Dame Meg Hillier
MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch · Labour (Co-op) · United Kingdom
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker, I have huge respect for the Minister, but she has said that she will not take any interventions. She is a very good Minister, and I trust that she will answer in detail the points that have been raised in the House today; having discussions with her and the Government after the debate is too late…”
“My hon. Friend talks about who makes our laws, and she has talked in articles that she has written about the primacy of this place. If the Bill goes forward, is she willing to accept amendments?”
“I welcome my right hon. Friend to her place and thank her for that response, which demonstrates the complications of these schemes. I asked the National Audit Office to look into this, and yesterday the Public Accounts Committee published its report on compensation schemes, suggesting that a central body be established.”
“I am pleased by my right hon. Friend’s answer, but she is in a unique position across Government to ensure that we are protecting not only women, but those who are blind or have visual impairments, who really value this technology.”
“I welcome the Chancellor’s clampdown on speculation and leaks ahead of the Budget; it is certainly an important step he has taken. On the issue of certainty, the National Wealth Fund is a critical investor in crowding in private investment around the UK. I noted that he has changed the remit.”
“Further to the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes), it is important that we talk here and that we have diplomacy, but what practical actions are the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence taking to ensure that there is a review of physical defence and security, so that we send a clear message to t…”
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“I have been listening with great interest to the hon. Gentleman. We see from other countries that there are ways of dealing with the issue without having full devolution, for many of the reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley) laid out. As was highlighted earlier, the Home Secretary made the Scottish Government an offer to work with the Migration Advisory Committee on solutions. Full devolution would be expensive and time consuming, and it would not deliver.”
“My right hon. Friend is making an interesting point about the challenges facing rural areas where there are shortages of people. Denmark has a rota system for doctors going into rural areas for a few months at a time, because it, like Scotland and parts of England, have these challenges. Does my right hon. Friend therefore agree that having a separate immigration policy for Scotland is not the answer and that this issue is being grappled with across the world?”
“The hon. Gentleman skirted over the question of the cost of doing this. The burden is not the individuals, but there is a huge cost to the UK Home Office of delivering the system and helping people through it—everything from detention centres at airports and elsewhere, to the processing of the claims, the greeting and receiving of people when they sadly arrive on boats and by other routes, and the management of the borders. All those things are costs, and that is a burden to the taxpayer—it is a fact of life that it does cost the taxpayer. I am wondering where the hon. Gentleman thinks the money will come from and what they are going to cut in Scotland to fund this.”
“Modifications to the list of reserved matters can be made in two ways: by an Order in Council under section 30(2) of the Act, or via primary legislation. The hon. Gentleman is proposing primary legislation, but with one line, no proper detail and no working up. We would be walking, ridiculously and recklessly, into the unknown if we were to adopt the Bill that is before us today.”
“Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry is proposing, so it might be worth pausing for a moment to remind ourselves of what this one-line Bill looks to be suggesting. The Scottish Parliament is governed by the Scotland Act 1998, and the devolution settlement in Scotland operates on what is known as a reserved powers model, of which a lot of our Scottish colleagues will be fully aware. Schedule 5 to that Act lists the powers that remain reserved—that is, which are the responsibility of the UK Parliament. Generally speaking, anything not listed in schedule 5 is devolved by default to the Scottish Parliament. Under paragraph B6 of part II of schedule 5, immigration and nationality is a reserved matter.”
“I pay tribute to Councillor Maurice Barnes, who proposed that approach to delivering services to make sure that they were really embedded in the community. In 1998, when the Labour Government came in having promised devolution, we saw under Donald Dewar the new dawn of a devolved Scotland. The giants who led on that devolution proposal should be respected for what they delivered. Devolution in Scotland was a breakthrough, and it is something I support, but if we are going to devolve power, we also need to make sure that the authority is competent to deal with those devolved powers. The electorate in Scotland, of course, will have their say on that in 2026. Today, we have not heard much of the nitty-gritty of exactly what the hon.”
