My Lords, we have come to the fourth day of Committee on the Bill. Before the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, became herald to this issue, we really had not talked about people. Trade is about people—it is about people who make and sell things, people who sell their services abroad, and people who come to this country to sell their services and goods to us. There are strong arguments for the preservation of free movement in any future treaty. Amendment 66 requires the UK to negotiate with the EU an international trade agreement that allows UK and EU citizens to continue to work, live and study abroad.
Free movement is good for the economy: it boosts efficiency and innovation. Meanwhile, its impacts on public services, crime and unemployment are generally positive—I will come back to those points shortly. There is a cultural and societal benefit which comes with the opportunity to work, live and study in other cultures and develop mutual understanding and friendships. These are often set to one side and referred to as “soft power” in a way which suggests that they are somehow less useful than hard power. However, these are important things, to do with the influence of our country in the rest of Europe. I will focus on the first two elements of the benefits from free movement.
In no small measure, we have a Prime Minister who is obsessive about the need to end free movement; this is reflected fully in the political declaration and the way we are moving forward. As the Minister set out, there is some outline in the political declaration, but of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, pointed out, it is merely a wish and not a reality. The political declaration says that free movement of people will end—we know that that is what the Prime Minister set out to achieve. The UK and the EU will provide visa-free travel, but only for short-term visits; both parties will consider visa conditions for research, study, training and youth exchanges; both parties will consider addressing social security co-ordination; both parties will consider measures to minimise border checks; both parties will seek to co-operate on parental responsibility measures; and there will be a framework to enable people to travel temporarily to the other territory for business purposes. The exception to this is the common travel area within Ireland, which will be unaffected. However, the rest of the immigration process, just like the rest of Brexit, is left hanging.
I am interested in what the Minister can say; clearly, he may not be able to say it directly. Those bullet points are interesting, and are clearly a result of a joint discussion between the European Union and the United Kingdom. Which of those points arose from the United Kingdom’s point of view and wish list, and which of them came from the European Union? In other words, what was the thinking of the two parties going forward?
Before we look at the trade influences specifically, I want to make the point clearly that ending the free movement of people in and to this country is a stupid idea. I shall take as my text to prove this the Migration Advisory Committee’s report of 18 September. When it comes to the impact of economic migrants from the EEA, the committee finds that, overall, there is,
“no evidence that EEA migration has reduced employment opportunities for UK-born people on average”,
and that overall there is,
“no evidence that EEA migration has reduced wages for UK-born workers on average”.
The committee notes that there is:
“Evidence that immigration has, on average, a positive impact on productivity”,
and:
“High-skilled immigrants increase innovation”.
I remind your Lordships that those two issues of innovation and productivity are key objectives of the Government’s Industrial Strategy. The committee also notes that EEA migrants,
“make a larger contribution both in terms of money and work to the NHS than they receive in health services”,
and that there is:
“No evidence that migration has reduced the quality of healthcare”.
Quite the contrary, I would say. Indeed, it is clear that the social care sector struggles to recruit sufficient people. With the current freedom of movement calling that into question, what will happen in the future?
The House of Commons Library estimates that in 2017, there were 10,705 doctors, 20,276 nurses, and 14,247 clinical support staff in the NHS who were EU nationals. It estimates that in the last two years, the net number of nurses and midwives who were EU nationals, for example, has fallen by over 5,000. We heard in today’s Question Time about the struggle that the NHS is having to recruit future doctors. There were 41,000 nursing vacancies in England, and the Royal College of Nursing estimates that this will rise to 48,000 by 2023 as fewer start nursing degrees each year. In social care, things are much worse, with about 110,000 vacancies.
The Migration Advisory Committee found no evidence that migration has reduced parental choice at schools. Nor has it reduced attainment, and there is no evidence that it has an effect on the overall level of crime. The committee noted that EEA migrants pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits for public services. However, and tellingly, the committee is also not convinced that sufficient attention is paid to ensuring that the extra resources that have come in from those migrants is being spent in the areas where they live. That is a very important point.
