Extracts from Public Bill committee consideration of the Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill - Feb 12

Wednesday, 13 February 2019 07:34

Nick Thomas-Symonds Q I think you have been very firm in your views on levels of migration being too high. What is the right level of migration? Lord Green (Migration Watch): Until 1998, the level of net migration had never been more than 50,000 a year, and on some occasions it had been negative. Times were different, but we did not really need large-scale migration until then. You...Request free trial

Nick Thomas-Symonds

Q I think you have been very firm in your views on levels of migration being too high. What is the right level of migration?

Lord Green (Migration Watch): Until 1998, the level of net migration had never been more than 50,000 a year, and on some occasions it had been negative. Times were different, but we did not really need large-scale migration until then. You probably remember—you may have been an MP at the time—that when the Labour Government eased the immigration system, the numbers trebled in a couple of years. You will also remember that when the points-based system was introduced in 2008, we found very soon that we had something like 40,000 bogus students arriving in one year, mainly from the Indian subcontinent. We also found that 1,000 bogus colleges had to be closed. I am not trying to criticise the Labour party in this matter. My point is more general: the pressures on our immigration system worldwide are very strong indeed. We have seen it twice and there is every risk that we are going to see it again.

Tracey Crouch

Q The other thing you said in your evidence was around linking migration and labour market access to trade deal negotiations. Can you expand a little bit on that?

Matthew Fell (CBI): Many countries around the world have told us that that is quite important when they have negotiated trade agreements with other countries around the world. That is something they expect to be part of that overall trade negotiation. We have heard from India, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. They have all publicly said that if they are looking to strike trade agreements with the UK, ideally they would like to include migration as part of those talks on a future trade deal. When you look around the world and other trade agreements, it is frequently part of those discussions and part of the final deal and our sense was that, if, rightly, we want to seek to strike the most ambitious trade deals in many parts of the world, this is something that should be part of those conversations...

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