Sir Edward Leigh
MP for Gainsborough · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Those of us who love the Jewish people and faith know that the reason why they have overcome all the empires that have tried to destroy them is that they are primarily people of the book and not the sword, but what is happening in the west bank is violent and egregious.”
“I am grateful to the Secretary of State for looking again at Lincolnshire. I made the point to her predecessor that the proposal for a Greater Lincolnshire authority was, in the eyes of many people, just a gerrymander. Will she look again at it and stop dividing West Lindsey and North Kesteven in half?”
“If the centre does not take action, nasty extremes will take over. The fact is that we are in acute danger. These people can now launch from anywhere on the north French coast and are escorted to our shores. Frankly, we are being invaded, and the public are completely fed up.”
“May I congratulate the Prime Minister on what he said about Ukraine and on how he conducted himself there? Our enemies should know that this House is completely and utterly united in standing behind the Ukrainian people.”
“What concerns me is the jobs of my constituents who work at Scunthorpe. That is all I am worried about; I have no ideological objection. If it is what is needed now, fair enough. As long as the blast furnaces are totally uneconomic because of high energy costs, however, it can only be a sticking plaster.”
“One of the poorest wards in the entire country is Gainsborough south-west ward. Why is the Secretary of State splitting West Lindsey in half? Why is he taking Scampton away from Gainsborough? It makes no sense. Why is he cutting away the nuclear fusion site from Lincoln?”
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“Absolutely. Let me be completely clear that nobody in the House questions the desperate plight of the people now trudging through Greece and those who are held up at the border, having fled the appalling events in Syria, Iraq and Libya. By the way, the west has a huge responsibility for that, and I have to say that those Members who voted to invade Iraq, to bomb Libya and to bomb Syria also have a responsibility for the chaos that has ensued. Nobody questions the desperate plight of those people, but let us be completely honest about this. The hon. Gentleman has to be honest.”
“The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We have to introduce the language of compassion. May I just defend the Government for a moment? There is not a single Government in the whole of Europe who have spent more money on aid to Syria. This Government have a perfectly logical and reasonable point of view, which is that, rather than simply giving comfort to the people traffickers, we should take people directly from the camps. I think that there is widespread support on the Government Benches for what the Government are doing in that regard. If I have not spoken the language of compassion, let me be absolutely clear now that this debate is not about being nasty to people who are desperately seeking a better life.”
“I quite understand—in the language of compassion—why a person would want to be an economic migrant, but are they an asylum seeker? When they are taken out of the back of a lorry in Lincoln or found at the first service station on the M3, they do not say to the English gendarmerie that they want to get benefits or a job; they say that they are an asylum seeker. The question that the British people are asking is this: if that person is a genuine asylum seeker, given that France is a completely safe and civilized country, with a very generous benefits system, why do they not claim asylum there? It all boils down to why this Bill is needed. I know that this is only a private Member’s Bill, but for the life of me I cannot understand why the Government do not take action on this.”
“That is the question that the public ask again and again in the letters and emails we receive. Why is the Dublin convention not being used? My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch was a very distinguished chairman of the migration committee in the Council of Europe, and he is probably one of the House’s leading experts on the whole migration issue. He has spent many hours not just sitting in committees in Strasbourg, but making the effort to go to Lampedusa and all these places to talk about the Dublin convention. That convention basically states, quite rightly, that a person should get asylum or be returned to the first country they enter, so this is what people in this country do not understand: is France unsafe?”
“I am told that in the “jungle”, England is viewed as a kind of El Dorado—having lived here for 65 years, I have never thought of it as that. Apparently, it is the place where all one’s dreams come true—there are unlimited work and benefits, and all the rest of it. These people come from outside the EU, so I am afraid that my hon. Friend’s intervention was not relevant. The issue is entirely in the hands of the Government. We hear about the staggering level of net migration, at 300,000 a year. The whole of London and the south-east is groaning under the number of people, and that is a particular issue for native working class people.”