Housing raises another important nuance. In pointing out that only a very small fraction of migrants occupy social housing, the committee also pointed out that, given that virtually no new social housing was being built, any migrant in social housing is excluding a UK-born tenant. The committee also found that migration has increased housing prices. It then went on to note that the housing issue cannot be taken in isolation from other government policy. “Hear, hear”, I say to that. For my part, it is clear that the woeful performance in housebuilding by successive Governments is a much larger irritant on the housing issue in this country than migrants. The evidence points to the need not to stop the beneficial flow of economic migrants but for targeted government investment in the communities that have generally been termed to have been left behind.
As the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, so eloquently put it in his speech during our debate before Christmas, these communities will not be benefited by making Britain poorer, and one way to make the UK poorer is to end free movement.
It is fair to say that there is a huge cognitive dissonance between the published evidence of the Migration Advisory Committee and the political declaration and immigration White Paper. Her Majesty’s Government are seeking to exclude a group of people who contribute positively to our national life. Worse than that, in justifying their policies, they vilify that group for issues that are caused by government mistakes and mismanagement.
The immigration White Paper makes clear distinctions between what are termed skilled and unskilled workers—here we come to the point raised just now by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. It uses the existing salary threshold of £30,000 to differentiate between those two groups of future employees. Yes, it makes the process of applying for tier 2 visas easier by proposing to abolish the 270,000 annual cap and the resident labour market test, which was a heavy administrative burden on businesses trying to hire from overseas. However, the salary cap is a fundamentally wrong proposal, because it conflates salary with skill. There are many jobs, not least in research and development, where experts are paid below that cap. They still have fabulous skills to offer this country, but they earn less than a £30,000 salary. The White Paper itself estimates that, overall, those restrictions would reduce the net inflow of EEA long-term workers by about 80% in the first five years. This would result in GDP being up to 0.9% lower in 2025.
So-called unskilled workers will not be offered a route into the UK in the long term, according to current proposals. In the interim, the Government will allow unskilled workers to apply for temporary, 12-month visas. This fails the logic test. High-skilled workers may be contributing more in tax, but lower skilled migrants are offering a huge contribution in the services they offer to this country. The Migration Advisory Committee report makes that clear.
There is also a tacit admission in the Government’s own words when they allude to work-related schemes. Once we start looking for sectors that might need such schemes, frankly, we can include the vast majority of the UK economy, but given that agriculture and the hospitality industry are two important parts of our international trade, perhaps the Minister can explain what volume of work-related immigrants the Government anticipate being admitted and how that equates to the stated needs of those two industries.
I am also anxious to learn the Government’s view on how self-employed people or freelancers will trade across the EU-UK border. Here I declare an interest, as I have at least one family member who is a freelancer. Self-employed people are vital to our service industry and dominate in particular sectors. I know that my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones will speak on their role in the tech and creative sectors, for example. How will self-employed people be able to contribute, going forward?
4.45 pm
If Brexit happens, any trade deal negotiation with the EU will include gives and takes to reach agreement. That is what negotiation is all about, even if the
current Secretary of State for International Trade has not quite worked that out yet. Telling people what you want and expecting them to give it all to you without making concessions is not the way it goes. Moving slightly in the opposite direction to the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, I am concerned that we are seeking to use free movement as a bargaining chip in our negotiations with the European Union—it is too important for that—because this ignores one central fact: by rejecting access by EEA citizens to the UK, the Government are guaranteeing that UK citizens will similarly be barred from the European Union. This is not sensible and is damaging to our economy and to the future prospects of those who seek to have a life, work and study abroad. It is for this reason that the amendment seeks to get the Government to confront the evidence that stands in the face of this policy.
I have at least modest hopes for this amendment. First, I hope that Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition show more resolution to support the principles of free movement than was demonstrated by the Labour Front Bench during the debate on the immigration Bill in the other place. Some of us on these Benches were amazed and, frankly, saddened by that shambolic performance in the other place. I am sure that in this House the Labour voices will be unequivocal.