Annual review of the ending of free movement in the United Kingdom

Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 11:00 am on 5 March 2019.

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“(1) The Secretary of State must conduct an annual review of the impact of the ending of free movement of people in the United Kingdom.

(2) The annual review under subsection (1) must include, but is not limited to, consideration of the impact the ending of free movement has had on—

(a) the UK economy;

(b) the NHS and social care workforce; and

(c) opportunities for British citizens in the European Economic Area.

(3) When carrying out each an annual review under subsection (1) the Secretary of State must consult with UK businesses.

(4) The first annual review carried out under this section must be commenced within 12 months of this Act having received Royal Assent.

(5) Each subsequent annual review carried out under this section must be commenced within 12 months of the previous review.

(6) Each annual review carried out under this section must be laid before both Houses of Parliament within 3 months of it having been commenced.”—

Brought up, and read the First time.

Photo of Graham Stringer Graham Stringer Labour, Blackley and Broughton

With this it will be convenient to discuss:

New clause 43—Future immigration policy—

“Within 12 months of this Act coming into force, and every 12 months thereafter, the Secretary of State must lay a report before Parliament setting out how any changes made to the

This new clause would mean the Secretary of State is accountable to Parliament for drafting Immigration Rule changes that ensure employers have adequate access to labour.

Photo of Alison McGovern Alison McGovern Chair, Speaker's Advisory Committee on Works of Art, Chair, Speaker's Advisory Committee on Works of Art

I wish to speak about proposed new clause 13. Often this discussion is focused on the procedural matters of immigration law, and rightly so; as we have discussed, these are important issues that affect the lives of many of our constituents and they should be scrutinised in detail. However, my proposed new clause is concerned not with the detail of immigration law but rather with economic analysis of the impact of free movement on our labour market. It seeks to require the Secretary of State to conduct

“an annual review of the impact of the ending of free movement of people in the United Kingdom”,

specifically the impact on:

“(a) the UK economy;

(b) the NHS and social care workforce; and

(c) opportunities for British citizens in the European Economic Area.”

The Secretary of State should also “consult with UK businesses” and, I would add by way of commentary, others in the UK, including civil society and trade unions, about the impact they have experienced, should free movement end in this country. Such a review is necessary for several reasons, which I will explain briefly.

When considering the impact of immigration in the labour market we tend to rely on emotional arguments and anecdote much more than we do on data. That is perfectly understandable—people tend to refer to their lived experience of economic matters, rather than on statistical analysis, and there is no reason why it should be otherwise. That is not always a good way to consider the labour market, however, because one person’s experience might be quite different from another’s, and we must look at the reality and consider the research.

However, there is a problem with that. Labour market data can tell us much to help us understand the impact of ending free movement on our economy, but there is much it cannot tell us and a lot we do not know about the way labour markets function in general. There is certainly much we do not know about the UK, and the driving reason behind the new clause is to suggest that the Government ought not to take decisions of this magnitude without having a much better understanding than we currently have about the way immigration impacts on our labour market.

Let us consider the data for local areas between 2008 and 2015, when there was a change in levels of EU migration. The change in employment rates for those born in the UK shows no statistically significant relationship, either negative or positive, between EU migration and employment rates for those born in the UK. That is what the data say, but unfortunately most people in politics would dismiss that fact almost immediately. Clearly, something has been going on, and in anecdotal discussion people will mention the way immigration has affected local labour markets.

Unfortunately, we are poor at analysing local labour market statistics, and we do not do a lot of research at sub-national level. Certainly, the analysis of such information for the formulation of Government policy is very poor, and if the Government accept the new clause, that might provide an opportunity for us all to have a more in-depth, specific and reasonable debate on immigration, rather than the one that has characterised political discussion in recent years.

