Net Migration Figures

Question

Where is the Home Secretary? Net migration figures are now three times their level at the 2019 election. The immigration system needs to be properly controlled and managed so that it is fair, effective, and linked to the economy.

Question

My right hon. Friend has my full support in taking this issue seriously. At the weekend, the Prime Minister said that migration was “too high” and needs to come down to more sustainable levels. Are Cabinet members who sit with my right hon. Friend full-fat, semi-skimmed or skimmed?

Question

On behalf of the SNP, I thank those people who have come to make their home here and contribute to our universities, public services and health and care sector. Have the Government thought this through? Who will carry out the vital tasks if they pull up the drawbridge?

Question

The figures are unsustainably high, but to put them in context, they also include 200,000 Ukrainians and 150,000 Hong Kong citizens. I wonder if those are included in the “something must be done-ism” from the Opposition. Can my right hon. Friend explain why 135,000 visas were granted to dependants last year, up from 19,000 just three years ago, and around 100,000 visas were granted to Chinese students, up 87% over the past 10 years? He mentioned care worker scandals and the 78,000 visas to care workers. Is it true that some visas have been granted to care workers to work in care homes that do not exist?

Question

Although today we are discussing one single set of net migration figures, we know that net migration has hugely varying impacts in regions and communities. We also know that the most skilled migrants flow disproportionately towards London and the south-east. Has the Minister given any thought to developing a more regionalised approach to immigration, to ensure that communities across the country benefit evenly and fairly from it?

Question

Does the Minister recognise that many myths about immigration are perpetuated by the unholy alliance of greedy globalist corporate businesses and guilt-ridden bourgeois liberals? One of them is that immigrants bring only economic benefit and no cost. In practice, dependants of the kind he described bring more economic costs than benefits, so will the Minister immediately introduce measures to restrict the number of dependants who can come here?

Question

The Government had a commitment in 2019 to deal with immigration. I have a simple question: why has it taken four years for them to recognise that they need a plan? Social care relies on workers from abroad, because there is no strategy in place for workforce, training or funding.

Question

People in Ashfield have had enough of this. There are 7,000 people on the council house waiting list. People are struggling to get a GP or dental appointment and are struggling to get school places. Is it not about time that we had a cap on migration?

Question

Instead of sitting in Whitehall and trying to persuade people that this is some sort of threat to them, why does the Minister not get out and talk to the businesses in communities such as mine that are crippled by labour shortages? He first promised me a meeting to talk about the issue of visas for deck hands in the fishing industry.

Question

The Minister will know that some of us have been banging on about this ever since he took office, saying that we should increase the level of work visas to average UK earnings. We have not done that because Ministers are worried that the care home sector will fall over.

Question

The increase in net migration has been fuelled by an increase in health and care visas last year of around 150%. I want to bring the Minister back to the central question. I am sure he shares Labour’s ambition to upskill the workforce here, but the central question is why the funding for the new social care workforce pathway was halved earlier this year.

Question

Does the Minister agree that Labour Members' recent stance on controlled migration is opportunistic and does not reflect their past positions supporting open borders?

Question

Should international students be excluded from net migration numbers to better align with competitors like the United States?

Question

Will the Government publish its plan before Christmas and include salary threshold increases?

Question

Are high visa fees preventing healthcare professionals from filling critical positions in hospitals?

Question

Can the Government control immigration from communist China to address security concerns?

Question

Why does the Home Office not disclose profit margins for asylum seeker accommodation providers and why should unemployment rights be lifted?

Question

Do care worker visas displace British workers and hinder improvements in pay and conditions?

Question

Why should the public believe the Government will deliver on reducing net migration after 13 years of broken promises?

Question

When can constituents expect to see a drop in migration numbers?

Question

Does the Minister regret the impact of fearmongering on communities and should he welcome those contributing to society?

Question

My right hon. Friend is working on many policies to try to solve the problem, but he will be aware that the performance of the Home Office in processing all kinds of applications has been chronically poor. Can he update us on the actions that are being taken, and on the direction in which he hopes efficiencies may be moving when it comes to processing the policies that he wants to put in place?

Question

Can the Minister explain to the musicians in Glasgow North who can no longer afford to travel to Europe, the academics in Glasgow North who have lost so many opportunities to collaborate across borders, and the hospitality and care sector venues that are crying out for staff why he thinks that the end of freedom of movement has been such a good thing?

Question

Can my right hon. Friend and perhaps the Home Secretary, who is present, tell me whether they share my concern about the fact that an increasing amount of questionable European Court of Human Rights case law, via judgments, is actually being drafted by foreign non-governmental organisations—unaccountable—and foreign judges—often unqualified—many of whom have close links with NGOs? I should like an answer to this, please.

Question

Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Guinea and Chad: five coups in three years in sub-Saharan Africa and the Sahel. What more can the Government do to work across Government in order to reduce the number of failing states becoming a situation in which Islamic State, the Wagner Group and other terrorist organisations use push factors and illegal migration into Europe as a weapon of war?

Question

It is quite clear that my right hon. Friend gets it on net migration. It is a shame that many people do not get it. In 2019, I stood on a manifesto when net migration was around 220,000 and I promised my constituents that it would come down. Last year the figure was 740,000. This year it was 650,000. This is a truly shocking state of affairs. The disconnect between where most of the public are on migration and the reality is growing and growing. Does the Minister agree that this growth in the disconnect has become an affront to our shared democracy and that urgent, radical action is needed now?

Question

I would like to thank the Minister for all the hard work he has done while he has been in his place, because I know how much he has done and how he has worked with colleagues here to make sure that he can drive this initiative through. It is absolutely the truth that the vast majority of people in this country want to see both the legal and illegal migration figures go down, and near to zero in the case of illegal migration. Does he agree that we have seen from the Opposition today that their plan is not really to affect any figures, which is to prevent democracy from happening, but also to tinker around the edges and reclassify people to pretend that they can solve immigration when actually what they are going to do is just tell a few untruths, perhaps?

Question

The UK has been an extremely open and welcoming country, but I think most people can see that even the most basic maths shows that numbers in the hundreds of thousands are not sustainable and cannot continue. This is having an unbearable impact on our housing, on our public services and particularly on schools. In schools in Stoke-on-Trent, some of the classrooms have nearly every single child speaking a different first language, which is having a massive impact on those schools without any additional funding. Can my right hon. Friend ensure that we take urgent action now to address these serious issues?

Question

Time and time again, the British public have told us that immigration is too high and needs to come down, and time and time again we have sadly left them bitterly disappointed. The levels of net migration we have seen over recent years are completely unsustainable, have no democratic mandate whatsoever and are completely unacceptable. Surely it is time to put this House and MPs in charge of the issue and to set legally binding caps on the numbers of migrants and asylum seekers. That might finally be a net zero policy I can support.