On Tuesday I had a conversation with Mr Brokenshire following his letter to me. He came over as a someone seriously trying to grapple with a genuinely difficult set of problems. I have no doubt he wants to deliver the Prime Minister’s promise of getting net migration down to tens of thousands, and is pushing his officials to come up with ways of limiting the numbers of people coming in under various regulations. He answered my points intelligently and explained the legal constraints that affect it. I am also quite sure that Mr Cameron himself knows the importance of the promise he made and wants the Home Office to deliver for the government.
I reject the views of those who have written in suggesting there is a tri partisan conspiracy between Labour, Lib Dems and Conservatives to ensure migration levels remain high. Labour did change the rules and did allow and want higher inward migration. Conservatives are trying to change the rules to reverse that policy and get back to nearer the levels of migration that we experienced prior to 1997 under a Conservative policy, when a net 50,000 a year was more normal. Labour multiplied the rate by five.
We do need to ask why is it proving so difficult, and what else does the government have to do to achieve its objective. Of course I understand the frustrations of some that the promise has not been delivered. Ministers are not all powerful, and live under the law like everyone else. At the root of this problem is just how far can Ministers exercise their unique power (with Parliament) to change the law? How many European constraints are there and can they be changed?
The first thing is to defend the current arrangement of having our main border with France in Calais. It would make no sense to bring all those would be economic migrants and asylum seekers to the UK, offering them false hope by so doing. Ministers have been right to work with the French government to strengthen that arrangement.
The second thing is to send people back promptly who do arrive here as economic migrants but who do not qualify under our schemes to let in students and suitably qualified workers. The Minister agrees, but says the UK courts and legal system often intervenes to delay sending people back. It should be easiest to ask people to leave at the port of arrival, but the legal requirements seem to get in the way of making a quick decision there and then. This needs to be tackled in UK legislation to the extent that we have the power to do so.
The third thing is to become better at tracking down and removing illegal stayers in the UK. That will be the point of the stronger legislation the Minister is proposing. All of us have to help enforce the law, by not letting illegal migrants get jobs, school places, rent homes, drive cars and have bank accounts. The idea behind the new checks on access to these facilities is to give the authorities more chance of discovering an illegal migrant and arranging for them to leave.
There are three major problems with enforcing a clear and simple UK law on these matters. The first is the European Court of human rights. The second is freedom of movement within the EU. The third is the workings of the UN Convention.
The government has pledged to tackle the human rights requirements. If the UK Parliament debates and votes to amend the law, that should be sufficient legal and moral guarantee of reasonable law without it being judged again in the ECHR. The original ECHR was designed to stop military dictatorships or other authoritarian regimes from abusing people, not to stop democratic societies deciding who they welcome to their table.
The government is currently engaged in negotiating a new relationship with the EU. They would be wise to make gaining control over our borders a leading priority, as they need to show the UK voters that after renegotiation they will be able to deliver their migration promise. Leaving the EU would certainly make controlling our borders much easier. The worry today is that any country in the EU can welcome in migrants of various kinds and then grant them the right to come to the UK under free movement.
The UN Convention on refugees should allow sensible rules, as it did before 1997. The UK should do its bit and take some refugees, but should have the Parliamentary power to decide how many and how their safe passage here can best be handled. Parliament needs to send clear directions to our judges, without foreign laws and courts changing the policy.
August 27, 2015
Good morning.
The immigration problem is, as I have said here and elsewhere, a hydra of a problem. No sooner do you think you have cracked one immigrationb problem then another turns up. So Mr Brokenshire MP has my sympathy.
And this to me is the nub of the problem. We have NEVER had a proper debate about immigration – EVER !! Under Labour who let the flood gates open, anyone who wanted to talk about MASS immigration was lableled a racist, bigot or xenophobe. They just did not want to talk about it.
It is not where you come from that is the issue, but how many can be reasonable accomodated in such a small island such as ours. Its not about space, it’s about resources, clean water and sanitation being vital.
The UK government can do more. It can send back EU migrants who do not work. It can send back non-EU migrants and it can make it conditional that people (non-EU) who wish to come to the UK must be above a certain age, fit and healthy and without a criminal record.
We also need to look at the welfare that we give to new arrivals. Why are we giving failed assylum seekers money ? Stop that one for a start.
August 27, 2015
It is indeed a multi-headed problem, requiring a multi-faceted solution:
Preventing entry, by properly screening incoming vehicles at the likes of Calais; close services to any port not properly secured.
Immediately return illegal entrants: anyone caught emerging from this end of the Tunnel, for example, should simply be taken back through it immediately and deposited back in France. Any legal case or asylum claim can then be filed from that end, if they want, but must not delay removal.
Immediate repatriation of failed applicants: if their country is safe to return to, there is no reason to delay sending them there.
Also, hold the carriers and countries responsible for these costs. Is Eurotunnel being fined for every illegal entrant coming through the tunnel, for example? Deduct an appropriate amount from any aid payments going to each person’s country of origin (and count all migrant/refugee costs against DfID’s absurd spending target, until we can see sense and repeal it!). Where problems are particularly severe, prohibit the operation of flights and other such services betweeen the UK and those countries.
I mostly applaud recent moves regarding landlords; I hope we have a nice clear way for people to verify immigration status, though. If I were to rent a room to somebody, what document should I require? Not every British national has a passport, and of course a birth certificate is no proof of ID, so what should I check?
August 27, 2015
“…. anyone who wanted to talk about MASS immigration was lableled a racist, bigot or xenophobe. They just did not want to talk about it.”
That is still the case today .
The main parties and the media have succeeded in categorising UKIP as “Far Right” .
The only real difference between the parties that that when Mandelson was Prime Minister he specifically told Labour MP’s not to target the sort of people who would benefit the country .
Instead he told them to “send out search parties” (for losers and layabouts and promise them they wouldn’t have to work but would get houses and the party will never end so long as they keep voting Labour ) .
August 28, 2015
ADS,
That’s why the voting public went for the lesser of three evils, the ones with the best chance of stopping the loonie left, of which Emperor Mandelson was an integral part.
Some of us will never trust his kind, ever! Labour have got to go some to put that right.
Tad
August 27, 2015
You’re not living in an inner city swamped by immigration then. You are not in a line of work swamped by legal immigrants. You are not struggling to get your children into half decent school. You in summary are not feeling the pain the way the real people are. Really try walking around Bradford, Slough, Coventry, any large IT site, if need be with so.someone like me who can show you what’s really going on. You are a nice guy but if even you can take this line it does show how much trouble we are in.
August 27, 2015
We are living in an inner city where due to immigration the standards at the local primary and secondary has gone up hugely because we now have parents and pupils who entirely understand the value of education and homework and who work diligently and do the homework and are first at the school gates in the morning.
These kids are not the ones loafing around the park after school eating crisps and smoking American tobacco cigarettes because the parents are at work and/or don’t care about the welfare of their kids. There is an anti education belief amongst some sections of British society in contrast to the majority of immigrant culture.
August 27, 2015
Have you thought that a lot of English have “given up” on caring? They see time and time again where immigrants are put up the housing queue despite having got here only recently. They see English people being turned down for benefits, despite years of contributions, but immigrants handed hundreds a week just for driving here, registering for a NI number, claiming for kids who we have no proof they exist, then driving back to their country to see how the English benefits funded house renovation is going. They see having to wait in a queue for hospital/doc appointments, because thousands of people who haven’t paid a penny have turned up with god knows how many relatives for their “entitlement” of free NHS.
When a country’s own govt keeps blatantly kicking it’s own people, while supplying anyone who turns up, with free lives – then eventually our own people stop caring.
August 27, 2015
No I think this happened a long time ago way before current levels of immigration. I think this country has always had a very poor education system except for the top 5 per cent. The grammar schools of course propelled whole generations forward but the remainder were left behind. My father left school at 14 and it was only the RAF who educated him and made him the man he was. If I could change one thing about the UK it would be the education system and to have a government of whatever hue which genuinely wanted all the people educated. Those who govern us must be hugging themselves with delight to see some of the people turning against each other and blaming others rather than having to face the real issues of an inadequate education system.