The same is true of wages. If we consider what the data tell us about the impact of EU immigration on local economies, there seems to be no apparent link or statistically significant relationship between EU immigration and changes to the real wages of UK nationals. We know, however, that the picture must be a lot more detailed than that, and if the Government want to get this issue right, they could do worse than accept this new clause, or that tabled by the Scottish National party, and take seriously the job of analysing local labour markets, working out what drives changes in wages—especially at the lower end of income distribution—and trying to put in place policies that will deliver.

We have gone through this terribly painful process for our country, and immigration has been treated as a kind of political cure-all by political parties that want to make hay in general elections. After all that, and after a Brexit vote in a referendum that was characterised by a terrible quality of political debate, if we find that restricting immigration does not raise the wages of those at the lower end of income distribution, what on earth will we say to people then?

We should do a little bit better than that in our policy making, and I encourage the Government to really investigate what could increase wages. I have my suspicions that if we perhaps allowed lower-paid women—I will come to them in a minute, in relation to the care sector—to work more flexibly and supported them with universal childcare, so that they could perhaps get training and increase their productivity, that might do a lot more to increase the wages of the low-paid in this country, who are by and large women, than the current policy on immigration does. But I do not know, and I simply encourage the Government to find out.

The NHS has an interesting place in our labour market. It is a huge employer and it has had centralised workforce planning almost since its inception. For the rest of the labour market, there is an element of market forces at work and the Government cannot be expected—I would think, anyway—to control the entirety of the labour market, but the Government have a huge input into the labour force for the NHS. We have rarely got it right in the history of the NHS; we have rarely managed to get the supply of good-quality staff for the NHS correct. The NHS has often run short and that is why it interacts with immigration in the way that it does; it has always done so. Many people came here from Commonwealth countries to work in the NHS, in just the same way as EU nationals have done recently.

We know from the evidence that we received as a Committee that this Bill will impact the NHS and— crucially—the social care system very significantly. Unfortunately, that negative impact on the NHS of immigration changes is not really helped by the Government at the moment. If the Government perhaps wanted to give the NHS a hand and do what I think a lot of British people would like to see—namely, train more qualified health staff—they could do a lot worse than reinstate nursing bursaries.

Photo of Maria Caulfield Maria Caulfield Conservative, Lewes 11:15, 5 March 2019

On Friday, I went with Peter Kyle to Brighton University to see the new nursing apprenticeship schemes, which are enabling a new source of nurses—mature students—to train as student nurses, and earn while they learn. The students all said that that was better than the previous bursary scheme, as it provided them with better wages and more job security once they finished their training.

Photo of Alison McGovern Alison McGovern Chair, Speaker's Advisory Committee on Works of Art, Chair, Speaker's Advisory Committee on Works of Art

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. I am perfectly happy for schemes to be called whatever they like; the fact is that we have to support nurses properly as they are training. The general point that I want to make, while accepting her experience of what sounds like a really good scheme, is that the general thrust of Government policy has not supported the training of staff for our national health service in recent times, and that has to change.

I will make one final specific point on this issue before I close, and it is about the social care sector. As the hon. Member has just mentioned, nurses are incredibly important and we have to get training and support for people coming into nursing, or back into nursing, correct, but social care is also important, and the pay in the social care sector is really dismal. It is a highly skilled job. If someone is working in a nursing home, they may have in their hands the care of the dying, and I do not think that there is a more important or dignified job in this country.

We have relied on EU nationals to a great extent and this Bill will have a huge impact on the social care sector. We have a massive staff shortage; there are hundreds of thousands of vacancies in the care sector. However, it is an interesting fact that that massive staff shortage has not increased pay in the care sector. If this was simply a matter of supply and demand, we might have expected wages in the care sector to rise quite rapidly over recent years, but the staff shortage has not increased pay, because in the end the funding for social care comes in large amount from the Government. That demonstrates the flaw in the argument that says, “Well, if we restrict immigration, that will necessarily put up pay”. Well, if in the end the funding—

The Chair adjourned the Committee without Question put (Standing Order No.88).

Adjourned till this day at Two o’clock.