“That may be a fair point. I do not think that Mr Deputy Speaker would want me to get into a whole debate about the Prime Minister’s renegotiation of benefits for Poles—people who have an absolute right to come here anyway. I briefly make the point that the overwhelming majority of Poles come here to work, not for benefits, but let us leave that to one side. The people sitting in Calais are not Polish, Lithuanian or Hungarian—those people can all come in anyway. I am afraid that the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris) is completely irrelevant. By definition, the people whom we are discussing are not allowed here. They come from outside the EU. It is true that our benefit system is a draw.”
“I shall give way to my hon. Friend if he wants to ask me about illegal immigration, rather than legal immigration, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale referred.”
“Many might think that they would never be caught, but that brings us to the debate about ID cards and all the rest of it; presumably, that is another reason why they want to come here. At least if they knew that they would be sent back if they were caught, that would solve the problem to a certain extent.”
“That is why people will do anything and take any risk to try to jump on the train, put their lives at risk and cause disruption for hundreds of different people. That is why we need the Bill: so that they know that it is simply not worth it. If the Government took the steps that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch suggests, I hazard a guess that the camp would dissolve. The whole issue would go away and our relations with France would improve immeasurably. People would simply make a perfectly rational and good decision, asking themselves what, if they knew that they were going to be caught, was the point of causing all the anguish in trying to get out of France and putting their lives at risk.”
“That is absolutely right. Some have put their lives on the line as interpreters for the British Army in Afghanistan and some, God forbid, may be living in the jungle in a shack. The Minister could make a good point about preventing illegal entry by people who put their lives at risk by trying to jump on a train. I do not know what the procedures are; presumably, the people mentioned in my hon. Friend’s intervention could find a British immigration official and try to enter legally. My hon. Friend makes a good point. My hon. Friend’s first point was very apposite too. Why are there all these attempts at illegal entry into the UK? It is because getting a job in France is so difficult and joining the benefits system there is so complex. Those things are probably even more difficult in places such as Italy.”
“The first figure is comparable with the earlier Home Office estimate, while the second includes the children of unauthorised migrants born in the UK. The study concluded that at the end of 2007 there were approximately 533,000 irregular migrants living in the UK, within a range of 373,000 and 719,000—so it is getting worse. There were approximately 618,000 irregular residents living in the UK, within a range of 470,000 to 863,000. If the public were aware of these figures—there is already public concern—they would be truly alarmed. The study found that the majority of the irregular resident population was living in London, with a central estimate of 442,000 irregular residents living in the capital—about 70% of the estimated irregular resident population at the end of 2007. These figures are truly extraordinary.”
“It concluded that in April 2001 the total unauthorised migrant population, including failed asylum seekers, living in the UK was approximately 430,000, within a range of 310,000 to 570,000 people. We should note that this estimate does not include the children of unauthorised migrants born in the UK. That study was produced in 2005, and I would like to have a more recent one. This is a really important issue in terms of good race relations and all the other aspects we are talking about. In 2009, the London School of Economics published a study commissioned by the Mayor of London that updated the earlier Home Office figures in order to estimate the unauthorised migrant population at the end of 2007. The study produced two estimates—one for the number of irregular migrants and another for the number of irregular residents.”
“The debate has moved on, in the Conservative party and in the Labour party, and there is now widespread public support for a really tough, firm and compassionate immigration policy. Serious efforts by Government to train the population into a different point of view have failed. Before we dismiss this as just a temporary blip, let us look again at some of the figures. They are extraordinary. As long ago as 2005, the Home Office produced a study. I have been unable to find a more recent study, and one might ask why not; I see the Home Office Minister here. The study estimated the number of unauthorised migrants living in the UK in 2001. It measured the discrepancy between census estimates of the total lawfully resident foreign-born population, based on migration records.”