August 27, 2015
Yulwaymartyn , bigneil
I don’t think your posts mutually exclusive .
There is definitely very unpleasant behaviour on the part of the political class to put Briton’s down .
Hopefully we’ll one day be able to (sort them out ed)
August 27, 2015
“I think this country has always had a very poor education system except for the top 5 per cent.”
The grammar schools selected the top 20% in the ability range with a margin of error; the better public schools probably educated another 5%. On top of that, some local authorities actually provided the technical schools which were mandated by law, and many secondary modern schools equiped their pupils with basic literacy and numeracy. The old A level was about two years above what passes for A level now and the Russell group universities already existed and larger conurbations had technical colleges or polytechnics. I would be very surprised if the education system in the bad old days was not signficantly better than now before cultural marxist concepts were used to pervert it.
August 28, 2015
‘ I think this country has always had a very poor education system except for the top 5 per cent.’
Perhaps then, state schools should be run on the same lines as a public school with the same emphasis on good behaviour and self-discipline.
I recall even George Galloway saying of Labour’s ‘Education, education education’ mantra that they didn’t get a lot for their money.
The people of the UK have been appallingly badly let down, but not just by Labour. Tory MPs have often squawked about trendy leftie methods and a lack of discipline in the classroom – then for Christ’s sake get off their backsides and sort it!
Churchill would have said, ‘Action this day’, not grumble and procrastinate for three decades.
Tad
August 27, 2015
Don’t worry, I expect that once they’ve been through our state education system most of the children of those immigrants will be dragged down to a similar level to most of the children of the indigenous population.
A poor, degraded state education system, which is routinely defended by the same left liberal types who defend mass immigration as a corrective.
I’m not going to give any details, but I’ve actually seen it happen.
August 27, 2015
The evidence suggests that if the home is supportive of education then most children will do well in spite of circumstance. In short if the lessons in the classroom are repeated at home and supported the child generally will prosper. Many parents fail to provide this from one generation to the next. The issue is cultural. I see it every day and I can give plenty of details. The irony is immigration is seen by the ruling elite as a cheaper and easier option than actually educating all the people.
August 27, 2015
You are correct but funding makes a difference. Immigrants attract funding as part of the formula which means schools with high levels of immigration are able to give more one to one or small group coaching. This in turn turns out more productive students.
August 28, 2015
What a load of cods. Children dragged down , abused and yes used and put down by the system think it is their performance and a self fulfilling prophecy follows. This argument is put into place by those who don’t want or can’t pay for their children. Turn your so called evidence around and the better performances are in fee paying schools.
August 28, 2015
All of our three kids could read and write before they went to state school, but then my wife and I took the time to teach them, knowing that it would be a huge advantage.
When our youngest started school, she was just bundled into a corner with a book and told to read until the others caught up, which of course never happened because she was always streets ahead having that essential start. But she never received the close attention at school that others had. She only got that at home, and that is a deplorable situation.
As far as my wife and I are concerned, Labour failed badly on education. I agree with Blair in one way though, you could tell even at an early age when a kid was likely to do badly and perhaps even become a criminal later on. They came from a trash family that couldn’t care less, whose parents had more kids when they felt like it as a means to more benefits, and who left every responsible decision to the nanny state. Proof that socialism doesn’t work!
Tad
August 27, 2015
That is no justification for the present levels of immigration.
I’m sure there is an anti education belief amongst some sections of British society (although I doubt that all immigrants are immune, as you seem to imply) and it needs to be fixed. However, the suggestion that race replacement is the answer is immoral and obnoxious, in my opinion.
August 27, 2015
Yulwaymartyn
Hold on !! You told us you were now living in Spain, and before that you told us you were living in Camden. How many houses do you own ? Is this fair for a socialist?
August 27, 2015
I have lived in Spain and Camden. Not now though. And as you know you and I lived in the same region of the UK for a significant period. I never owned a house in any of those areas. Is that OK?
August 28, 2015
yulwaymartyn
Yes of course thats OK, just checking. So where is your new inner city gaff ?
I ask as I’m interested where all the British kids that lounge around smoking and eating crisps have now gone?
August 27, 2015
He is NOT a Socialist, he is a Liberal Progressive. A man with a Common Purpose in life.
August 27, 2015
Yulwaymartin – “We are living in an inner city where due to immigration the standards at the local primary and secondary has gone up hugely…”
Well that’s fine – so long as you can get your kid into a local school at all these days ! (One suspects you’re not a person faced with this problem)
For the past fifty years or so there has been a grand cleansing of conscience by the middle classes. Something to do with leftist teachings about the Empire – hard hitting TV series such as Roots. This guilt has been assuaged not through atonement by the middle classes themselves but through the sacrifices of their working class whipping boys.
There is something almost smug and sanctimonious about your comment.
I heard someone at work (in defence of mass immigration) say “We need to be kicking our own trash out.”
But that isn’t the world we’re in. We don’t ‘kick our trash out’. It becomes a growing problem.
Yours is not the solution.
August 27, 2015
@yulaway
I think the extra £2500 (over 50% increase) per English as a second language and low idacii score unit (for that is how pupils are funded) that each of these immigrant pupils attract has more to do with it personally.
Even in the lowest performing schools cash makes a difference which is why the early academies were so productive. Now they all get the same cash the new converters are failing in the same numbers as the old maintained schools.
The extra cash that those immigrant pupils attract comes from the indigenous pot. That pot has been guaranteed at the same per pupil level by the Conservatives but more immigrants means lower per pupil standard funding. Ergo immigrants are a drain on the indigenous population.
I can do the same equation for housing, wages, health and law and order if you like.
August 27, 2015
@Yulaway
Also how many immigrants do you have staying in your house? Or do you just expect the rest of us to share the burden that you would have the population put under?
August 27, 2015
Germany is expecting 800,000 refugees this year.
How many are we taking in? 10,000?
Surely we should be doing more to help those refugees fleeing war zones? Shouldn’t we also be helping our European neighbours that such as Greece and Italy that are struggling to process the influx of people.
Our immigration “problem” pales into insignificance compared to many other countries in Europe.
Reply We are taking 600,000 people in various categories each year.
August 27, 2015
Reply to reply,
In today’s Telegraph it is reported that the latest figure for immigration is 800,000.
August 27, 2015
The latest figure is 636,000 immigrants in the year to March, of whom 83,000 are returning British, 269,000 from the EU and 284,000 from elsewhere. Net migration is 330,000,with 49,000 British emigrants, 183,000 from the EU and 196,000 from elsewhere.
August 27, 2015
Thanks for quoting the figures from the Office of National Statistics
one.gov.uk See migration, and other related topics within the”migration” headline.
Surprising that journalists at the DT cannot do such a simple task?
August 27, 2015
If they will admit to 269,000 + 284,000 , the true figures must be close to a million .
My satnav hasn’t updated it’s maps for a 5 years e and consequentially all journeys in the South East take approximately 25% longer now than was estimated 5 years ago .
The whole place is turning into a 3rd world ****hole thanks to our Oxbridge PPE progressive consensus political class .
August 28, 2015
UK citizens returning to their own country are not immigrants and should not be counted in as immigrants.
August 27, 2015
I don’t care how many immigrants the Germans choose to admit. If they wish to hand over their homeland to however many millions of people from other countries on whatever pretexts, millions or tens of millions out of the vast numbers around the world who would prefer not to live in their own countries for various reasons, then that is their affair and nothing to do with us provided they don’t expect to pass any on to us. It would have been far better if the UN had put more effort into reducing population growth in poor countries over past decades rather than now trying to arrange for them to offload their surplus populations onto more developed countries. As I pointed out the other day, when Syria became independent seventy years ago it had a population of about 3 million, now it is more like 27 million notionally and the 3 million actually corresponds just to the number who have fled from Syria to other countries. If there were still only 3 million Syrians, as there were in 1945, then Syria would now be empty.
August 27, 2015
Compare the relative land areas of Germany or France with the UK!
August 27, 2015
Without immigration the German population would be in decline.
