Events

Can Labour Get Immigration Right? Event report

Our Labour conference fringe ‘Can Labour Get Immigration Right?’ was well timed, coming the morning after Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has addressed conference delegates. The Independent’s Home Affairs Correspondent Holly Bancroft chaired a panel comprising Olivia Bailey MP, Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee; Emily Graham of the Future Governance Forum, who co-hosted the event; and British Future’s Sunder Katwala.

Mahmood’s speech had struck a quite different tone to that of last year. Its focus was on fairness – and while the Home Secretary stressed that “there is nothing fair about a lack of control at our borders,” she balanced this by adding that it is also unfair when people in need of refugee protection in the UK can’t find a safe and legal route to get here. The meat of the speech was the introduction of new safe routes to claim asylum in Britain, through community and student sponsorship and by reopening the resettlement scheme. Mahmood also hinted that her much-criticised reforms to settlement rights in the UK – which could see some people waiting 20 years for status – were likely to be revised.

These two topics – asylum and small boats and settlement – were the focus of discussion before a full audience.

“People want control but they also want fairness and compassion to people who need to claim asylum,” Olivia Bailey said.

Emily Graham suggested agreed this was right, but argued that the government had often got the sequencing wrong – saying “we’ll do the control first and then you can have the compassion.”

Policy needed to combine the two simultaneously, she said. The ‘one in one out’ asylum deal with France, she argued, has the right principles but needs to be at a much bigger scale if it is to be effective. The UK and France should extend and expand the asylum deal, which expires shortly.  FGF has published a new paper on this, called ‘Rethinking migration’.

Sunder agreed, saying that on small boats and the deal with France, what’s needed is a safe route that’s more attractive and viable than paying a smuggler to bring you in a dinghy – with a strong chance you’ll be returned if you don’t choose it. That requires delivery at scale.

On settlement, Sunder said that the settlement changes started as a modest proposal in the White Paper, but became quite a radical proposal, making some people wait 10, 15 or 20 years.

Changes to visa thresholds coming soon mean that most people told to wait 15 years for settlement won’t be able to, as they don’t earn enough, he added. So Labour effectively has a ‘Remigration by stealth’ proposal affecting a million people.

The government does look likely to rethink settlement reforms, he added, but it would be wrong only to apply changes to care workers. What about the chefs, vets and engineers earning less than £50k? Are they all going to be deported?

Emily observed that we could see a carve-out for care workers after trade union pressure. But she added that the unions represent lots of other workers too – and thousands of people responded to the govt consultation, arguing the settlement reforms are unfair.

Olivia Bailey, meanwhile, expressed concern about the impact of settlement changes on children and the prospect of them being uprooted and sent to a country they have never previously set foot in. The government needs to look at what changes are needed to make the settlement reforms fair, she said

Asked if the government would not be better to simply scrap the reforms altogether, Sunder expressed his hope that the government will end up offering settlement for all of those currently on a pathway to settlement in 5 or 10 years to make sure there were fair rules for everybody.