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.
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.
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