August 27, 2015
That is why they want immigrants altho perhaps not as many as might arrive which makes their position different from ours. It is strange that no one at the BBC knows this.
August 27, 2015
Mark: “Without immigration the German population would be in decline.”
With immigration the population of the geographical area called Germany is increasing.
But the German population is declining.
Without abortion on demand the German population would probably be growing.
What we are seeing is the suicide of western European societies. Urged on by the liberal elite
August 28, 2015
“Without abortion on demand the German population would probably be growing.”
That is actually what tipped the balance in the UK as well, but we are not allowed to talk about that.
August 27, 2015
That maybe so .
If the German people decide individually and collectively that the best thing for the future is a smaller population then the political class should accept that collective wisdom .
Until they gain a mandate for increasing the population by immigration , they have no right to do so .
August 27, 2015
“help those refugees fleeing war zones” – -as it seems to be certain groups are always “fleeing war zones” – where do WE go to when the wars, that follow them around, start here?
August 27, 2015
England has a higher population density than India, Pakistan and Japan.
Country = Population /People per sq km
– Bangladesh = 156.0m / 1083
– Taiwan = 23.0m / 639
– South-Korea = 48.5m / 487
– Netherlands = 16.7m / 402
– England = 51.5m / 395 (of which SE England 8.2m 432)
– Rwanda = 10.5m / 398
– India = 1,166m / 354
– Belgium = 10.4m / 341
– Japan = 127.0m / 336
– Sri-Lanka = 21.3m / 324
– Philippines = 97.0m / 323
– Vietnam = 87.0m / 262
– UK = 61.4m / 253
– Germany = 82.3m / 231
– Pakistan =176.0m / 219
– Nepal = 28.5m / 194
– Italy = 58.1m / 193
– North-Korea = 22.6m / 188
– Nigeria = 149.0m / 161
Countries with populations over 10m, 2009 estimates
Sources: ONS, UN, CIA World Factbook
August 27, 2015
The number of immigrants who came to work in Britain last year reached a record high of more than 800,000 as the number of Romanians coming here tripled in just 12 months.
August 27, 2015
Actual numbers in
Population by country of birth and nationality Report, August 2015
on one.gov.uk
August 27, 2015
James Winfield.
Last time I looked at the atlas we are insignificant in size to most other countries within the EU.
Thanks for the nice thought, but a lot of us really believe that we have more than enough problems sorting out what we have got already.
August 27, 2015
Reply to reply – John. You repeatedly divert your readers’ attention to *illegal* immigration.
The real scandal is how much LEGAL immigration the Tory party is willing to accept.
At higher levels than Labour ever did.
August 27, 2015
Cameron has no intention of leaving the EU and has no ability to renegotiate our terms of membership.
So, if we do not leave the EU and do not repeal the ‘human rights bill’ nothing will change.
Eventually so many people will have migrated from ‘poorer’ parts of the world into Europe, that Europe will become an overcrowded hellhole. It’s a recipe for disaster. Ultimately Europe will be destroyed by the alacrity of those who were charged with the responsibility to protect it.
August 27, 2015
636,000 last year alone of which 53,000 were the new accession Countries of Bulgaria and Romania. However as Mr Farage points out 192,000 new National Insurance figures were given out to Nationals from that Country in the same year. These are the highest figures ever!
Mr Brokenshire needs to get to his desk and stay there until he has a full understanding of the issue and the actions this day that he needs to take to bring this under control. Forget Party loyalties this is a National disaster. If it means we have to leave the EU so be it. If it means we have to declare a state of emergency, so be it. If it means we have to pay and increase our Border controls so be it. Our Country is being invaded and the legacies are incompetent and impotent. UKIP warned the public and we were ridiculed. So when are we getting the documentary entitled “The disaster of Tory rule after 3 months?” It is not my fault I’m one of the 4000,000 who would sort this out.
August 27, 2015
Uncontrolled immigration from poor countries to rich countries is actually the policy of an influential group of the world’s elite – Sir Peter Sutherland for example. They themselves would be entirely immune from the consequences of that of course. I wouldn’t be surprised if many in the British establishment (politicians, civil servants) secretly agree with him.
August 27, 2015
The only surprise would be if they DIDN’T agree with Peter Sutherland on these issues .
They really hate us .
August 27, 2015
Cameron has No ability, nor even an inclination it seems, to negotiate anything other than a choreographed fig leaf or two.
August 27, 2015
“There are three major problems with enforcing a clear and simple UK law on these matters”.
So it’ll be forever and a day before those problems are resolved. The government can babble away as much as it likes but I believe we have lost control of our own country where it seriously matters. Putting it another way..its in the hands of very weak people.
I never expected a Tory government to struggle here.
August 27, 2015
“The UN Convention on refugees should allow sensible rules, as it did before 1997.”
I don’t know why you should pick out the year 1997, JR, given that the profoundly stupid change to the original 1951 Convention, and the only change, was made through the 1967 Protocol:
http://www.unhcr.org/3b66c2aa10.html
“The Convention entered into force on 22 April 1954, and it has been subject to only one amendment in the form of a 1967 Protocol, which removed the geographic and temporal limits of the 1951 Convention.(2) The 1951 Convention, as a post-Second World War instrument, was originally limited in scope to persons fleeing events occurring before 1 January 1951 and within Europe. The 1967 Protocol removed these limitations and thus gave the Convention universal coverage.”
On a quick search I’ve found no contemporary UK legislation to approve that insane Protocol, so I assume that it was deemed to have been tacitly approved after being laid before Parliament for 21 days without any significant objections being raised ,under the old Ponsonby Rule:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldconst/236/23612.htm
It would be easy to blame the Labour government of that period, just as easy as to blame the later Blair government, but I’m fairly confident that if it had been decided that the Protocol should have express approval then the collection of idiots in Parliament at that time would have merrily passed it without any regard for the scope for abuse, or the potentially huge numbers involved, or the increasing ease of global travel.
However there is no reason why present parliamentarians should consider that they and we must be bound by the idiocy of their predecessors in 1967.
Under the terms of both the original Convention and the 1967 Protocol any state which has acceded is free to withdraw with one’s year notice, and the UK government should immediately put in its notice that it is withdrawing from at least the Protocol.
Withdrawal from the original 1951 Convention is not so important because there will now be very few individuals who could claim asylum under its terms.
August 27, 2015
The major problems are the laws and the judges interpretation and stretching of them. But why promise no if no buts, 10s of thousands if Cameron has no intention of sorting these
laws out. Unless that is it was always intended merely to deceive voters as his cast iron promise clearly was.
August 27, 2015
I see that the telegraph is calling for Alan Yentob to resign. Clearly he should but then so should the rest of the BBC management for presiding over a vastly expensive, lefty, greencrap, fake equality pushing, pro EU propaganda machine. Alas Cameron clearly liked it that way or he would never have appointed Lord Patten.
August 27, 2015
See in the Daily Mail we are to be stuck with the BBC TV tax for another ten years at least, can`t this government stand up to anyone?
August 27, 2015
Cameron wants the BBC to be a lefty, green crap, pro EU, pro open door immigration, right on, purveyor of propaganda. Except they do not even purvey, they just tax under threat of menaces and then ram the lefty drivel down people’s throats.
August 27, 2015
LifeLogic.
Well said for example on the Scottish News not a mention of the 4 SNP ministers who have been named by the Daily mail over the T in Park fiasco.
Empress Nick wants more money for Scottish programmes?
What a joke, take out the sport and weather and the bin lorry enquiry they would have nothing to report on.
CMD had better start getting his A into G and start proving that he is actually upto the job.
No more talk, lets have Action Today as the great Churchill would say.
August 27, 2015
In short you think he is a good man trying to do the right things, but powerless to do them. In this case he should demand the powers and resign if not given them. If he is as you suggest a good man that should be his approach.
August 27, 2015
As the conventions and protocols on refugees have been incorporated into EU law you have no control.
It sounds very meally mouthed to bleat about legislation to remove illegals etc
A start would be to enforce existing legislation.