“I therefore suggest to the SNP Government in Scotland that they think about broadband speed, and sweetening the offer on housing to attract younger people to live and work in Scotland. They should make sure that their schools, health service and so on are delivering to attract them to what is a beautiful country with much to offer. But why is it that people are not staying? That is a failure of the SNP Government and we need to be absolutely clear about that. As I have said, I started my career devolving services to the most appropriate level, in Islington—a borough of that size! It started as 24 neighbourhoods, but we reduced down to 12, because we had to take account of costs and so on.”
“Immigration is one element, but as the academic Richard Florida highlights, people will go to places where there is good education, a good cultural offer, excellent transport links and a tolerant community. We can all learn about how we can make our own constituencies attractive. Of course, we do not have problems attracting people Hackney South and Shoreditch, except on the knotty issue of the cost of housing, which is another very important factor to attract people. Given all the challenges of covid, many people moved from expensive areas like mine, where a typical two-bedroom flat is £750,000 and rents are through the roof, to areas where they could get cheaper housing, because they had the opportunity to work from home and good broadband.”
“We wanted services to be within pram-pushing distance and decisions devolved to the communities best placed to make them. I had the honour of serving in the Government of Gordon Brown as an immigration Minister for three years, spending a lot of time travelling across the UK to look at the issues. I will touch on that in relation to Scotland in a moment. I both debated the issue and followed it since in the UK generally, and specifically in Scotland. The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) highlighted the recruitment issues and the workload crisis, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) so eloquently put it, as is his wont, attracting people somewhere is not down to immigration policies.”
“Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) to suggest that we were conceding victory to the SNP next year. It is precisely because of the SNP Government’s mess that we need to win next year and it is precisely because of their mess that the idea of a new immigration policy as a priority, when they have failed in so many other respects, is not something we should entertain. I want to move on to my more detailed remarks. As I have said, I am very pleased to speak in the debate because I believe in devolution. I am a passionate believer in devolving power to the most appropriate level, to competent bodies. I served as a councillor in Islington in the days when we were devolving things to neighbourhoods. For my younger colleagues, this was in the days before the internet—those days did exist.”
“He also laid out clearly some of the challenges and burdens of a separate system of immigration. It is not a cost-free option. It is costly to the taxpayer, duplicative and confusing for businesses. He also debunked the myths of a virtual border—something we heard rather too much about during Brexit. On the basis of the SNP’s track record, any future Labour Government in Scotland, which we all hope to see in 2026, will have a lot on their plate. I do not think that dealing with immigration is anywhere near the top of the agenda, because a Scottish Labour Government would see very clearly the benefits of working across the United Kingdom, between Whitehall and Edinburgh, to make sure we all delivered for all our communities. Certainly, setting up a new system would not be a priority. It was a bit disingenuous of the hon.”
“That is an example of how we can work together in the interests of the UK and Scotland. We are doing that already, so what on earth is the reason to have a separate Bill on migration? I want to touch on the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley) in his excellent speech. He spoke from a place of real knowledge about the challenges for island communities, including ferries. I have very fond memories of spending time in the Isle of Wight as child. It is smaller, but the challenges are very similar. I feel his pain in relation to the ferries. I could repeat what he said about the failure of the SNP Government on ferries, but given the many things I need to talk about in the next half an hour or so, I will just say that he highlighted that very clearly.”
“They should be the lifeblood of the country, and the Scottish Government should be doing more to support them. A number of Members have mentioned the Migration Advisory Committee. I will go on to speak about it in more detail, but the fact that the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Home Secretary have indicated very clearly their willingness to engage rather undermines the hon. Gentleman’s argument for the need for the Bill in the first place. The Migration Advisory Committee has a role to cover the needs of migration across the country—that is, the whole of the UK, including Scotland. The hon. Gentleman mentioned fresh talent. He talked about examples where the Scottish Government worked very closely with the Home Office. The Secretary of State highlighted an example, too—the Afghan women medical students.”
“Gentleman and his colleagues have highlighted today. It is shocking that the demographics of Scotland are as they are, and I compare this with England. I represent a constituency where our demographics are changing, and around one in five young people are now under the age of 16. We are investing in those young people. As I say when I go into schools, “You are the future of our country. You need to get good jobs and do well. You will be paying the pensions of older people. You will be caring for people and running the country. We need you.” We believe in investing in our young people, and it is a shocker that the Scottish Government have sleepwalked into letting young people fail so badly. There is such talent among young people in Scotland, and they have been sorely let down.”
