was a member of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee at the time we considered these instruments, and our very able officials who looked at these huge documents complained that even the Explanatory Memo on the first of the instruments—the 507-page one—
“was not clearer on the policy aims of these changes and what the impact will be.”
On the second of the instruments, they complained about
“insufficient information to gain a clear understanding”
of what the Government were trying to do. So, we look forward greatly to the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, so she can elucidate what this is all about.
If I could just make a political remark about Brexit, the whole debate on immigration was about taking back control. It is clearly not control by the British Parliament, is it? Surely, the Minister must recognise that. It is hardly, I suspect, taking back control to Ministers, because I doubt many of them will have gone through these 500-page statutory instruments in great detail. All we are talking about is Home Office officials trying to interpret what Ministers want in these statutory instruments. I suspect that the record of the Home Office, in the way that it has mishandled other questions, will prove to be repeated in this instance.
On the substance of the issue, clearly, the referendum was won on the basis of cutting back EU immigration. All the time, however, non-EU immigration was always higher than EU immigration, yet it was completely neglected in the public debate. Where are we going on non-EU immigration now? There is clearly something of a circular effect on EU immigration, as people who came here for economic reasons are going back, at least to some extent, because prospects are not so good as they once were.
My Lords, I want to highlight how immigration has been great for Great Britain. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Green, for giving us this opportunity. As an immigrant myself, I have seen that benefit first-hand. I am the first ethnic minority president of the Confederation of British Industry.
I have seen how immigrants helped grow the UK economy. A study from Oxford Economics showed that immigrants have made a positive net contribution to UK GDP. On average, each migrant European worker, for example, will, over the lifespan of their stay, contribute £78,000 more to the economy than British citizens. The majority of migrants who have come to the UK are of working age. Data from the Migration Observatory showed that, in 2020, 16% of the working population was born abroad. Foreign workers bring different skills that have a positive impact on business productivity. They are able to fill skills gaps and labour shortages in the jobs market that would otherwise be left unfilled or taken by underqualified staff. Migrants also fill shortages in the higher-skilled sectors that have fewer specialist individuals, such as in IT, engineering and accounting. Migrants bring specialist knowledge and international experience that improve businesses’ existing products and processes. That allows businesses to do more work in a more effective way by sharing knowledge across teams, which increases profit.
I have seen the power of a diverse workforce in my own business by building Cobra Beer, which is a household name in this country, from scratch with just two people and building a team that became a mini united nation with people from all over the world. They had different backgrounds and different mindsets. That diversity made a buzz and innovation, made us more creative and resulted in high growth.
Migrants’ international connections are highly valued by businesses and allow firms to tap into foreign markets. Deloitte’s surveys have shown that more diverse companies are more innovative. McKinsey’s surveys have shown that the companies that embrace diversity and inclusion are more profitable, with the top quartile being 39% more profitable than the bottom quartile. So immigration works.
My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, I find myself in the rather curious position of greatly regretting elements of the SIs we are debating now, particularly HC 1043, while entirely disagreeing with the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Green, in introducing them. I agree with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, said, and seek not to repeat it but just to associate myself and the Green group with his comments.
As the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, just indicated, the UK is a nation of immigrants. About 9% of the UK population, or 6.2 million people, are immigrants—and if anyone perhaps is on a crackly remote line and cannot hear my accent, to be clear I declare that, yes, I am one of them. It is also worth noting that 5.5 million Britons live in other countries around the globe. It is about an equal balance. We are a nation of emigrants as well as immigrants.
Listening to the noble Lords, Lord Green, Lord Horam and Lord Hodgson, I found myself feeling that I was trapped in another age. The world has changed but we are back in the old ways of thinking. We know that a significant number of people have left the UK since Covid and Brexit, perhaps 1 million EU citizens and a significant—probably very large—number of Britons have chosen to leave as well. Just this morning I spent my time at two sessions—first with the Westminster Forum on food security, then with Building magazine talking about retrofitting our homes. Both those industries are tearing their hair out, saying, “Where are we going to find the workers? Where are we going to find the skills?” I very much agree that we need to train and develop our own workforce, but the numbers simply do not add up. We are in a situation, as the UK has been for decades and centuries, of looking around the world for people to come because we need them.