“Of course, we heartily welcome a pay rise for the lowest-paid workers in Britain because that means more disposable income for them to spend or save as they see fit. The more immigration there is, particularly the more illegal immigration, the more consequences there will be. Untrammelled immigration was introduced in 1997 for social reasons. The then Government gambled on newly arrived immigrants and their offspring being reliable Labour supporters—not always the case—so they adopted the Brechtian policy of abolishing the people and electing another version. Unfortunately, this kind of bad, poorly thought out policy was backed by certain aspects of the business community.”
“Some people might say, “Maybe we want more immigration—maybe these people provide low-cost cheap labour”, and all the rest of it. I would argue that the ready availability of cheap labour reduces the need for employers to modernise their economy, and that for too long Governments have relied on open borders and cheap wages to keep the economy afloat. The problem with this large-scale migration—illegal migration is the worst aspect—is that it is totally unsustainable in the long run in terms of the economy, public policy and public opinion. The Chancellor has signalled his intention that we end this model and move towards a low tax, high wage society. Lord Rose, the head of the remain campaign, admitted before the Treasury Committee this week that if Britain leaves the EU and immigration within the EU falls, then wages will rise.”
“It continues: “Much of the investment from the UK Government appears to have gone into improving security around the Port of Calais ferry terminal, rather than the Eurotunnel terminal at Coquelles.” That was the case when the Committee wrote the report; I agree that things have moved on since. It concludes: “If the Government accepts there is a security problem at both sites, then it should contribute to security measures at both sites.” I accept that the Government are trying now to address the problem, but only in terms of improving the fences and security. My contention, and that of my hon. Friend, is that we also have to deal with the pull factor. This illegal migration into this country is very serious in terms of public policy.”
“Improvements in security must be combined with improvements in managing the traffic flow.” That, surely, is the point. We can build as many fences or walls as we like, but we cannot manage the migrant flow unless the Government make real, cogent and serious attempts, first, to get rid of the incentive through something like my hon. Friend’s Bill, and, secondly, to impose some sort of sanction. These people are desperate—we should show compassion to them because they come from appalling places—and will keep trying again and again. There is the physical risk, but in terms of the law there is no risk at all. The Home Affairs Committee goes on to say: “It is important that improvements in security at one site do not simply displace clandestine activity to another site.” That is why we cannot deal with this problem simply with fences.”
“We find it bizarre that there are thousands of attempts to enter the UK illegally through Calais, at great cost and inconvenience to business and leisure travellers, transport companies, and hauliers, and yet the people who are caught are simply released back into the French countryside.” Extraordinary! “Nothing in this process appears to serve as a disincentive to returning to Calais and trying again and again, and there is no evidence it has affected the number of migrants living in the Calais area. It appears to be an admission of stalemate and something must be done to break this cycle.” The Committee goes on: “It is apparent that extra security slows the traffic, creates queues”— as I go back and forth to the Council of Europe, I am well aware of this— “and can increase the vulnerability of the lorries to infiltration by migrants.”
“As the Home Affairs Committee report said, “Sir Charles explained that the 30,000 attempts”— the numbers are staggering— “to enter the UK through the juxtaposed ports last year do not represent 30,000 individuals”. He said that many are trying again and again and again. Nevertheless, the Home Affairs Committee was critical of the UK and French authorities’ approach to the problem. Some of its comments are tough and interesting. It says: “The number of interceptions by Border Force and PAF, the French Border Police, highlights the sheer scale of the problem. And yet we have seen no evidence that France or the UK is pursuing a policy of processing and deporting the individuals found at Calais.”
“The Government’s response to the report agreed with his recommendation to review this policy. However, the Home Affairs Committee noted in March 2015 that clandestine migrants caught in Calais or Coquelles are still not fingerprinted by the UK authorities, unlike at other juxtaposed controls. They are handed over to the French police, who will release them. As we know, this is a sort of game. No matter how many times people try, there is no criminal sanction or disbenefit—the migrants simply try again and again. The director general of the Border Force told the Home Affairs Committee that the number of individuals attempting to enter the UK is significantly less than the number of attempts.”
