"Migrant Mess": UK MPs Clash Over Record Migration Numbers

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]Uh there's been too much immigration into this country for too long and that is certainly the view of the vast majority of the people I speak to in my constituency and I suspect a widespread view amongst law-abiding patriotic Britons from all kinds of backgrounds.

[00:00:21]Three myths have been perpetuated to sustain the level of immigration which we've endured. The first is that it's necessary for our economy, that we need labor. What migration has actually done is to displace investment in domestic skills to perpetuate a laborintensive economy at a time that we should have been automating and taking out labor demand. and to feed the greed of those employers who rather than paying a decent wage for employees that understood their rights were happy to take cheap labor. Those have been the effect of the arguments about the economy. The second myth has been about multiculturalism.

[00:01:11]this curious notion that we can absorb all kinds of people into our country without a shared sense of belonging, without a common sense of what being British was all about. And these coexisting subcultures would somehow cohhere. In fact, as Trevor Phillips argued long ago, himself of course the child of migrants, what we've ended up with is the ghettoization of large parts. his words, not mine. Uh, large parts of our country with coexisting subcultures without those bonds which bind them together in that shared sense I've described.

[00:01:54]The third myth is that migration would not have a detrimental effect on some of our public services. Imagine, just imagine the figures for a moment. I'm speaking now of legal migration.

[00:02:09]Between April 2022 and March 2023, the number of people entering Britain was 944,000.

[00:02:20]944,000 people extra in a year. And yet when we debate housing, when we debate transport infrastructure, when we debate health service, the availability of dentists and GPS, we never consider the effect that population growth at that scale has on the demand for all of those services.

[00:02:41]Of course, >> would my right honorable friend give >> I will happily give way.

[00:02:44]>> I thank my right honorable friend for giving Mayway. He's making an extremely eloquent, sweet speech. And of course we understand that the more people come into our country the pressures on our public services will be exacerbated. The numbers he quoted are post Brexit under his former government. Before Brexit the net migration if I remember correctly and I I I apologize I forget this wrong was around quarter of a million people coming to our country most skilled labor or or or for specific work. After Brexit, the Europeans had to return. We ended up allowing thousands of people to work in our care sector, in our in our NHS, and in our um services uh uh industries that that were lacking that had too many vacancies. So, how does he explain the policies of his government that led from quarter of a million net migration to 900 plus thousand and what would he do differently today?

[00:03:38]>> Well, the honorable of course is right.

[00:03:41]This is not uh this the blame for all of this should not be laid exclusively the hands uh of the of the Labor party or Labor governments. Successive governments have uh administered a regime which has been out of tune with the sentiments of the vast majority of the population who know what I've said is true. Uh and he's right to say too that those successive governments have allowed unsustainable levels of net migration. If you look at the history however it was quite different in 1987 sorry 1967 net migration was minus 84,000 1987 net migration was just 2,000 in 1997 it was 48,000 is in my time in this house although I hasten to add not at my behest strength that migration has soared And we have begun to accept that hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people can be added to our population without taking account of the fact that that brings additional pressure on public service.

[00:04:50]Now not to say that many of those people don't make a positive contribution to our country. Of course they do uh in all kinds of ways. But simply in terms of the growth in demand of for example housing to ignore these facts is a dereliction of duty which parties which politicians across the political spectrum are guilty of. I give way again.

[00:05:15]>> Thank the honorable member for giving away. Would you agree with me just on the issue of population change? uh it it would appear that in the past 25 years the population of the United Kingdom has increased by over 10 million while our economy has been largely stagnant. So do mo does he not agree with me that most people agree there's a distinct difference between those who come from across the world to contribute to our society to pay their taxes to help the NHS and work like that and a distinction between them and those who come illegally and that's a distinction that is often lost in this debate.

[00:05:50]Well, illegal migration of course is of different order. Illegal immigration is about breaching borders. A nation means very little unless it has territorial integrity. What is the purpose of a nation uh which has poorest borders?

[00:06:06]Indeed, it barely deserves the the to be described as such. And he's right to say that the way that our bord has been breached with impunity over time. And bear in mind that nine out of 10 of those people who arrive in dingies are men and 75% are under the age of 40.

[00:06:24]Let's be clear about who's coming and what purpose. Many are economic migrants. And frankly, given where they come from, if you came from those places, you might come too because you see a better life here and you want that life your family. I don't criticize the individuals. I criticize a system that permits that level of illegal migration.

[00:06:49]But legal migration matters too because of its scale and its character. It has led to a change in our society, a pace which many people find it impossible to comprehend still less to cope with. So it's time that the political establishment populated it is by the liberal bourgeoisi faced up not the honorable not the honorable gentleman of I accept him from that general description. uh face up to the fact that what they have perpetuated for too long is at odds with both the intuition, the experience and the will of the British people. We need to cut migration of all kinds and we need to cut it now or we will be will or they will dispense with us >> and elect people who will.

[00:07:40]>> I'm sure the minister is glad to have a friendly face in this debate. So it's a particular pleasure to open and to congratulate the member for Perth and Kin Roshshire in skewing it. I agree entirely >> I agree entirely with what what he said about the timeliness of the debate that's happened and it's been a very broad-ranging one. So Mr. Stringer I'll make a few observations on the debate and then finish with some questions which I hope the minister might address in his summing up. It's very clear that there is a degree of commonality between the official opposition and the government on many of the measures which are being brought forward and as the leader of the opposition said very clearly the government will have our support in implementing them should they run into any difficulties in that respect. But it is also clear that many of the challenges around asylum and migration like many of the challenges that face our government our country more generally are getting worse and the situation is deteriorating. I know for many years my own uh entry into this area of work came because as a local authority counselor I saw the consequence for communities of very large numbers of asylum seekers arriving and indeed to this day my constituency has in the Hillington part the highest per capita level of asylum seekers of any local authority area in the country with more than 100 different first languages. So diversity and dealing with these issues at a local level is something with which I and my constituents are extremely familiar and over those years we've had many debates and I'll touch on this in my questions to the minister about how we ensure a fair and appropriate uh dispersal of those asylum seekers in particular across the country. I know the member for Perth and Kin Roshshire is now hosting some asylum seekers dispersed into his constituency. But for many decades we saw for example local authorities in Scotland demanding a more liberal approach to our borders in respect of asylum seekers but absolutely refusing to be dispersal areas for those people when they were here. And when the 31 mostly conservative authorities in the southeast of England volunteered to become asylum dispersal areas, that plea fell on deaf ears north of the border.