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The upshot is that we are being launched on a course with very serious economic and political consequences, but without any effective discussions in this House, as I keep saying. Given all the uncertainties, it would surely be common prudence to have measures available to bring the numbers under control.
The Government have repeatedly promised “firmer control” of immigration. Indeed, during the last election the Prime Minister confirmed on television that this meant reducing it—yes, reducing it. Meanwhile, a recent opinion poll finds that nearly 60% of the public—nearly 30 million people—think that the level of immigration to the UK has been too high over the past decade. It is therefore very concerning that the Home Secretary, when presenting her new plan for immigration, refused to say whether the result would be an increase or decrease in net migration. She said that she did not want to get into “the language of old”.
This comes after a period of 20 years in which foreign net migration has averaged nearly 300,000 a year and has accounted for over 80% of our population increase. Even today, it requires us to build 300 new homes every day to accommodate the new citizens. The truth is that the arrangements incorporated in these statutory instruments are much more likely than not to lead to a considerable increase in net migration and regrettably to deep concern among those most directly affected.
Finally, I fear that it looks as though those who voted in the expectation that immigration would be effectively controlled and reduced, whether at the time of Brexit or in the 2019 so-called red wall election, will all be very disappointed. I am afraid they may well feel that they have been deceived.
I urge the Government to be more sympathetic to family reunion, especially in the case of children who want to join family members here. We know that there are children in northern France, in what has replaced the “jungle” near Calais, and on the Greek islands. Some of these young people have family links with the UK. What is to become of them now that the Dublin III provisions have stopped? Will there be any way in which they can apply to come legally? After all, they reached the Greek islands and northern France before they knew of the Government’s proposals—although I doubt that that would have had any effect.
The Government are saying clearly—and regrettably —that an asylum seeker will be inadmissible if they have travelled through or have a connection with a safe third country. But—I repeat—what about those who have a connection to this country? Have the Government reached any agreements yet with other countries to take people who will be refused on the basis of their proposals? Can we have a list of the countries that have said that, yes, they will take them on the basis of our policy? I doubt that the Government will find any. In any case, if we say that they have not travelled the way we would like them to, what about those who have a connection with this country? Would not the French or other people say, “Well, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander”—or whatever the expression is—“and surely, if they are following that policy, why shouldn’t we?” I just think it is unworkable. In any case, it does not take much thought to realise that, if all European countries had followed that policy, the million or so Syrians who went to Germany would still be in Greece, Italy or Malta. We cannot allow the accident of geography to put such enormous responsibilities on some countries without the costs being shared.
Furthermore, I would argue that it is against the 1951 convention to penalise refugees for unauthorised entry to a territory. It is expressly forbidden. The Government say that they legally have right on their side. Well, I have talked to the UNHCR—which, as far as I am concerned, is the custodian of the 1951 Geneva convention—and it seems to me that we will be in for some legal battles to resolve that. Frankly, I think that the Government are wrong on this.
Some of the briefing we have had explains that the Immigration Rules concede that leave outside the rules is “theoretically possible”. The question is how to make this possible. In the words of the Home Office, such leave should be granted where refusal
“would result in unjustifiably harsh consequences”.
How can this be challenged? It is an argument of a Home Office official or Minister against the applicant. That is not a workable way forward.
I fear that another consequence of the Government’s proposals will be an increase in the backlog of applicants. The Home Office is already grappling with an enormous backlog. Frankly, I think this will make the situation worse.
To end on a positive note, where I can agree with the Minister, I think community sponsorship is a good idea, but it has to be worked out and the Government have to publicise the scheme and help to make it less bureaucratic.
That is a problem for Labour, but it became a problem for the whole country when immigration became such a big issue in the European Union referendum. There was a direct line between the neglect of immigration issues by the liberal elite and the vote to leave the European Union, which has had such momentous consequences for our country and is so deplored by that same liberal elite.