I see the IOD are complaining about trying to restrict immigration having a detriment effect on their bottom line. These are the same clowns who relocate Transit to Turkey with EU assistance and all production to China whilst we subsidise their wage bill
No thought on access to schools and hospitals or the never ending housing shortage.
No more excuses John. Action this day.
August 27, 2015
Actually it seems we have an opt-out from that part of EU law, under PROTOCOL (No 21) “ON THE POSITION OF THE UNITED KINGDOM AND IRELAND IN RESPECT OF THE AREA OF FREEDOM, SECURITY AND JUSTICE” attached to the EU treaties:
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:12012E/TXT
Unless our government has relinquished it.
August 27, 2015
There used to be a convention that parliament couldn’t bind the hands of future parliaments yet that is exactly what has happened with EU law and is why, I’m sure, that many politicians want to keep us in the EU.
August 27, 2015
Indeed , with a political class that is there for a career rather than a vocation, they are happy that the ‘problem’ of setting policy has been off shored to Brussels, and they can concentrate on what their PPE courses prepared them for, that of playing silly little Westminster games and points scoring off each other.
August 27, 2015
Officially Parliamentary sovereignty is still the most important principle of our national constitution:
http://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/parliamentary-sovereignty/
“Parliamentary sovereignty is a principle of the UK constitution. It makes Parliament the supreme legal authority in the UK which can create or end any law. Generally, the courts cannot overrule its legislation and no Parliament can pass laws that future Parliaments cannot change. Parliamentary sovereignty is the most important part of the UK constitution.”
Unfortunately only a small minority of those we elect to Parliament have any firm commitment to the sovereignty of their Parliament, our national Parliament, and there is no prospect of that changing while people keep voting for the candidates of main parties whose leaders do not believe in it.
Reply Parliament is not sovereign and regularly binds its successors all the time we stay in the EU on current terms and fail to amend the EC Act.
August 27, 2015
There is only one real impediment to Parliament amending the ECA72, and that is the attitude of the great majority of its members in both Houses.
August 27, 2015
And the attitude of Cameron and other the BBC think rabble.
August 27, 2015
The Corbyn bubble is already almost at bursting point .
Even so , this government has a transient feeling about it .
I can’t see it lasting until 2020 .
August 27, 2015
I have heard MPs on TV in Parliament, its committees, and read of their academic qualifications and experience. You are certainly nobody’s fools though as politicians you paint one another as groups or individuals into that dunce’s corner from time to time. So I am not lief to flock to the idea that the EU/laws/ migrant problem started but yesterday or even the day before; that it was not deliberated upon and foreseen decades ago.
The question is, besides of course all the meaningful, proper, robust and thorough consideration of “acting within the law” whether MPs feel they will remain in power if they do not stop immigration. Can they win the national lottery every week?
August 27, 2015
Reading the article again made me think just how useless our politicians are
Anything in the public interest is not possible but anything that wastes money is.
We pay billions in aid but can’t afford to control our borders
We can afford billions on HS2 but can’t fill potholes in the road
We can house millions of foreigners but insist we can’t afford to care for elderly.
There is no wonder politicians are classed as lower than snake oil salesmen.
Why can’t Parliament force the release of the Chilcot enquiry.
August 27, 2015
“Why can’t Parliament force the release of the Chilcot enquiry.” – you missed the question mark off the end – tut tut. . . why force the release of something they clearly don’t want released? – – see you Friday for a cuppa if all’s well.
August 27, 2015
Cameron is happy with the delay in Chilcot but also happy to blame others for it. It will come out when politically expedient for him.
August 27, 2015
Unless the media – BBC Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, ITV, social media and several think tanks stop pumping out the pictures of unwanted, wretched people crowding, sometimes armed with knives, into Europe, the electors will get increasingly worried in this country. And, Mr Redwood, we do not want to be asked, at every opportunity – inside Tescos, on the railway platform, at arbitrary stop and check points, as we walk along the pavement – for “Papieren Bitte!!” Or Stop’n’searched. Or knocked up in a surprising dawn raid by black clad riot police armed and intending to ransack our houses.
August 27, 2015
There can be no bigger nonsense than that which we were shown on the TV news last week :
Young male migrants from Africa landing on the beaches of Southern Europe and jubilantly taking selfies with their smartphones !
Thankfully, despite the BBC’s best efforts, the population of the UK can no longer be conned into thinking these people are genuine asylum seekers. The vast majority are economic migrants, pure and simple.
They should be returned to their port of embarkation immediately and not allowed to land in the EU.
August 27, 2015
“… send people back promptly who do arrive here as economic migrants but who do not qualify under our schemes to let in students and suitably qualified workers.”
Once again I suggest that students should not be classified as “immigrants” during their agreed periods of study, but instead as temporary residents for the purposes of study who are almost all expected to leave the country at the end of that period. Only if they are invited to stay on afterwards should they then be classed as “immigrants”.
Moreover I suggest a scheme which runs in direct opposition to the government’s idea that they can get away with using the student route to augment the mass immigration which they really want, notwithstanding any public position to the contrary.
Firstly every country in the world should be ascribed a student quota, that quota being the maximum number of that country’s citizens who can be present in the UK at any time on the grounds that they are studying at a UK institution.
Secondly every country in the world should be informed of an expected return (or at least departure) rate for its citizens who come here to study, which could for example be 95% for a country whose students tend to be of high quality and 99% for a country producing low quality students.
If it is found that the citizens of a particular country are frequently abusing our hospitality by coming here to study for a strictly limited period and then failing to leave at the end of their studies, absent any positive official invitation to remain indefinitely, then the quota for that country is cut.
In some cases that would mean that no more citizens of that country would be allowed to come here with the stated intention of studying until such time as some of those already here had fulfilled their promise that they would leave on completion of their studies.
I know that many of those making their livelihoods by running higher education would protest and claim that they need an open doors policy, but they should not be allowed to determine our immigration policy against the wishes of the electorate.
August 27, 2015
I disagree with your suggestion. Student migration has been a persistent back door round the immigration system. Today’s data reveal that in the year to March just 59,000 overseas students re-emigrated after completing their studies or a further period of staying the UK for work or otherwise. That compares with some 208,000 student immigrants three years previously (to allow for the time spent studying). It remains the case that the vast majority of students stay on after their studies, many of them illegally. It is essential to count them in, and to take more measures to ensure they don’t overstay illegally.
August 27, 2015
Of course it’s been a backdoor for immigration, and my proposal is intended to shut it by laying down that if the citizens of a given country don’t go back home at the end of their studies, bar a small fraction who we would like to keep, then no more “students” will be admitted from that country.
August 27, 2015
Denis
Why are you allowing yourself to be fooled into arguing about illegal immigration ?
Today’s shock figures were about legal immigration.
August 28, 2015
Anonymous, why are you preferring to ignore the fact that there are no limits on the number of “students” who can come here, and only a minority leave at the end of their courses, and the government is not only content with that but facilitates it?
August 28, 2015
Most illegal immigration takes the form of those who come here legally originally, and overstay. Students are a case in point that provides a large element of illegal overstayers.
August 29, 2015
That is why I say that if many of the “students” from a particular country are found to be overstaying then the door should be shut for more “students” as far as that country is concerned, while if those from another country are found to be reliable when it comes to leaving then more can be allowed in. But government policy has been deliberately set to allow and encourage most of them to stay legally, they only need to get a job paying rather less than the average wage and we are then supposed to welcome them with open arms as making a hugely valuable contribution to our society.
August 27, 2015
The elephant in the room of course is that all the time we remain in the EU we cannot control our borders.If Italy and Greece want to grant citizenship to the whole of Africa there is then not a thing we can do to stop them coming to the UK.
Increasing numbers of us can see this but it seems those we elect to govern us are largely in denial.
Your mission Sir should be to see how you can best effect change particularly with the leadership of your own party.
August 27, 2015
The pure and simple truth is that we have to have 100% control over our borders, a strong Border Force with powers to detain and deport immediately, and a quick and efficient asylum system. The ECHR and the EU are preventing this at the minute.
Of course, you get the feeling we will soon be under siege somehow if we implement these things and the rest of Europe doesn’t, but perhaps for once our politicians might lead by example – no doubt the French will follow suit when they see it working.
