The Tories are more trusted on the issue of immigration than Labour. But then it’s so much easier to be tough on our borders in opposition. Last week the complicated reality of getting immigration right began to severely tarnish the Tories’ reputation.
Home secretary Theresa May had to report to parliament on the summer’s border fiasco. Despite some attempts to muddy the waters with references to the previous government, the Vine report actually told us that controls which were toughened by Labour in 2007 were downgraded far more often in 2011 than in any previous year. Furthermore, the immigration minister Damian Green actually licensed repeated weakening of border controls.
Then official migration figures reported that the government is deporting fewer foreign criminals, stopping fewer people who shouldn’t be in the UK from coming in, and removing fewer people who should not be here. And with 6,500 fewer staff, the queues at major airports will be getting worse – as we see a major influx of visitors for the Olympics.
The figures also show that net immigration remains at its highest ever level – the government is making no progress on their much-vaunted cap target.
They deserve to be held to account for this failure. Either they knew that they’d fail with this target and pledged it purely for electoral advantage or they are ignorant of the complexities of immigration. Deviously disingenuous or stupidly disingenuous – take your pick!
To succeed in reducing net migration, there must either be a reduction in people coming from outside the EU, or from inside the EU, or an increase in those leaving the UK. The government can only actually control the first of these. The numbers leaving the country are certainly not increasing sufficiently to deliver the target and there appears to be no reduction in those coming to the UK from the rest of the EU. A worsening of the recession here is the most likely way to prompt more people to leave and fewer to come from the EU. Presumably this isn’t part of the government’s immigration strategy. So the pressure to bring down immigration from outside the EU becomes even greater just to stand still. The last government had already stopped all unskilled economic migration from outside the EU and the points-based-system was tightening the criteria for skilled workers and students. So reductions will need to come from further cuts to students, skilled workers and family reunions. Overseas students are a major export earner for the country and – as higher education funding is slashed – vital for the financial health of many universities. Further reductions in skilled workers will either restrict growth opportunities for UK employers or mean further EU immigration to fill the gaps. The alternative, of course, would be a concerted effort to train UK workers for these roles, but there is no sign that the government is serious about this.
The Tories could have used their poll lead to develop a more sophisticated and honest argument about types and sources of immigration, their benefits and what we should expect from those we allow to come to this country. But instead they chose a crude cap on immigration as their immigration ‘dog whistle’. We must hold them to account for failing to deliver. But perhaps this is also the opportunity for Labour to get a hearing on how to build a ‘something-for-something’ immigration system.
—————————————————————————————
Jacqui Smith is former home secretary and writes the Monday Politics column for Progress
—————————————————————————————
Yes, but the truth is that the difference between the two government’s in their respective records is still pretty small and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of mileage in running the claim that Labour was so much ‘better’ than the coalition.
The real problem is that both Labour and now the coalition over-sold the capacity of governments running liberal market economies to control immigration in the first place. Border controls are probably as tight as they can be (59 million passing through Heathrow each year, with only around 15000 being served with control notices). With these figures the scope for policy reform is entirely in the direction of liberalisation rather pointless attempts to further tighten rules and procedures.
It is interesting that Jacqui Smith sees Tory policies as being ‘an open and honest argument about types and sources of immigration’. In fact they were nearly overwhelmed a few weeks back with a backlash against their claim that unacceptably high levels of migrants were in receipt of in-work benefits, or that migration has had an adverse impact on youth employment. It was regrettable that the Labour opposition contributed very little to the embarrassment that was heaped on Messrs Grayling and Green for the claims they made at this time.
‘Holding them to account for failing to deliver’ misses the point in this context. The point surely is that what they promised to deliver on was nonsense in the first place and we should brief a sigh of relief that things like a reduction in net migration are going to be missed, or that immigration officials retain discretion to exercise checks in a sensible manner to avoid borders becoming seething pits of anger and frustration over hugely unwarranted delays. To do this the Labour benches need to demonstrate more spunk than they’ve done up to now, and denounce policies for being nonsense, rather than “a failure to deliver….”