In following my noble friend Lady Stroud, I shall plough a lonely and, I fear, unpopular furrow by suggesting to the Minister that we ought to reject this amendment. I greatly admire my noble friend Lady Stroud for her commitment and the work that she has done in these areas, but I still think that her amendment should be rejected. As my noble friend Lady Stowell pointed out, of course these are asylum seekers whose cases have not been determined. Some of them will be asylum seekers, and some of them will not find their case, and they will become in effect economic migrants. I absolutely accept that the time that it is taking to determine the cases is very long and debilitating to all parties concerned, but I am concerned because, if we allow people to use the asylum route as a means to move forward faster, it is at the expense of those who wish to come here as economic migrants from the beginning.
Secondly, I do not accept the argument that forum shopping—looking around for the best place to make your future—is not a factor. Of course, it is not in every case, but it is a factor. I will not weary the House at 10.20 pm with the list of things, which run from the diasporas to the respect for individuals, the chance to learn English, flexible labour markets, and so on, but they are undoubtedly factors that encourage people to come here.
Nearly every case that I have heard being made now is based on the economy, and the economic prism is undoubtedly an important one, but there are prisms other than that. The impact of each one of us—whether we have just arrived here, seek to come here or have been here for some time—is not just about our economic performance. We make demands on our society of a house, a school, a hospital and a place for our children to play. We have an impact on the green belt, the availability of open space and our future food and water security in an increasingly uncertain world. We expect, overall, that between now and 2040 there will be another 4 million people in this country.
Members of your Lordships’ House have talked about public opinion and where it stands on the issue, but I can tell your Lordships that 71% of people believe that this country is already too crowded and that the Government do not have any plans to deal with the challenges that that causes. If you reset that polling so that it just asks the minority communities, 61% are still equally concerned about the prospects that lie ahead not for us in this House but for our children and grandchildren, if we do not take steps, wherever we reasonably can, to ensure that the growth of population in this country is limited as far as possible. With the best will in the world—I accept the good intentions of my noble friend—her amendment does not tick that box. It encourages the growth of population; it does not discourage it.