August 27, 2015
Dave–What a good few people over here would benefit from, as I have, is arriving in America in utmost good faith to work (for three years) at the Head Office of a big American bank, exactly as I had been instructed, and being told on getting off the plane that I could not stay and had to leave the country immediately because I had the wrong Visa (The HR people in Head Office told me the wrong one). Given that I was patently genuine (I worked for the Bank in London) and after the High Command of the Bank had involved themselves I was allowed as a concession to stay one night but was essentially deported the next day. Admittedly I did not have to come back to London (which was good because I had let my flat)–they didn’t much care where I went so long as it was out of America–and I ended up going to Toronto to apply from scratch at the Embassy there where it took me the best part of a week before I was given the necessary Visa and allowed in. I was put in a room with an armed guard initially.
August 27, 2015
Pity there were not a few thousand of you then you could have stayed until paperwork was completed. Large numbers of people are required to scotch any regulations
August 27, 2015
Agreed Calais is better as the first barrier than the UK.
Agreed we need to turn around people quickly at the Port/place of entry.
Agreed when found, illegals should be sent back immediately, no human rights, because any so called right started off with an illegal act.
You should not be able to benefit from criminal activity.
So a simple Act is needed, you do not get the benefit of any human right in this Country, if you broke the law to gain it.
People who have no papers, or who refuse to co-operate with information from where they came, should never be given Refugee status.
Why would anyone who is genuine refugee not want to tell their story.
All people who are making a claim for asylum to be kept in secure accommodation, pending investigation with a time limit before they are automatically returned.
It is simply madness to allow them to roam the streets on the promise to return for a hearing at some future date.
Yes I understand we have to work within the law, but when the law is making it difficult to uphold the spirit of that law, then the law needs to be changed, if the EU is causing a problem with legislation then either sort it or withdraw from that legislation, if lawyers are deliberately using last minute tricks to help their clients avoid the law, then discipline them or strike them off after a number of offences.
The problem you have attempting to stop people working, is that they often present themselves with a National Insurance number and other so called official documents.
Employers are not forgery experts, but in the construction industry people have to be registered with HMRC in order to act as a subcontractor, and the main contractor can contact HMRC to verify that person before engaging for work or payment, if not registered then they are not engaged.
Is this system available for all work, if not why not.
All an employer would need to do under such circumstances would be to check a registration number with HMRC to confirm they are genuine.
As I understand it you only have to be employed for a single day to get a National Insurance Number, which then entitles that person to the riches of our State Benefits System and Health Service.
Why can we not have a two tier National Insurance Registration, the first being a Provisional Number (licence) that only entitles you to work and pay income tax and National insurance for 5 years, before a full National Insurance number is issued.
We issue Provisional Driving licenses, why not a Provisional Insurance number.
It should be so simple, but politicians seem to always want to take the complicated route with gold plated legislation, which is complex to operate and difficult for most to understand, and when it all fails and falls apart, they want to pass the buck onto someone else, usually the employer.
With all of the brains available in Parliament, surely we can make some simple laws to protect our country from infiltration.
If not, then our MP’s are failing in their duty, and the people they represent.
Last but not least stop picking up people at sea, to then transport them an even longer distance into the EU, than simply turning them around by escorting them back from where they came.
August 27, 2015
“With all of the brains available in Parliament, surely we can make some simple laws to protect our country from infiltration.”
The serial incompetence of managing our borders cannot be just a error , it has gone on for too long. Parliament and the Civil Service are stuffed with people with degrees from top universities , yet they cannot muster up the intellect to count people in and out of our country. I am sorry it is just not believable . If Credit Card companies can process 864 billion transactions per day, and get your bill right, then it can’t be beyond the whit of the British establishment to count people in and out of our country from a dozen or so ports of entry and exit .
I believe what we are being asked to accept is a manufactured incompetence for they don’t really want to control our borders. So they pretend to rush around doing this that and the other, occasionally , when needs must, make an announcement about a crack down that never amounts to anything, but meanwhile the flow of migrants remains unhindered, which was the objective all along.
August 27, 2015
Iain
“with all the brains available”
I thought that may get a response, but the fact is many of our politicians are bright, its just that they do not seem to think and act in a simple manner, hence my long list of very simple suggestions.
I would certainly agree with regards to much of your comment, but we have elected who we have elected, so we need to try and work with those we have, until some better people come along. (I exclude our host from my comments)
August 27, 2015
alan jutson: “I thought that may get a response, but the fact is many of our politicians are bright, ..”
9/10 of their intellectual ability is dedicated to milking the expenses system or giving themselves block busting pay rises so they no longer feel the need to
break the lawwork within the rules.The other 1/10? Well we’ll never know that because it’s too heinous to be allowed into the public domain.
August 27, 2015
Precisely. The Establishment doesn’t want to restrict, let alone control immigration.
They want us flooded with foreigners. It will, eventually, break the national Will.
August 27, 2015
“With all of the brains available in Parliament”
I think that you over estimate the situation. There are few there with real intellect, who have done anything significant before entering politics. I wonder how many could write a blog every day of the week covering some topical subject like our host. Most of those in positions of power seem to react to situations rather than being pro-active in anticipating the situation. This is why people are getting so disillusioned with politicians.
August 27, 2015
“The worry today is that any country in the EU can welcome in migrants of various kinds and then grant them the right to come to the UK under free movement.”
Well, our political class has been warned about this for many years but have chosen to go along with a system which means that in effect UK immigration policy is to a large extent determined by the actions of foreign governments in the remoter reaches of the EU.
Whether it’s the old problem of Romania handing out passports to Moldovans, or the more recent problem of Italy providing a free ferry service for Africans into the EU, or the new problem of Greece passing streams of migrants from Syria and elsewhere along to Macedonia and thence to Serbia and on to Hungary, or the Poles allowing in Ukrainians as they are now mooting, or the Greeks allowing in Ukrainians with Greek roots as they are now mooting, potentially once inside the EU they could all end up here.
August 27, 2015
…or,in the case of Italy,handing out passports to descendents of people who left Italy several generations ago – one of the reasons there are so many Brazilians in London;so many that you would be forgiven for thinking it was Italy,not Portugal,that colonized Brazil.
August 27, 2015
No one seems to know of the Spanish law which permits those descendants of Jews who were expelled in 1498 to return to Spain for citizenship. I thought that it also applied also to Muslims but no, they are trying now to be included.
Should we do the same for those we kicked out in the long past?
August 27, 2015
JR,
We need to ask why migrants want to by-pass Greece, Italy, France and Spain and move to the UK. Is it anything to do with a much higher rate of unemployment in these countries? There is always going to be a movement of people from areas of higher unemployment to areas of lower unemployment. It is very difficult to stop that movement if workers have no jobs and need to move to be able to support their families.
If job prospects in the sunnier parts of Europe could be improved then there might even be a significant number of workers wanting to move the other way to swap grey skies for blue ones. There might even be a net outflow of Labour voters which could be welcome to some Conservative MPs too!
Is part of the Govt’s strategy to campaign against the reactionary neo-liberal economic policies imposed by the powers-that-be in the EU?
Reply The government wishes to limit the number of people who can come here to get a job and a home.
August 27, 2015
reply to reply . . “The government wishes to limit the number of people who can come here to get a job and a home. . ” . . . . Wishes to ?????? – – I wish I could win a Euromillions rollover – -in fact I probably have more chance of it than of the govt stopping the invasion, and then rewarding them for turning up.
August 27, 2015
Bigneil,
I’m sure JR is right to say that Mr Borokenshire is ” seriously trying to grapple with a genuinely difficult set of problems.”
and that
” Ministers are not all powerful, and live under the law like everyone else.”
However, we are only treating (if we are treating it at all) the symptoms of wider malaise in the EU rather than the malaise itself. An exit from the EU would help in that it would allow the UK to, at least partially, isolate itself from the problem, but the problem is still there. Immigrants will still find a way to get in to the country – legally or otherwise.
There’s a lot of attention on the problem at Calais but a far bigger problem is one of visitors to the country, who largely arrive through our airports, overstaying their visas. Or, as citizens of the EU, they have a right of entry anyway.