Since 2010, the coalition and Conservative Governments have had the task of dealing with this problem. So far, they have not done well. The numbers had not come down before the pandemic. But I do believe that the present Home Secretary, unlike so many of her predecessors, understands the problem and is giving it the attention it needs, most recently in this week’s strategic document.
This is a sensible basis for policy-making, but I would add a number of riders. First, the issue of immigration is looked at almost exclusively from an economic perspective at the moment. The members of the Migration Advisory Committee are almost all economists. I am an economist myself, so I am not likely to underplay their importance, but this is wrong. There are demographic, social and environmental viewpoints which are equally important in looking at this issue. As my noble friend Lord Hodgson said, we need a democratic authority staffed by demographers, social scientists, environmentalists and climate change experts as well as economists, and they should be asking, “What is the right number of people for these crowded islands?”
Secondly, we should wind down as soon as feasible the separate health and care visa. Why are we, a rich country, continuously recruiting doctors, nurses and care workers from poorer countries that have fewer of them per head of population and need them more than we do? Where is the morality in that? Should we not think of the effect we are having on these countries by taking their skilled workers, as well as our own selfish interest? Why have the NHS and medical colleges so totally failed in their manpower planning that more than 40% of doctors in the UK come from overseas? In Germany and France, it is less than 10%.
Finally, a cap should be set on the number of work visas issued, just as it is in other countries such as Australia and Canada that use the same points-based system as we do. We need that cap, because we need employers to concentrate not on the lazy option of recruiting overseas but on improving the skills of the settled population. Improving people’s skills, particularly in left-behind areas, is at the heart of the levelling-up agenda. Just at the point where we are making real progress in the number and quality of apprenticeships and the funding of further education, it would be foolish to take the pressure off employers in this area.
Of course, I accept that the current immigration situation is rather unreal as a result of Covid, but the Home Secretary has promised a review next year of how the new system is settling in. When that happens, I hope that my noble friend and the Home Secretary will look carefully at the points I am making, because they are certainly supported by many Members of this House, and by even more Members of the other House. If they are properly taken into account, we will have a policy which works in the long-term interests of the British people in this small island of ours. That is what the people themselves have for a long time been calling for, and this time they should be listened to.
“sees the ‘face behind the case’.”
On returning people to such safe countries, we did not negotiate to remain part of the Dublin regulations. We have no bilateral agreements with any European country with which to enforce these rules. In the absence of Dublin, are the Government engaging in blarney? The Home Office today published statistics for the first quarter since the rules came into effect, alerting us to the fact that 1,053 people were issued with notices of intent, meaning that the department is looking at the possibility of return for these people. It records that none has been returned on inadmissibility grounds. Will the Minister explain the mechanism for returning such individuals in conformity with the rules but in the absence of any agreement to do so? Will she concede that the rules on inadmissibility are unworkable?
I should say, before I ask my final question, that I understand the Government’s animus against people smuggling—that is terribly important. Lastly, it is reasonable to suppose that most people seeking safety find refuge in the first safe country they reach, and they do. However, there are always reasons why some do not. What the Home Office might consider safe is not universally experienced as such. There are also linguistic, cultural and family ties to be taken into consideration in seeking a destination, as well as access to routes. Furthermore, the refugee convention makes no such requirement of those fleeing persecution that they must do so in a specified geographical radius. To do so would be to burden many countries already dealing with enormous refugee issues.
Therefore, by making in law an automatic presumption against any claim from someone who has not arrived in the UK, except in a prescribed manner and prescribed place, is the Minister confident that we meet our obligations under international law? Would it not be far more effective to establish effective and legal routes which asylum seekers can readily access? That would reduce the demand upon which organised crime is currently feeding. I look forward to the noble Baroness’s response.