“We are in a United Kingdom, and I agree that being part of the United Kingdom is the right thing. That is why I am a Unionist at heart. I am proud to have served in what was then Her Majesty’s Government as a Home Office Minister, working on a number of issues that covered the entirety of the UK. The hon. Gentleman spoke at length about young people. We know that the demographics of Scotland are a particular challenge, but as the Secretary of State and others highlighted, the Scottish Government’s record on young people is woeful, with one in six not in education, employment or training. It is a scandalous level of disregard for the future of the whole UK but in particular Scotland, where young people are the lifeblood of the future of economic development and can help us ensure that we do not have to deal with the issues that the hon.”
“I congratulate the hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry (Stephen Gethins) on bringing forward this Bill. It takes me back to the halcyon days when I served as an immigration Minister. I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak about that experience and explain why I therefore disagree with the premise of his Bill. There were things the hon. Gentleman said that we might find agreement on. He says that migration is a good thing. I would add that, yes, it is, but it needs to be controlled and it needs to be where there is need. I recognise that there is certainly need in Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom. We need to make sure that any immigration policy that we support and any changes that the Government introduce are led by those principles. The hon. Gentleman talked about pooling and sharing sovereignty.”
“I enormously respect the hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry, but the flimsiness of this Bill suggests that it has not been properly thought through. If the Bill were to omit some or all of paragraph B6 of part II of schedule 5 to the Scotland Act 1998, it would transfer responsibilities for those matters to the Scottish Parliament. There is a really big issue here, which is why I believe we should not adopt the Bill. We have seen how the different tax rates in Scotland can create challenges, for example with how the armed forces are paid. The Ministry of Defence has a formula for different branches of the armed forces, so someone on a tour in Scotland is paid more to take account of the tax rate. We cannot have two members of our armed forces personnel doing the same job with the same title but earning differently.”
“The most significant and long-term changes to the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament have been made by Acts of Parliament, rather than Orders in Council. That is also interesting; we could have a long discussion about that, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I suspect that I would be trying your patience if I started discussing the constitutional settlement for Scotland, so I will resist that temptation. However, the Scotland Acts 2012 and 2016 implemented recommendations made by the Calman commission and the Smith commission respectively, so there has been change along the way. Devolution was never intended to be a static thing; it was intended to reward the competencies, skills and needs of our devolved bodies, but those bodies need to play properly and professionally, not engage in cheap political gimmicks.”
“I plan to do so later in my speech, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right. Modifications under section 30 of the Scotland Act 1998 —that is, Orders in Council—require Scottish, as well as UK, parliamentary approval. However, modifications via primary legislation only require approval from both Houses of the UK Parliament. By taking this approach, the hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry is saying that this is a matter entirely for this Parliament—this House and the other place—cutting out his colleagues in Holyrood. That is an interesting take on events, given that we already have a good relationship between Holyrood and Whitehall on many of the issues we are discussing today.”
“Dare I say it, on the hon. Gentleman’s head be it. It was the Scottish Government who introduced the variation in taxation, which has left a challenge for anybody working in a UK-wide public body or UK-wide company. I repeat that personnel who are doing the same job on the same headline salary are ending up paying different taxes because they are working in different jurisdictions. That has caused a big headache for the Ministry of Defence and has been quite complicated to deliver. That is just one example—we could go into others, but we are here to discuss immigration—of what happens if we heedlessly and recklessly dive into changing something without proper preparation, thoughtful discussion and agreement.”
“People on the coach would get a text message telling them whether there were more immigration officers and police at Stranraer or at Cairnryan, so they would get off at the one at which the fewest checks were taking place on the day. It was a very well-worn route. At the time, the route was managed by the police and Border Force—this was before Police Scotland was set up—but it was a very thinly stretched team. It was intelligence-led by a UK-wide service, with support from the local force in Scotland.”
“The role of the UK immigration service—now Border Force—was to ensure that that was managed. Having a border at Scotland, with a different agency dealing with things, would mean an awful lot of cross-collaboration. It would make things clunky and very complicated. For some time after the Labour Government left office—it became a problem for the Conservative party in government—people would get on a coach at London Victoria station and go to the Republic of Ireland, sometimes to claim benefits. There was benefit fraud, there were immigration issues and increasingly there were issues around drugs crime, which I know has been a problem for colleagues in Northern Ireland.”
“Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes the point clearly and powerfully. As he has highlighted, there are other areas that the Bill would affect; it is not simply about setting a new immigration policy. There are a raft of contradictions that could play out in the mechanics behind it, making life very chaotic. I will address that point in more detail later. When I was honoured to serve as an Immigration Minister in Her late Majesty’s Government, we had a lot of discussions across the nations of the UK. I sometimes felt that I was the Minister sent to the remotest parts of the UK; I made a lot of interesting visits to ports. Although the links between Stranraer or Cairnryan in Scotland and Larne in Northern Ireland were intra-UK, we had a very big challenge with illegal immigrants moving between them.”
“There was a severe shortage of fish filleters on the west coast of Scotland, so the Migration Advisory Committee had put it on the shortage occupation list for Scotland. It turns out that one of the many skills that Ukrainian women have is that many of them are very good fish filleters, so the word went round and they came and helped the Scottish economy. Obviously it ended up with a number of them settling and marrying Scottish men. [ Interruption. ] I fear I may choke from an hon. Friend’s seated intervention; I am a happily married woman. It is not a concern for me to look to our Scottish colleagues and see what the best of the pickings are. [ Laughter. ]”
“We cannot gloss over it by saying that a new immigration policy will solve everything. The Migration Advisory Committee has been raised a number of times. It is worth sharing one of the moments in the Home Office that was a screw-up. One of the challenges is that the Home Office is a Department of many parts, and a panic came across my desk that there was a sudden rash of marriages between Ukrainian women—this was a long time before the tragic war in Ukraine and the illegal invasion by Putin—and Scottish men. It triggered a bit of the Home Office to wonder whether fraud was going on. There were examples of newspapers advertising for brides from other countries, so it was not a frivolous concern of the Home Office. It turned out that the Migration Advisory Committee had listened to colleagues in Scotland and acted on what they were saying.”
“My hon. Friend is right to again highlight the failures of the Scottish Government, which is one of the reasons that people are not staying. We know that this is a challenge, and not just in Scotland. Areas of England have also been left behind and have challenges in keeping their young populations. A lot of work is being done in places such as west Cumbria, where people who left for university outside the area tended not to come back. An awful lot of work has been done there to try to hold on to those young people, so that they bring their families up there and the younger population in those communities does not reduce. There are examples where this work is being done well, and there are examples where it is still early days, but we need to acknowledge the problem.”
“I spent over a decade on the Public Accounts Committee, looking at the problems of Whitehall, and even within one Government things do not always go smoothly as different agencies interact. To add an extra layer of complication seems to me something we would not want to see. The police at that time were overstretched, and moving to Police Scotland did not help. That is not a criticism of that policy, although I know colleagues have strong feelings about that, but it did not mean there were suddenly, magically, more police officers who could be deployed differently because of the challenges in that area.”
“Unbelievable as it may seem to the hon. Gentleman, I was a Minister between 2007 and 2010. I was a child Minister, of course. [ Laughter. ] I can understand his confusion, but that was the case at the time, and it continued for some while, because I then dealt with the local Member of Parliament—by then I was in opposition—about the challenges of that particular route. As he will know, the route from Scotland to Larne is the shortest route that can be taken, so people would make that journey. I have done that journey and driven along the long and winding single-track route to get there. It is not somewhere to get stuck behind a lorry, for sure. I was really demonstrating the point about the challenges of having multiple agencies. It is difficult enough with one Government, frankly.”
“Indeed. My hon. Friend was not an MP when we were discussing Brexit, but oh my word, there was a lack of thought about the issues with the land border prior to that. Madam Deputy Speaker, you may recall that when the former Prime Minister, now Baroness May, was proposing her Brexit deal, only 17% of Members of Parliament had been Members of Parliament when the Northern Ireland agreement was signed, so there was a distinct lack of understanding in this place. We all expect and hope that Members will read into these issues, but often that got missed, and there was a distinct lack of understanding about the border. We do not want to go down that route again.”