Then there’s the problem of trade. High unemployment in the EU affects British trade too. Its not easy to sell into markets where everyone is strapped for cash!
It’s in all our interests all round to pressure the EU/EZ for a change of economic direction and do whatever it takes to fix its unemployment problem.
August 27, 2015
I’m surprised you describe the economic policies as “neo liberal”
If only they were.
What we have in the EU is a growing centralised, corporatist EU which follows socialist interventionist style policies.
It stifles free trade and enterprise and distorts the markets in food and fisheries and energy to name just three.
We need less power for the EU and its multi national big business friends with their monopoly style powers and some proper liberalising economics.
Less EU, less intervention, less tax, less red tape, equals lower unemployment, prosperity and growth.
August 27, 2015
Edward2,
I perhaps could have used the word “ordo-liberal” . There is an extensive description in Wiki which you might want to look up.
It’s essentially the German system of a strong state, a controlled economy, and manipulated exchange rates leading to the creation of strong export surpluses. The snag is that in the euro not everyone can have an export surplus and so ordo-liberalism doesn’t work for them.
August 28, 2015
The very unsuitable exchange rate the Euro nations other than Germany have to endure is a big reason for the economic depression in Europe.
If Spain, Portugal et al hadfree floating currencies their rate would be a great deal different and they would prosper once again.
August 28, 2015
Edward2,
Yes I largely agree. Except I’d just make the point that a floating currency is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for prosperity.
The govts in charge of those floating currencies would have to understand the new freedom that gave them. They’d have to make sure they didn’t have rampant inflation, on the one hand, nor rampant recession on the other. ie There’s no need to balance their budgets unless the sectoral balances dictate they should.
They should also resist the temptation to borrow in any other currency than their own.
August 27, 2015
I am not one for conspiracies but either the complete inability of the British political state to manage our borders is the result of some sort of establishment culture, or it is endemic incompetence, any sort of middle ground has long since gone as an excuse due to the crisis we face.
For myself I believe we have a political class who have gone rogue on us. The battle between left and right worked when it was confined within the sovereignty of our nation. But in dismantling our nation what we have ended up with is the Conservative party beholding to the globalists, Labour beholding to the internationalists, and the LibDems fanatical acolytes of the EU. None of the old Westminster parties represent the interests of the British people anymore , that is why the Scots were so attracted to the message of the SNP who made it very clear they would put the Scottish nation first, and why UKIP polled 4 million votes with a message saying they would put the British people first.
August 27, 2015
Well said, Iain. Immigration could easily be controlled and action could be taken swiftly. However, our politicians do not want this. They are not all incompetent, but rather they lack the political will to take the steps that are needed as it goes contrary to their broader plans of staying in the EU, (necessitating relinquishing further UK sovereignty), and embracing globalist corporatism. The Conservatives, led by Cameron, seem to be wedded to big business/the global agenda and that appears to mean sacrificing sovereignty, abolishing borders and allowing mass movement of peoples to enable big business to generate profit (and to permit large scale wealth redistribution that the UN and EU are so keen on). Borders and sovereignty do not fit in with this model of wealth creation for the few i.e. big business and the political elite. “The people’s” views/wishes are apparently irrelevant, the populus merely providing the means for the politicians and corporate concerns to achieve and maintain their goals: power and wealth.
August 27, 2015
what you say about UKIP is true however the SNP have only their vested interest at heart and damn the Scots as long as they get independence.
August 28, 2015
I agree with your assessment of the outcomes but I don’t think the political class or the establishment ever had the general citizenry’s best interests at heart – your last sentance is right on the money.
August 28, 2015
‘…..a political class who have gone rogue on us.’ Exactly, Iain, and a nic turn of phrase. Not one too to believe in conspiracies, there has to be a reason for the failure of our political masters to urgently get to grips with this problem.
One cannot help but feel compassion for the daily digest of refugee families fleeing the tyranny of IS and Assad in Syria, and for the terrible loss of life at sea, but unless something is done urgently to stem the flow the standard of living of all of us in Europe will rapidly become the same as much of the third world. Perhaps that is the end objective. What then ? Eugenics…..
August 27, 2015
Your 7th.paragraph is the key. The three major problems that need to be addressed.
1. Leaving the EU and becoming once more a sovereign nation. It would solve the Free Movement problem and many others, but as your leader is set against this, he is not the person to bring it about. I am amazed that in a supposed democracy you allow so much power in the hands of one man. It must be through the largesse he can spread and the gullibility of those beneath the table. Not very democratic.
2. By creating our own laws on human rights. We were complicit in creating the ECHR, it is they who have abused it with their bizarre rulings. It is of course so much beloved of our own legal profession who in the words of Arthur Daley see it as a “Nice little earner.” I see them as more under the table feeders.
3. If the UN convention is designed to cover political refugees alone, then we should play our part as we have always done since long before the UN existed. The initial applications should be handled by our myriad embassies overseas. If they cannot in their country of origin, go to the embassy in an adjoining country.
Acting on all three above we vastly reduce the numbers, taking only those we want and those in real peril. I would add that we should stay out of wars where we cannot control the end result. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria come to mind. By all means go for ISIS in undeclared conflicts as we did against Yemeni rebels in the UAE some years ago. The elimination of the threat should be the game, not the creation of democracies in places where they have no concept of the meaning of the word. Our own interpretations can be quite flawed.
August 27, 2015
I see that “Reducing net migration to the Tens of Thousands” is now being interpreted by the Government as “less than one hundred thousand a year.”
Well that’s 100% more than the last Conservative Government was achieving. Nevertheless it’s a reduction by a factor of at least three.
If as you told me yesterday in your reply, the whole problem really is the EU because the non-EU migrants are actually coming here legally from Europe, then we know the answer, don’t we ?
The problem will be getting Cameron to be honest with us over this : the truth will destroy any chance he has of winning the referendum and keeping us enslaved by the treaties.
I for one would like to see the figures :
1.How many Non-EU migrants are legally coming in directly to the UK ?
Of these :
a.How many are students ?
b.How many are sponsored employees ?
c.How many are non-productive dependents ?
2.How many Non-EU migrants are legally coming in via the EU because they have been granted EU documents ?
Of these :
a.How many are students ?
b.How many are sponsored employees ?
c.How many are non-productive dependents ?
3.How many EU citizens are currently coming to the UK to settle ?
Cameron could certainly do something about reducing the numbers in category 1.c immediately but we need to know how many people we are talking about here.
No doubt the term “net migration” disguises the real extent of inward migration of people who do not share the cultural traditions of the UK and who will continue the irrevocable change in our country which largely began under Blair.
It would therefore be interesting to know the cultural make up of those that leave the UK so we can assess the real impact of migration on the face of our country.
I suspect these figures are being withheld for a reason.
August 27, 2015
Figures are available (at least within the accuracy of the statistics), but the press avoid discussing them. Student immigration was 189,000 in the year to March, of which 46,000 were from the EU and 137,000 from outside it, and 6,000 were British. Some 22,000 emigrated to study abroad, of whom 8,000 were British, 8,000 from the EU and 6,000 from elsewhere (most of these are postgraduates taking up academic offers abroad). Just 59,000 former student immigrants re-emigrated after their courses ended or after a further period in the UK – a very low figure compared with much higher levels of student immigration when they started their courses.
Immigration to take up a definite job comprised 23,000 returning British, 99,000 from the EU and 51,000 from elsewhere for a total of 174,000. In addition there were 23,000 British, 63,000 from the EU and 13,000 from elsewhere who were looking for work. Offsetting this to some degree were the 65,000 British, 40,000 from the EU and 53,000 from elsewhere who emigrated to work (some will have come to the end of a contract in the UK, and some will be ex students going abroad to work), and some 19,000 from the EU and 14,000 from elsewhere who were “going home to live” (presumably in retirement).
There were also about 25,000 asylum seekers. I gave the totals by citizenship group gross and net in an earlier reply.