[00:09:53]So it's clear that no party has any monopoly on practical compassion when it comes to the support for those who seek refuge in our country. And indeed, I think we can thank the member for Brainree, now my shadow secretary of state, for the actions that he took during his time as our home secretary for the significant fall in net migration into this country, which uh this government I know has seen as a benefit. But as the member for Mid Bedfordshire outlined in reference to his report, there remain significant concerns about how we have the appropriate package uh of measures in place to ensure that our borders are robustly and consistently controlled.

[00:10:37]And we need to make sure that these debates are happening because one thing that is very clear and most of us I would expect as politicians canvasing will have heard it. Our voters tend to be very positive about all of the migrants that they personally know.

[00:10:50]They're like the ones that run the local shop and the ones that work in the GP practice and the ones that drive the bus and the ones that are their next door neighbors. It's all the others that they are worried about. So there's a big job of work about demystification. I think when we saw in the previous government when we as conservatives took the decision to open the door to large numbers of refugees from Hong Kong, people who were traditionally associated with our country and had a right to be here under that scheme. that that was something which gained very widespread public acceptance. The same was true of the Ukraine refugee scheme. So we need to make sure that we have really tough measures in place around illegal migration and an appropriate and compassionate response to those we see in need. I'll give way briefly.

[00:11:33]>> My right honorable friend for giving way just going back towards backdoor migration. Would my right honorable friend agree with me that the findings um of of our our our friend here? They were issues under his government and that they uh been inherited by the Labor government and not created by them. So would he like to explain why the previous government allowed these backdoor routes to exist and why didn't they take action to stop them when they were in power?

[00:12:03]>> Mr. Stringer, the member for Woking said very clearly about the issues of the absence of certain members from certain parties from this chamber. I think for those colleagues who we saw scuttling off to reform, they have serious questions to answer about why when given free reign in the home office, they failed to implement even the measures which this Labor government has brought forward to address some of the loopholes which my honorable friend highlights. And the member for South Holland, the right honorable member for South Holland, the deepings described in particular some of the characteristics of illegal migration. I've been to Cali.

[00:12:35]I've seen the footage gathered by the French police. I've seen the drone footage. I've seen the boats on the beach. I've seen the camps that have been set up by the traffickers bringing people over. And it is very clear that we should be robust and extremely cautious because I've watched the footage where the people in the boats seeing the police approach pick up the children and throw them in the sea knowing that the police will have to rescue them rather than stop the migrant boat. So we should make no apology for taking robust action to address those specific concerns. I'll give >> does he also um um share my concern? I think he probably does that the French police in many occasions just seem to sit back and do nothing and and let let the whole process go ahead. Uh this seems to uh pose the question whether the Labor Party's uh agreement with the the French government actually means anything at all.

[00:13:33]>> Mr. Stringer, I don't entirely share that view. I've seen the challenges that the French police have. There are something like a thousand in their constabularary covering 10,000 kilometers of coastline. And the traffickers knowing this will sometimes send 50 or 100 boats to sea simultaneously knowing that there is no way that the French police can possibly deter that. And knowing that each of those boats is worth 70 to 80,000 euros worth of revenue to their criminal enterprise, they have a big incentive to to challenge that. So uh Mr. Stringer, moving towards some conclusions. The minister is here in an honorable tradition uh of labor governments taking robust action on our borders. The first immigration controls that our country ever had were introduced by the post-war Labor government in response to concerns about the exit from Empire. No recourse to public funds. The first time that immigrants were taken or asylum seekers were taken out of the standard benefit system and eligibility for council housing was introduced by the Blair government. The asylum dispersal system was introduced by the now mayor of Greater Manchester when he was the immigration minister in those years and today we are on this side of the chamber broadly supportive of the measures on that Danish model that are being brought forward by this home secretary. But we remain very concerned as the members for South Holland, the Deepings and Mid Bedford have highlighted that many of these measures will still fall short that the concerns that our residents, our constituents have will remain in place. So in the spirit of a constructive approach firstly may I ask the minister has he given any further consideration to the idea of an asylum visa going beyond the simple prospect of safe and legal routes but just as we do if you wish to study or work come to get married and live in the United Kingdom for any other reason you have to apply for a visa we do not have any such measures in place for asylum seekers and that is helping to drive the illegal traffic across the channel. What discussions is he having across government about avoiding cost shunts that we know are an increasing concern as a consequence of speeding up asylum decision-making? In particular, a rapid rise in the cost of temporary accommodation to local authorities as asylum seekers get status and turn up at the town hall seeking help or are left destitute in local communities. What consideration will he give to using the protocol 16 of the European uh convention on human rights? because they are clear that the UK tribunals go well beyond the provisions of that protocol in many cases so that we can ensure that we are not doing more than we should be doing. But with all of these I can assure him that we will as the official opposition be providing support in the lobbies to ensure these measures are uh implemented even if we remain of the view that they should go further.

[00:16:26]Thank you.