“Absolutely. A lot of tripe was talked at the time about having virtual borders. Even with some of the tensions between Scotland and the UK, which were evident in what SNP Members said earlier, we are not, I hope, at the point where we would have watchtowers and border guards with guns, but once we have a border, that is a risk.”
“If the cap fits, maybe the hon. Gentleman should consider his position. I am not suggesting for a minute that we would see border guards and towers, but once there is a land border there is a risk. We have seen in other parts of the world and among allies of ours more recently quite intemperate discussion about borders, walls and security. We would not want to go down that route.”
“As you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, it is important that we have debate in this place. People have made points to me and I am simply responding to those points. As I said, I am not suggesting that we would want, or would see, watchtowers with armed guards, and in my area of the country we had the second-largest anti-Brexit vote, so I know where I and my constituents stand on that issue. However, we do not want to add extra borders where we do not need to.”
“My hon. Friend makes the point well. We could reopen the whole debate about the Windsor framework, the border in the Irish sea and the many challenges to do with that, but I will not try your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker. When I was Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, we looked a lot at the detail of that, including the costs and the complication.”
“Certainly, it would not be cost-free. It would be a big burden on taxpayers across the UK, whichever tax system they were in. The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire talked about using a tax code as a marker of whether people had moved. Has he not heard of working from home, or working on holiday? That is a trend that I have read about. People can be working for an employer in one country but living somewhere else. It can get very messy, and those complications are not dealt with by this one-sentence Bill.”
“That sounds like an absolutely wonderful policy, and a lot of people lobby for it, but the reality is that it squeezes the funding of our higher education institutions, so that they have no option but to find overseas students who will pay more. We have seen an element of that in England, but the problem is exacerbated in Scotland because of the proposals of the Scottish Government.”
“At the time, Brexit was widely expected, and the Scottish Government’s expert advisory group discussed a possible fall in net migration to Scotland of between 30% and 50%, but so far the opposite has happened, as it has in the rest of the UK. Net international migration to Scotland in 2022-23 was an estimated 48,000, according to the most recent figures from National Records of Scotland. That is about four times the pre-pandemic average of 12,000. In January 2025, the Scottish Government said that the recent increase in net migration to Scotland could be largely explained by international students, but might not be sustained when restrictions introduced by the last Government feed through. There is an important point there about the education system. We have seen the Scottish Government introduce free tuition.”
“My hon. Friend took the words out of my mouth; he says it better than I could. Let me turn for a moment to what the SNP-led Scottish Government wish to deliver. In 2020—I think this was referred to—they published a paper arguing for some devolution of immigration policy to Scotland. I remember well before then, when I was a Minister, having discussions about that and—I would not normally be so crass—slapping down the idea that there could be a separate immigration policy for Scotland. The paper argued that Scotland was more reliant on migration than other parts of the UK, and noted that the population of Scotland would be falling if it were not for migration from the rest of the UK and overseas. An Opposition day debate on a motion condemning the UK Government’s response to that paper took place on 11 February 2020.”
“A new Government—a new broom coming in next May in Scotland—who understand these issues, are able and willing to get their head around how to tackle them, and are willing to work with Government in Whitehall, will deliver for the young people of Scotland and for the Scottish economy.”
“I have absolute confidence and faith that my Scottish Labour colleagues will have done the maths, will know where the money will come from, and will have looked at the matter in the round, and will be more willing to work with Whitehall on these issues. We will no doubt discuss with the Secretary of State for Scotland, the Home Secretary and others in Government, as necessary, how they will ensure that everything matches up, because that is right. Scottish Labour will invest in young people—something that the SNP has a woeful record on. That investment includes putting people through the right skilled routes, so that we have the skills that are needed in Scotland. My point is that under the SNP, the Scottish Government have this immigration policy that they have promoted hard, but they have never dealt with its consequences.”
“That is exactly the point. The hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry puts great faith in Committee stages. I have been here a long time, and they are not always as good as people say that they will be. Even if there was a Committee stage, there are so many other elements. That is one of the challenges with a Bill that is simply one line long. There are issues and knock-on effects for not just the Home Office, but all the other cross-UK institutions. I spent more than a decade on the Public Accounts Committee, and I know that if we pull a lever somewhere in Whitehall, unintended consequences flow into places we would never have thought of. The skill in government is to try to work that out, and a Bill like this would not deliver that necessary joined-up approach.”