August 27, 2015
JR : ” Action on migration”
The problem is there is no “action”. All you have told us is “we should do this or that”. There can be no genuine intention to deal with this or action would have been taken after all these years. You may have conveniently forgotten your party’s promise in 2010 – made again in 2015. It seems to me that LibLabCon were and are happy to see and ecourage mass migration. After failing to silence the warnings from UKIP and MigrationWatch with scurrilous accusations and, at last, noting that this was a very important issue in the country it now seems that the idea is to talk about it whilst doing nothing.
We now know that net UK migration in year ending March ‘15 was highest ever recorded, at 330,ooo, up 40% on previous year.
I rest my case.
August 27, 2015
Instead of “resting your case” you should pack it and emigrate, taking your family with you. Lots of the migrants will be a drain on our resources. The only way they can be paid for will be taxes. the poor have nothing else left to take, therefore the govt will come after those further up the ladder.
August 27, 2015
“The government has pledged to tackle the human rights requirements.”
The government has “pledged” to do lots of things, but that seems to many to be the limit of their action. We need to totally negate the present Human Rights legislation which seems to take precedence over all other legislation.
Every day we see in the papers yet another ludicrous decision from a judge upholding someone’s human rights, like the recent foreign criminal who was jailed for attacking his wife and when released could not be deported when he was released because of his “right to family life” even though his wife has made it clear, enforced by a court order, that she does not want to see him. No doubt there are many more decisions like this, but which are not reported as they are now such common occurrences. At the same time, we should stop legal aid to all non-citizens which perhaps might make lawyers less willing to take on such cases. I wouldn’t get such aid from, say, France if I were to be charged with an offence there, why should non-citizens get it here?
“The government is currently engaged in negotiating a new relationship with the EU.”
When the government tells the electorate what it is expecting from the negotiations, only then will the people of this country discover whether they are aiming high enough and in due course will be able to evaluate the success of the negotiations. I have no doubt in my own mind that something trivial will be agreed, which will be hailed by Cameron as a great success showing “how we can work with our European partners” and the reason why we should stay in the EU. Can we expect to see him come back from Brussels (or is it Berlin these days), waving a bit of paper just like Chamberlain?
Nothing that this government has done so far convinces me that they really mean business. They are not pro-active and just respond to events. They can no longer blame the LibDems in a coalition, so now they blame the House of Lords; like a child, it’s always someone else did the damage!
August 27, 2015
The fact that all immigration is lumped together doesn’t help. Most people probably agree that if this country needs people from the EU, the Commonwealth, etc, then they should be invited the same way as e.g. Australia invites British Servicemen to join their forces to enhance capability and make up for recruitment shortfalls. Likewise inviting international students should be a way to enhance our seats of learning rather than being a way to give people from e.g. India an excuse to enrol in a spurious ‘IT’ college so they can work illegally. This kind of immigration is good, for the most part.
What people are concerned about is illegal non-EU immigration, and the open border policy which enables undesirables to come here with criminal records and abuse our hospitality in a multitude of ways.
If the EU actually managed to achieve its aim of bringing the whole continent up to the same standard of living the Freedom of Movement policy wouldn’t be a problem. But the fact that the Germans seem determined to hand their country to unskilled immigrants and the Greeks and Italians are willing to accept the whole world into their countries make FoM a major problem for the UK, and indeed France.
As someone has already said here today, there needs to be a long and meaningful debate after politicians have looked at the real world.
Close borders, deport those not entitled to be here, build infrastructure, then start inviting those who are required. Simple as that. Unfortunately ECHR and EU rules are making it impossible to follow the logical and sensible path. Aaaaaggghhhh!!!
August 27, 2015
I think it would be useful if there were some attempt to estimate illegal immigration by visa overstayers (a large number in students, let alone other visitors) and by border control evasion on entry (gets a lot of publicity, but probably much smaller). I have yet to do the detailed analysis, but it immediately struck me that the data on the population by birth country and citizenship also released today seems to be at variance with the immigration data over the years. The population estimates rely mainly on the Labour Force Survey, which may be rather poor at capturing the illegal element.
August 28, 2015
I did hear Mr Brokenshire on the radio mentioning a figure of 100,000 student overstayers ( I presume he means per year, in line with the statistics).
August 27, 2015
Dave M – “Unfortunately ECHR and EU rules are making it impossible to follow the logical and sensible path. Aaaaaggghhhh!!!”
The ECHR and EU rules “We must take these seriously.”
UKIP winning the EU election “Pah ! We can treat that as a joke.”
The choice to treat each fact accordingly was made by our surplus-to-requirement and overpaid Parliamentarians.
They want to ignore the will of the British people ? Then they should **** off then. Let’s have a full on EU Parliament then.
August 27, 2015
A good clear article this am John.It is always continuing living that gets in the way , for example the summer recess in parliament , peoples annual leave and temporaries to take their place ( but decisions cannot be taken until they return), the paper work which had to be edited, the anger which had to be quelled , the diversions along the way , in other words the ability of a collective to focus on one main problem and be determined to act and get a result.
August 27, 2015
May I offer my congratulations to your government JR.
Cameron says ‘he wants immigration down to the tens of thousands’ Nearly there Dave.
For the last full year of data net migration rose to 330,000, it’s going well. Remember that’s NET. Which means more than that came in, but the number is offset by those who have fled their homeland.
8.3MILLION people now here, were born abroad. A statistic that is scandalous, horrifying and brings the destruction of this nation state alarmingly close.
August 27, 2015
You hit the nail on the head with “those who fled their homeland”. It’s not European immigrants going home, its the English leaving. We should be concerned at the loss of those we most need, doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, etc who can relatively easily get work in the other English speaking countries. Most of my friends have an adult child or grandchild who has permanently left the country.
August 27, 2015
From what I have read, the British people are concerned with the ‘brain drain’ from the UK, but I am far from convinced that our ‘ Leaders and Betters’ share that concern. How long can we afford to have that much talent leaving our shores?
As an aside, may I congratulate my fellow commentators on this blog for their forthright and very sensible views on how to tackle the problem of unlimited immigration. Would that our Leaders would adopt these ideas, but I wont hold my breath!
August 27, 2015
Yes, agree. I have a friend whose daughter is close to qualifying as a nurse and the first thing she is going to do is apply to emigrate to Australia. Sensible girl. Get out of a country that is doomed to an existence non of us will recognize. John, it doesn’t matter how many points we make about illegal immigration or legal immigration of people we don’t need or want, all the time we have weak DC and a leader who is intent on staying in the EU we many as well accept our fate. It is an utter disgrace to all our forefathers who fought so hard to keep our country safe and well. I am sickened by the whole debacle and failure of all parties to tackle this.
August 27, 2015
Good clear article this am John. It is always continuing living that gets in the way of progress, for example the summer recess in parliament, peoples annual leave and temporaries to cover ( decisions not being able to be made until they return),
angers to quell , diversions taken along the way , people too busy to follow legal tracts efficiently ( or take a long time to get more money out of the process). In other words it is the inability of a collective to focus on a problem and be determined to act upon it before much more damage is done.
August 27, 2015
JR
I am sure that you have listened to the Great Donald Trump. A brilliant man, that get things done. A man that has energy, a fire in his belly, the love for the American people and his country. He said that he isn’t a politician and hates the word, maybe we need to out our politicians, find a person that has Britain and the people in their hearts, a true Conservative.
He will cut migration and send illegal back. I believe Mr Trump, when he says that he would make Mexico pay for the wall too.
While our government sits around talking about laws they should change, Trump would have completed everything he set of to do before you change any law.
Richardlittlejohn, talk about a Article he had written twenty years ago about immigration. He could publish that same article today and be relevant, another twenty years from now, we will read the some headlines as today.
With immigration only increasing more and more every day, I foresee those people getting a vote, they will not vote your party, they will vote the stupid party ( labour ) then you will become unelectable. You have the chance today to stop this future reality happening.
August 27, 2015
Millions of ‘Conservative’ voters who lent their UKIP votes will be kicking themselves today.
August 27, 2015
Next time you see the Prime Minister can you get him to define what he meant by his phrase ” No ifs, no buts” and let us know what you discover.