“In November 2014, the answer to a parliamentary question gave some details about the costs and impacts of juxtaposed controls in France: “In 2013/14 the number of clandestine people detected at juxtaposed controls in France by Border Force and other agencies was around 18,000—a rise of over 60 percent from around 11,000 in FY2012/13.” I suspect that the figures are far worse now than they were even a year ago. The annual cost of the Border Force at the port of Calais per fiscal year is also quite extraordinary: in 2013, it had risen to more than £17.5 million. The independent chief inspector of borders and immigration published a report on the inspection of juxtaposed controls in 2013. He found that people found hiding in freight vehicles were no longer being fingerprinted at Calais or Coquelles owing to limited detention facilities.”
“The Schengen area is not as open as it was. Last summer, I was driving from Italy to France. I noticed that although there were no border checks between the two countries, there were loads of gendarmes checking every single coach and car at the first péage, where people pay the tolls for the motorway. My hon. Friend should not be too starry-eyed about the Schengen area; all sorts of controls are gradually building up all over Europe and I quite understand the position of the French Government, of whom I make no criticism at all. The numbers are extraordinary.”
“It is argued that the Government can do nothing about migration from eastern Europe, unless of course we leave the European Union, but the issue of illegal migration is surely under our control, and it is now running at staggering levels. The people want to know what the Government are doing about it. What are they doing to find these people? My hon. Friend talked about the level of deportations. I think, off the top of my head, that he said that there were 12,562 deportations last year. Is that not an extraordinarily low proportion of the hundreds of thousands that I have been mentioning? This is not just a matter of figures.”
“Yes. I personally think—I put this in a half-hearted way to the Prime Minister in his statement a couple of weeks ago when I asked him why he was banging on about Polish immigration—that we are obsessing too much about east European migration. That is legal and understood. We have a fair idea of the numbers coming in, although there is a lot of dispute about the national insurance figures, which suggest that those numbers are far greater than is admitted by the Government. This matter has also been raised in Prime Minister’s questions. In this House we are obsessing too much about the Prime Minister’s renegotiation and what he achieved and did not achieve, and forgetting what is in our control.”
“Will the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Refugees explain the deficiencies of the existing Immigration Act 2014 in processing illegal migrants, and how would the new Immigration Bill make any difference?”
“The Home Office has the power to require an appeal to be brought only once an individual has left the UK where the claim is clearly unfounded and where a person liable to deportation makes a human rights claim and it would not cause serious irreversible harm or otherwise breach human rights to require them to appeal from overseas. The Immigration Bill seeks to extend the power to require an appeal to be brought from overseas to all human rights claims where an appeal from overseas would not cause serious irreversible harm or otherwise breach human rights. Similar provisions are set out in the Immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2006”.”
“To be fair to the Home Office, I will give the answer provided by the Minister for Immigration: “The Home Office continues to take action at every opportunity to prevent immigration abuse, pursue immigration offenders and increase compliance with immigration law including arresting and returning illegal migrants to their country of origin.” Yet another Immigration Bill is making its way through the House, but I do not think there is any point in passing more Immigration Acts if we are not enforcing the existing ones. The Minister’s answer continues: “The Immigration Act 2014 simplified the appeals system so that an appeal right only arises where a claim raising fundamental rights is refused, namely asylum, humanitarian protection and human rights claims.”
“That is precisely what I am asking. We now want an up-to-date study from the Home Office, but because we have such weak exit controls, the Government seem to have very little idea of what is going on. Questions have been asked about this. On 18 January 2016, my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) asked “the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what procedures are in place to ensure that illegal migrants to the UK are returned to their country of origin; and whether people deemed by her Department to be illegal migrants are only able to appeal that decision from their country of origin.” That seems to be a very fair question.”