“The Government are not against foreign students coming here—that is important—but we need to strike a balance, so that there are enough places for the young people in Scotland and across the UK who want to attend Scottish universities, and who are perhaps being squeezed out by the imbalance and the cost of going.”
“My hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. I absolutely take what the hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry highlighted. As I said, there are really challenging issues with the demographics in the Scottish population. We all need to put our shoulder to the wheel to deal with those things, rather than saying, “If only the SNP Scottish Government were in charge of immigration, it would all be fine.” This Bill is a gimmick, and the hon. Gentleman knows that it will not work. I will touch on the higher education figures. In the last two years, we have seen the number of home Scottish students drop. In 2021-22, the figure was just over 183,000, and it has dropped to just shy of 174,000. The number of non-UK students has gone down in the past couple of years, but it is nevertheless a significant number at 73,915.”
“Applicants would need to have graduated from a Scottish institution—we have already seen an interesting divide on that—to have lived in Scotland for an “appropriate amount of time”, and would have to intend to live and work in Scotland. The visa would be linked to a Scottish tax code, which we have heard a lot about today.”
“My hon. Friend is right. We have seen the pain and challenges caused by Brexit for academic movement. Knowledge has no boundaries or borders, but there is a danger of the Bill not recognising that. Let me turn to the Scottish National party’s proposal for a Scottish graduate visa. Overseas students in the UK can get a two-year graduate visa. That is an extension available to those who complete their degree in the UK, allowing them to stay on and work without sponsorship for two years—or three if they are PhD graduates. The SNP Scottish Government have proposed an additional Scottish graduate visa that would be available to those on UK graduate visas. It would allow them to stay for another two years.”
“As ever, my hon. Friend talks enormous sense. Let us talk through the practicalities of the proposal that I have just outlined. A person graduating from a Scottish university would be able to stay on and work in Scotland without sponsorship for four years in total. To remind the House, that means two years on a UK graduate visa—or three for a PhD—followed by two years on a Scottish graduate visa.”
“They could not possibly work through the system on their own without professional advice, which is costly. That is discriminatory, really. They find it very difficult. The more complication we add, the harder it will be.”
“On the tax code, I have spent quite a lot of time considering how our tax system works, and every time a Chancellor of any party stands up at the Dispatch Box to announce something, it adds complexity to the tax system, which can be very confusing for people. One of the last things that we wanted to do in the previous Labour Government, but which was too complicated to deliver in time, was codify all immigration law into one Bill—but, boy, was that a big task. It is the sort of thing that a Government would need to start at the beginning of a 15-year Government. Perhaps I should suggest it to the Home Secretary, because I am sure that this Government have the prospect of seeing it through. People come to my constituency surgery—and to those of many other Members, I am sure—to ask for information about their immigration status.”
“I hope that I am beginning to explain how some of these interactions— [ Laughter. ] I am only just beginning. [Hon. Members: “More!”] I fear I might be cut off, which is a great shame, because I had really looked forward to going into this in more detail. If the person completed undergraduate and postgraduate in Scotland, they would qualify for permanent residence simply by having been in the country. We might want to support that, but we ought to debate, it rather than sleepwalking into the challenges of having two systems set up for different purposes. That would be confusing for the individual and for the businesses employing them, as they might not know whether visas were needed. It would be very complicated.”
“I am proud to represent a constituency that shows tolerance to people from all backgrounds, unlike the political hot potato the issue has become in this place and in political dialogue. I have a constituent who transitioned in the 1970s. She has used female toilets for more of her life than any other toilets. Are we saying that her dignity and the respect the Minister talked about will be in any way improved if there is a ban on her using the toilets she has been using for so many years?”
“I applaud my right hon. Friend for his decisive action in this matter. I have only had a chance to read the Bill for 10 minutes— [ Interruption. ] That is not a criticism; it is the natural procedure of this House. The Bill could not be laid until First Reading. The Bill talks about compensation. He has made the point that he is not planning to take over and run British Steel, which is not the desirable option, but has he done some sort of impact assessment on the potential range of costs to the taxpayer in these circumstances?”