My second and final point is entirely personal. Some Members of your Lordships’ House will be aware of my interest in demography—the study of changes in our population, up or down, and the consequent impacts on the lives of all of us. Last year, I published a pamphlet, kindly referred to by my noble friend Lord Horam, entitled Overcrowded Islands?—the question mark is important. I was very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, for giving a plug for the pamphlet at Question Time, on Monday last. I am agnostic about the conclusions, but I argue strongly that we fail to consider the impact of these policies in sufficient depth and over a sufficiently long period into the future. I ask Members of your Lordships’ House not to pigeonhole these remarks as an attack on immigration. I fully recognise that some immigration refreshes and reinvigorates our cultural and economic life, and fulfils some of our moral duties to the world as a whole. But it is about scale and the consequent impact of that scale on the lives of all of us.
The latest ONS projections, adjusted for the pandemic and for Brexit, suggest that by 2040, in the half century since the Blair Government opened up the country to widespread immigration, as referred to by my noble friend Lord Horam, the population will increase by 13 million people, which is just over 20% of the population. Should we be worried about this for ourselves? More importantly, should we be worried about this for those who come after us? We might be worried about risks to our supplies of food and water. We grow only 50% of our food, and the Environment Agency says that by 2035 we shall be running short of water. We might be worried about risks to our ecology; our songbirds have declined by 75% in the last 40 years. We might be worried about risks to our environment; we are currently tarmacking over our countryside at the fastest rate in history. And in our rush to build fast, we are creating identikit housing estates built to low standards, devoid of any vernacular style and, too often, devoid of any sense of community. Do the economic benefits really accrue to us all? Or, as many of us fear, do they accrue to the already better-off and the new arrivals themselves? And good luck to them.
In none of these challenges is population growth the only factor, but it is the most significant factor connecting and linking them all. If the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Green, are realised—and I sincerely hope they are not—the magnitude of all the above challenges will multiply exponentially. That is why the noble Lord has done the House a singleservice by tabling this regret Motion today.
However, what is going on regarding non-EU immigration? Is what the noble Lord, Lord Green, says true, which is essentially that immigration is being opened up to people with level-3 qualifications from all over the world? We deserve an answer from the noble Baroness, Lady Williams. If that is the case, it is a huge change of policy that ought to be debated fully in hours-long debates in Parliament because it is the kind of issue that the public are concerned about. I believe in immigration, and I am quite liberal on immigration questions. In a diverse country, we win more from it than we lose. However, one has to have immigration control. One cannot just be open to the world. The question is: what numbers are the Government contemplating? Will they give us an answer on that?
A criticism of the Home Secretary is that she likes to pretend that she is pursuing a tough immigration policy. One gets all this stuff about how people who arrive here claiming asylum who have not come by a legal route are going to be sent back. It is not clear, of course, whether any country is prepared to take them back and I very much doubt whether any European countries through which the asylum seekers have travelled would be prepared to do so. There is a lot of bluster about the toughness of the Government’s new asylum policy, but is it a cover-up for the fact that, actually, our borders are being opened up in a totally unprecedented way to non-EU citizens? The British people deserve an answer to that question.
The new points-based immigration system is an opportunity for UK business to attract the brightest global talent. The system has many different routes, including a skilled-worker route that will ensure that the best and most skilled workers have the chance to come and work in the UK, and contribute to our society and economy. The system will help create a firm but, we hope, fair system that will contribute to creating a high-wage, high-skilled and high-productivity economy.
However, the reality is, as we have seen at the CBI, that businesses are not engaged with this new points-based system as much as they would have liked to be because of the disruption caused by Covid-19. We are making clear to the Home Office that it should make sure that the system is easy and simple to use for business in time for many more users to begin to engage with the system, and we will be watching that carefully and feeding back to government.
I am president of UKCISA, the UK Council for International Student Affairs. The new graduate visa system launches this year. Last year more than half a million international students came to study at UK universities, many of them studying for masters and PhDs. International students are an export and an import. They bring inward investment and contribute £26 billion to our economy. They are one of the UK’s strongest elements of soft power, with more world leaders educated at British universities than in any other country except for the United States of America.