“Friend the Member for Christchurch this morning is not just about statistics; it is about the very bedrock and nature of society. Society is a contract, is it not, between the people? We know who the people are, we know where they live and we know they pay taxes—we all pay taxes and get public services in return. However, when literally hundreds of thousands of people are living in this country illegally and the Government have no idea who or where they are, and only 12,000 are being deported every year, trust in the immigration system and the trust on which society relies gradually break down. That is why my hon. Friend’s Bill is excellent and the Government need to respond to it.”
“If there is more and more illegal migration, and if the Government do not even know what is going on, it is much more difficult to create homogeneity among the population, which has been one of the keys to the success of the Nordic model. People in our country, and even more so in Scandinavian countries, were content to pay high taxes because they obtained high-quality services and knew that those services were going to their own people, who were here legally. However, if we add very high levels of immigration to the mix, and if hundreds of thousands of people are here illegally, that relationship of trust between people—who were prepared to pay high taxes because they knew that everybody else was doing so and they were getting high-quality services in return—starts to break down. The debate instituted by my hon.”
“Absolutely. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State can respond to that point. The whole issue of migration, particularly illegal migration, is—I am sure that nobody would disagree with this—one of the most serious crises we face in Europe today. It makes it much more difficult to create a sense of community and cohesion in our democracy. Scandinavia is often held up as a paragon of social cohesion, but its countries’ economies and their whole sense of the community of the nation are now under threat as never before. That Nordic model is based on high taxation combined with strong, high-quality service provision.”
“We have the absurd situation that someone from Romania who does not work here and will never want to work here can come to this country, but a most distinguished American professor of Shakespearian literature—one of the most distinguished people in the world—who came to Stratford-upon-Avon to talk about Shakespeare but stayed a few days too long, was arrested, frog-marched to a police station and deported. It beggars belief that we are preventing research scientists and nuclear physicists from India or America from coming here. Mass migration from the EU is therefore pertinent to this debate, because people are so frustrated and that is leading to all this illegal immigration.”
“If the law is adequate and we do not need an extra law, why was the chap who walked through the channel tunnel to arrive in Dover not sent straight back to France after the initial arrest? He was not even prosecuted and was allowed to remain here. If the law is adequate, why could we not arrest this chap and, ultimately, deport him?”
“I am afraid it is an answer and the Minister needs to address this point. People cannot understand why, when someone has travelled through perfectly safe countries such as Spain, France or Italy to the UK and are caught, they cannot be sent back to France and claim asylum there.”
“The Minister must not try to put words in our mouths, because this is a really important subject. Nobody in the leave campaign is suggesting that people from Europe who are already legally resident here should in any way become illegal immigrants. There is no suggestion of that at all.”
“May I just ask where the Foreign Secretary is? I know he is very busy, but the House of Commons must always come first. We are at least owed an explanation. May I suggest that the Labour and Conservative establishments, in being such an outrider for the overthrow of unpleasant authoritarian regimes—whether Gaddafi’s, Assad’s or Saddam’s—have merely provided an opening for far worse, totalitarian movements? It is also arguable that we have had very little influence in the latest round of peace negotiations, as the Americans cosy up to the Russians. Will the Foreign Office now at least accept that there may be some merit in Assad being allowed to go gracefully in elections, however imperfect?”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You are the foremost guardian of the convention that the House of Commons must come first. My hon. Friend the Minister is a most charming and able Minister, but I have asked him why the Foreign Secretary is not here. I quite understand—he is a very busy man—if he is abroad or ill, but surely we must establish the convention that when there is an urgent question or a statement, unless it deals with a particular, small part of a Department, the Secretary of State should be here. I would hope that you make that clear to Departments.”
“If my hon. Friend is seeking a cure for insomnia, may I refer him to my speech on Friday when I spoke on this subject for an hour in support of the Bill sponsored by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), which would set up an independent audit of the pros and cons of leaving the EU? That is what we need. Perhaps the Office for Budget Responsibility should be given that job. We accused the Labour Government of fiddling the figures before the Budget, so why not ask an independent body to give a genuine audit?”
“Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) authority to carry on giving his speech.”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. This is a most important point. When I was Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee—I am now a member of the Procedure Committee— I produced a report for the Chancellor on this. What the hon. Gentleman says is quite true and he is doing a great service to the House. The fact is that we spend £600 billion of the people’s money every year, but the one thing we are not allowed to talk about on estimates days is estimates. The hon. Gentleman is therefore making a fundamentally important point. When the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) tried to talk about estimates on an estimates day a couple of years ago, unbelievably he was ruled out of order. You have the power now, Madam Deputy Speaker, to say that on estimates days we are allowed to talk about estimates. You can give the hon.”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I just ask how I, or any other hon. Member, can question the Government on £600 billion of expenditure? By the way, under the Barnett formula what we spend directly affects the spend in Scotland. How can I start giving a speech about all this money we are spending?”
“17. On a scale of one to 10, and in terms of preserving our national security, how would the Secretary of State rate and compare our membership of NATO with our membership of the EU?”
“Say for a moment that I am the fisheries Minister, young, ambitious, good looking and anxious to do the Prime Minister’s bidding, and the Prime Minister tells me that I have to set out my vision of what life outside the EU means for fishing—indeed that is a huge question for our fishing fleets—what do I do? The EU determines everything in my Department. I have no national policy on fishing, but I happen to be in favour of the out campaign. Do I go home for four months? Do I get no advice from Ministers? Is it not so much “Yes, Minister” as just “Go home for four months and we will see you in June”?”
“The answer to my hon. Friend’s question is simple: if we left the EU, we would not have to pay a £10 billion a year subscription just to have a £70 billion a year deficit.”
“To be absolutely fair—we should be fair, and that is why we need an independent audit—our own crooks can presumably do the same in those other countries?”
“I have been trying to wrestle with an understanding of farming policy for the 30 years I have been in this place. It is immensely complex, but again we have had virtually no detailed debate or analysis to inform our farmers on how they should vote. This is desperately important to them. There are hundreds of farmers in my constituency and tens of thousands of farmers throughout the country who want an answer, because they, for better or for worse, depend on the subsidy system.”
“He made a detailed analysis of what leaving the EU would mean for farming policy. He made the point that although food and agriculture is a huge and massively important industry—it employs more than 3.5 million people and accounts for £85 billion of GNP—agriculture policy is entirely determined by the EU. On that, this House has very little, or virtually no, independence from the EU. He was putting forward his view and arguing that alternative subsidy arrangements could be made. For instance, he argued that we should broadly spend on subsidies what we are spending now, but create a different subsidy system. He argued that we could divert more agricultural subsidies away from lowland farming to hill farmers in difficult farming environments.”
“I just have a point of view—I believe it is reasonable, but other people may say it is a prejudice—but there is no point my standing up in the House of Commons and articulating my alternative vision if there is no independent analysis of it. That is surely what the British people want and demand. I am asking them on 23 June to take the risk of leaving, and they therefore have the right to come back to me to ask such questions. If we left the EU, I believe it would be quite exciting—I represent a rural area—to reclaim control of the common agricultural policy. In that context, I recommend the speech by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), the former Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to the Oxford farming conference.”
“To go back to yesterday’s debate, the Minister for Europe said in his summing up, “I’ve sat through this debate, and those who want to leave the EU have not given any sense of their vision.” That is quite true, and it is incumbent on us—it could be done as part of such a study—to give the people and the House some sense of where we want to take the nation if we leave the EU. I accept that argument—the Minister for Europe kindly added that he said that “with the exception of my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough”—and I tried to give an alternative vision yesterday. Such alternative visions need to be tested.”
“Normally, when someone pays a subscription to a club, they do so to have a benefit: they are prepared to pay the cost because they get something back. Frankly, given that there is a deficit of £70 billion—I agree that it exists now and will almost certainly remain if we leave the EU, because of the strength of German engineering products or French food and drinks products and all the other reasons—that is quite a big subscription to pay for it. We want an independent study.”