Orders of the Day — Immigration Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 6:31 pm on 16 November 1987.

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Photo of Mr Tim Janman Mr Tim Janman , Thurrock 6:31, 16 November 1987

Much of the detail of what I wanted to say about the Bill has already been said by some of my hon. Friends. I should like to add one or two comments and, perhaps, broaden the discussion on immigration to bring in the possibility of some form of voluntary resettlement.

I welcome the Bill. My hon. Friend the Minister of State visited my constituency during the election campaign and witnessed an extremely successful result. He will welcome the news that my constituents welcome the Bill, which effectively implements our manifesto commitment to ensure that controls over settlement become even more effective.

I and my constituents especially welcome clause 1. As we have heard at some length, it will extend existing criteria to pre-1973 immigrants. I endorse the statistical point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Barnes (Mr. Hanley). Since the Government were elected in 1979, the number of Commonwealth immigrants has fallen to approximately 44,000 per year and immigration from the new Commonwealth and Pakistan has fallen to its lowest level since 1962. It went down to approximately 22,500 in 1986 from a peak of 68,519 in 1972.

I shall certainly vote for the Bill, but I remind the Minister that there are many aspects of immigration policy that the Conservative Governments from 1970–74 and since 1979 have not implemented, even though we have made several manifesto commitments to some form of voluntary resettlement. In our 1970 manifesto we said: There will be no further large-scale permanent immigration". Since then we have received more than 600,000 into the United Kingdom. They are now permanent residents and that is against the wishes of the British people. According to figures that I have seen, from the early 1960s there was no discernible reduction in the numbers of immigrants until about 1980. The reduction started in 1980 and that is a great credit to successive Conservative Home Secretaries and the Prime Minister. Even since 1980, the number of immigrants who have come to Britain and taken up permanent residence is nearly 250,000. I hope that the Bill will lead to further reductions in the number of people coming in. More important, perhaps it will start to deal with the excessive numbers of immigrants who are already here.

There has been some talk about illegal immigration and about people coming Britain and overstaying. Many people in the United Kingdom are incensed about illegal immigration. A letter to The Daily Telegraph from my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. McCrindle) in 1975 said: On the wider question of immigration I find there is much distress in middle-class circles on the question of illegal immigration. I can assure the House that there is much distress in working-class circles as well. It is felt that the statistics are totally wrong and that the Government is doing nothing to combat the problem. As it is the number of immigrants that worries people, the authorities would be well advised to tackle this if they are to be able to sell further race relations law to the population. That letter from my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar was true in 1975 and remains true.

In our 1970 manifesto, from which I have already quoted, we pledged to bring in a scheme of voluntary resettlement. Since the 1970 election, all that we have had—although of course there were two different schemes running concurrently before — is the pathetic International Social Service of Great Britain. That Government body reduces the number of people who apply to return to their country of origin under the 1971 Act and in the financial year 1983–84 it spent the mean and measly sum of £1,175 per head on resettlement. That beats even the London borough of Camden in meanness in helping people to return to their country of origin.

The Bill applies tighter controls about fitness to stay to people who came here before 1973. This coupled with a generously funded, voluntary resettlement programme that was well publicised and available to all would achieve a net outflow to reduce the degree of swamping that the Prime Minister rightly spoke about in her famous speech in 1979. Our 1979 manifesto spoke about assisting people to return to their country of origin.