From this summer onwards, businesses can employ students for up to two years on the post-graduate work visa and three years for PhD students. This gives the students a great opportunity to get work experience. On 4 May, the UK and India announced a young professionals scheme that will allow those aged 18 to 30 from each country to work in the other country for up to two years. This is attractive for business, especially in the IT and technology sectors. It can be used as a means for many highly talented young Indians to take on a wide range of jobs in the UK. Partnerships form part of the UK Government’s commitment to deliver an immigration system that attracts talented individuals from India and around the world, while enhancing UK-India co-operation on ensuring that the system is fair and secure.
Looking ahead to the next academic year, I am chancellor of the University of Birmingham, and we are concerned about the international students coming in, particularly from what might be red-list countries at that time. Will we be able to offer all our international students vaccinations when they come to the UK? I believe that the Government have agreed to this. Can the Minister confirm that all international students will be able to be vaccinated in the UK on arrival, if they have not already been vaccinated? Furthermore, will the Government ensure that international students do not have to quarantine in hotels even if they come from red-list countries? Universities are prepared to make quarantine preparations on their campuses. International students pay so much to study over here, with fees, living costs and travel costs. Spending almost another £2,000 for quarantine is unaffordable. Where is the capacity of the Government to house tens of thousands of internationals students that may be coming from red-list countries at the time? The capacity does not exist. Universities have shown that they can create a Covid-safe environment for their students, including with mass testing. Let us allow them to do that and give confidence to students that when they come to study here in the next academic year they will be in a safe and secure environment at their universities.
To conclude, without immigration, Britain, with just 1% of the world’s population, would not be one of the sixth largest economies in the world. Immigrants have enriched and always will enrich our country in every way.
To address the point by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, about the environmental impact: the UK lives a three-planet lifestyle. We have to cut consumption, particularly by the wealthiest. Consumption and inequality are our issues. That is where the environmental action needs to be.
All those people who have been invited and welcomed to the UK, and then they face a dishonest, discriminatory and often chaotic hostile environment. I will focus particularly on those likely to be affected by HC 1043, because those seeking refuge are most likely to be affected. The invaluable Refugee Action briefing for this debate noted that with the current backlog of asylum claims, 76% of people are waiting for more than six months. Many have been in limbo for years. What does that mean?
I often think back to a young woman I met in Southampton. As a 19 year-old, she had been forced to flee Zimbabwe; she had been persecuted and abused by the security forces there. She had been in the UK for a decade, waiting to get status in an uncertain immigration situation. She said to me, “I feel like I am in a cage. I am locked into this tiny cage, and there is a person walking past outside this cage with the key for the cage hanging from their belt. I’m pretty confident that one day they will pick up that key and open the cage, but I’ve been a decade—a third of my life—waiting for the cage to be unlocked.” I very much fear that HC 1043 will bring in the same situation for many more people. If asylum claims are treated as inadmissible on the basis of the method of arrival, people are going to be left in indefinite limbo. There are not return agreements, and it looks very unlikely that there will be. Then there is case-by-case negotiation, using many resources.
The Government say they want to tackle people trafficking and are concerned about this situation. On Monday I heard some powerful testimony from young people from the Safe Passage international young leaders scheme, the Hummingbird young leaders scheme and the Kent Refugee Action Network youth forum. I asked those young people, “As you were coming here and reached the UK, what sort of decisions did you make? What sort of information did you have? What sort of choices did you have?” They said, “When you’re dashing out the back door in fear of your life and the police or the army are coming through the front door, you just dash.” Of course. All the way along the line, they have had to make calls to just seek safety. That is what people are doing and what our lack of providing them with safe routes to reach the UK is forcing them into. That is the practical reality.
My very brief final point is that, as the Freedom from Torture briefing points out, HC 1043 is in contravention of Article 31 of the refugee convention. It is a moral and practical wrong to bring this in. We are in a world in which the rule of law is under grave threat. Look at Belarus, Hungary or many other nations. We need to defend the rule of law, not go back on agreements that we have previously made.