Shadow home affairs minister Gloria de Piero kicked off the Progress annual conference breakout debate, Doorstep challenge: Can we win on crime and immigration?, focusing on antisocial behaviour. She said that the government was turning the clock back. In the most recent crime survey for England and Wales, eight out of 10 respondents thought levels of ASB had increased in the past 12 months.
Despite the government’s early rhetoric on the issue it was replacing Labour’s antisocial behaviour order with a new injunction that would have no criminal sanction and therefore no deterrent. With repeat ASB, victims should expect a right to get action straight away but this was not happening. The community trigger introduced by the government in five pilot areas is failing, eg in around 23,000 incidents in Manchester it has only been triggered only a handful of times.
Experiences of immigration and integration are very different throughout the country. For example, Gloria grew up in diverse Bradford where integration is a major issue while she now represents Ashfield where is the resident population is 96 per cent white British. Labour needed to get tougher on the government’s record on immigration – 800 fewer immigrants are being deported every year under this government that the last, she said.
David Goodhart, director of thinktank Demos thought Labour needed to continue to rethink its approach in order to win on crime and immigration. We are living through a ‘golden age’ of crime reduction, most probably due to Labour social policy and the party needs to be better at selling this, but there are still questions over why it is falling. However a quick internet search suggests there is very little current Labour policy on crime apart from reducing the prison population and reoffending, he argued.
He went on to say that the levels of immigration after accession of the A8 countries in May 2004 was too high and the economic benefits were not felt by the less well-off. Labour should adopt a version of the government’s immigration cap, leaving out asylum and the European Union and should be around 60,000. There needs to be a downward pressure on permanent settlement. Goodhart further argued that Labour should also address the issue of free movement in Europe, because opportunities arising from mobility are skewed to the well-off and free movement offends people’s sense of what it means to be a British citizen. He said that the work of Geoffrey Evans of Nuffield College, Oxford, suggested that immigration was a key issue in the 2010 general election.
Neal Lawson, chair of Compass, wanted Labour to prefigure the type of good society we live in – a society where there is tolerance and respect for fellow citizens. In winning the doorstep argument, listing facts and figures would not be enough. Labour needs to find the right emotional language to reconnect with voters on these issues.
Former Labour home secretary Jacqui Smith opened with a clear statement of crime and immigration being matters of social justice, where the most deprived communities were the ones most affected. Immigration is often described as ‘out of control’ but we need to celebrate the improvements it has brought to this country. We also need to deal with people’s insecurities and trade unions have a key role in supporting enforcement of the national minimum wage, highlighting exploitation by agencies, she said. The transitional impact of migration needs to be dealt with. The Tories scrapped Labour’s Migration Impacts Fund and Migration Impacts Forum. Labour councils could set up local forums to look at the reality of local impacts. Smith argued that under Labour we increased police numbers, their visibility and partnership with other agencies. Now we are seeing downgrading of neighbourhood policing and less joint working. police and crime commissioners and activists need to be central to campaigning on crime.
Zoe Tyndall of market researchers BritainThinks outlined that immigration salience had increased and continues to rank among the top five issues, with crime usually sitting at seven or eight. Since 1997 concern over immigration has tended to mirror levels of net migration, with it being a key concern to swing voters (especially in the south-east). Immigration is tied in with economy, welfare and EU – trust across all is closely linked.
The gap in competence between the two major parties is not large but politicians cannot win on it as the public do not think politicians have the answers. Twenty per cent of potential Lib Dem switchers think the Tories are better on it. Even among Labour supporters only 44 per cent think we’re stronger on immigration. When you ask people about how their areas have changes in the last 20 years they say their schools and hospitals have improved. However, they are negative about immigration.
In constructing political message around immigration and crime, facts are not enough – we need to bridge with people’s experiences. People can be positive if they are framed in the right way, eg immigrant contribution (especially in the NHS), gratitude from refugees, investment in rehabilitation. Good messaging on immigration might talk about interconnectivity, especially with large economies such as China on the rise.
For me Labour needs to ensure its crime and immigration policies are evidence-based and focused on outcomes. It needs to develop a vision for dealing with crime and ASB that includes prevention through early intervention in families, public services that are more responsive to communities’ experiences of ASB, and improving the use of technology, analytics and problem-solving in policing. The Labour message on immigration needs to be broadened. We talk of the negative impacts but rarely of the positive. We apologise for A8 immigration but not of our points-based immigration system or our work on transitional impacts. We talk of abuses of the labour market but not of our response to dealing with skills gaps or supporting key sectors of the economy. On immigration we can only gain the trust of the voters if we are able to have honest conversations with them and equip our doorstep activists with the confidence to do so.
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Ash McGregor is secretary of the Socialist Societies Executive, @SocialistSocs. He tweets @ashmcgregor