UK Borders Bill

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay), whom I like and admire in equal measure and who is a great parliamentarian. He demonstrated why he is such a great parliamentarian once again this evening. I would like to put the Bill in context. The first part of that context is political. Back in 1997, there were no British National party councillors anywhere in the country; today, there are 50. The question we have to ask ourselves is: have people become more racist in the last 10 years? My view is that they have not, but I do think that they have become much more frustrated. One of the main issues that they have become frustrated about is the Government’s lack of ability to deal with mass immigration. For a parliamentary democracy to work, everybody has to feel that somebody is standing up for them and speaking about the things that concern them. Over the last 10 years—largely due to the blight of political correctness—people have felt that they have not been able to have their say and that these important issues have been neglected across both sides of the House. We neglect these issues at our peril, because extremists prosper in such a void. The solution to the problem of the growth of the BNP is in our hands. Most of the people who vote for the BNP these days are not racists; they are not nasty people. There will always been a hard core of racists in this country, but fortunately they will always be only a tiny number that will not make a great difference. The issue that we have to address is why many ordinary, decent people in this country added their votes to those of racists in such numbers that they allowed them to get a foothold in too many of our communities. The reason is that we have not been doing enough to tackle immigration. The scale of the problem is also part of the context. There is one migrant a minute coming into this country, which is equivalent to a city the size of Birmingham arriving every three years or so. Those are big numbers and this is a big problem. That is why people are crying out for mainstream parties to tackle the issue. Although I welcome many aspects of the Bill, it is a very inadequate response to the scale of the problem that we face.