Thankyou
August 27, 2015
They will be replaced by long rambling phrases meaning the same thing: “After taking the current situation into account and listening to our European partners we have decided following careful consideration of all the factors involved that we will do b…… all.”
August 27, 2015
Where Mr Cameron(and many besides) is concerned the phrase “invertebrate liar” comes to mind;a living tribute to the late George Cole/Arthur Daley.
August 27, 2015
I also do not see the relevance to the 1997 date unless John is looking at this through the prism of Labour being responsible for every bad immigration policy decision in the world. Somehow, I don’t think that it’s quite like that. Net and gross migration will be up up up in the latest figures, and there is little effective action that the government is currently taking to reduce that figure……
And, as you soon as you try and do something, they will all begin with the magic chant – Asylum! – and there will be nothing that you can do about it as the system will fall apart as it is barely coping with 20,000+ per year now. They were getting 100,000+ per year in 1998 – 2001. If the same happens now, it will be game over…..
zorro
Reply 1997 is a crucial date ion this story, as Labour did radically change immigration policy, relaxing the rules Conservatives used to control numbers.
August 27, 2015
So what’s stopping you tightening the rules and reducing immigration. lack of will and an underlying belief that it is good for GDP. never mind that we are being displaced at an alarming rate.
August 27, 2015
Indeed so: net immigration was just under 150,000 in 1998, and has always been higher than that ever since. It rose to over 250,000 in 2004 as we started admitting A8 nationals without a visa.
August 27, 2015
John, everything you say is sensible but this is becoming urgent.
I think we must either bring the eu referendum forward or have a separate immediate referendum on removing us from the free movement clauses of the eu. As you say we can pass our own legislation to deal with politically motivated courts.
It is urgent that bring immigration down right now to miniscule levels.
NB Alan Jutson, a fellow contributor to this board had a great idea which I reproduce below:
“Greece have hundreds of Islands, the EU could pay Greece a sum on the proviso that immigrants remain for a few years.
It may help the Greeks financially as well instead of them asking for loans.
Would also help the greek unemployment rate as well as these immigrants would need people to oversee them.
Three birds with one stone, and its still nice and warm for them. !!!!”
August 27, 2015
I’ve just discovered the full figures. 636,000 people came in. With 306.000 departing.
Do you not understand the level of demographic change that is happening?
August 27, 2015
The demographic change is exactly what Cameron and the EU want. Our nation and country is to be destroyed – deliberately.
August 27, 2015
Yes, it must be deliberate, just as much for the Tories as for Labour.
August 27, 2015
The problem is that we, as well as all countries of mainly Northern European ancestry, but not elsewhere, are facing a conspiracy of treachery on a very wide scale which encompasses politics, both politicians and major donors, the BBC, the civil service, academe, all of which are replete with English-haters (multiculturalisers) and English people who are too cowardly to act.
August 27, 2015
These numbers are truly frightening
August 27, 2015
Old Albion
“636,000 came in”
Yes that is the reality.
The BBC and the Government always want to use Net figures simply because it camouflages the real scale of the problem.
The Gross figure is always the one that should be used.
Funny how when we have recently been compared to Germany the media use Gross figures for Germany, and Net figures for us, to make it look like we are not taking as many.
August 27, 2015
NHS lies too.
“All immigration is good.”
There is no mention of our medics fleeing.
August 27, 2015
Perhaps he could have a chat with his colleagues in the Dept of Health about the fact that one in four nurses are being recruited abroad as a direct result of the reduction in the number of training places for British nurses under the coalition and the high staff turnover due to the poor and deteriorating working environment.
They are using ever increasing overseas recruitment as a sticking plaster for the NHS.
August 27, 2015
This is completely immoral. Do they pay the country where the nurse came from to cover the cost of their training. Strikes me other countries have the expense of training doctors and nurses and we just poach them. Utterly immoral.
August 27, 2015
The NHS is also a backdoor immigration route. UK nurses are expected to have degrees. Foreign nurses have diplomas some of which are questionable and all are given a passport after a short time.
I worked overseas for 20 plus years. Always on a fixed contract and I had to leave the country on completion.
The NHS has a critical mass of foreigners who will inevitably recruit their own.
August 27, 2015
Mr Brokenshire is now as I write appearing for the second time today on TV. Having an “ambition” is his ambition. Employment legislation must be changed. Now no employee should be disciplined, refused promotion or sacked for failure to get the job done nor in fact making it considerably problematic if they say it is their “ambition” to work.
In all fields of human endeavour without exception, a Mr Brokenshire would resign immediately if his boss had been absent from work and therefore unable to sack him personally.
August 27, 2015
Part of the problem is that if you are in the UK long enough illegally you can become legal and get a British passport, I know people who have done this personally.
If the UK government said “Illegals will never become legal” it would really stop this pull factor (and they would go to a country that let them become legal after a few years).
We also need to change the benefits system I know people who have got off a plane from Spain and been given a council flat in central London.
August 27, 2015
Mmm, having lived in Spain I cannot see the opposite happening. We got nothing given to us. did it all ourselves and were better off for it. People who were not born in this country are being put above those that were and it must stop.
August 27, 2015
The problem here is that our system is directed to those in greatest need irrespective of whether they have contributed anything or not and due to the EU we consequently have to apply this to everyone in the UK, except of course those here illegally. Huge numbers coming here are in greater need than the indigenous population and hence the problem.
The answer seems obvious and I find it almost impossible to understand why a politician in or out of government would want to spend his or her entire career dictated to by some superior foreign authority.
August 27, 2015
Didn’t the Scottish government and other areas of the UK say they needed more inward immigration to meet skill shortages and jobs, why not facilitate that through the job centre network and Scottish government instead of this falling on London and the South East predominantly?
If you open up more places for training our British students into NHS jobs instead of the closed shop restrictive practises this may also aid recruitment.
Do you support ID cards from birth John with a renewal at every school change and then at 16 years of age/ that could be electronic on peoples phones tied in with the national insurance number being issued? Or do you agree with the civil liberties groups about restrictive freedoms and it would be a bad thing to have to show entitlement at our national service providers to obtain free services and when taking on work? Isn’t that the direction that Europe is going in?
August 27, 2015
But while the present UK endures any foreign immigrant admitted to Scotland would be free to move to England, and many would want to do just that.
August 27, 2015
I am also quite sure that Mr Cameron himself knows the importance of the promise he made and wants the Home Office to deliver for the government.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at that sentence. Good to know he knows the importance of the promise. What did he say … ‘immigration down to the tens of thousands or vote me out’ … yet you people on here voted him in! He asked you to vote him out if he failed – but you didn’t!
I reject the views of those who have written in suggesting there is a tri partisan conspiracy between Labour, Lib Dems and Conservatives to ensure migration levels remain high.
There may be no conspiracy but all three want high levels of immigration – it is the ONLY way you get get growth in the economy. You seem to be incapable of improving the efficiency of the state … we are struggling with globalization depressing wages here … all you can do is let more people in and ‘grow’ the economy – and to hell with the housing and social problems it causes – and the demand on an already creaking infrastructure.
August 27, 2015
I repeat what I posted the other day , ” We must turn our backs on the constraints put on our legal system ” ; our independence and the way we wish to go about our own affairs is handicapped by the ECHR . Mr. Brokensire can say what he likes – its the results that count .
August 27, 2015
Cameron will be having a party at this increase in numbers ( all the relatives have to arrive as well yet ). His reward of a place in Brussels for destroying this nation is getting closer.
August 27, 2015
a more thoughtful commentary on the subject can be found here http://openeurope.org.uk/blog/the-net-migration-target-doesnt-make-sense-irrespective-of-eu-migration/
August 27, 2015
I would describe it more as “revealing” than “thoughtful”.
August 27, 2015
330,000 a year net !!!
That’s :
An extra constituency the size or Wokingham every 113 days : Three more every year !
The same number of people as voted in Wokingham in May arriving every 86 days !
The same number of people as voted for J A Redwood in May arriving every 36 days !
Having to have an extra three MPs every year is enough of a reason on its own to put an end to this nonsense !
August 27, 2015
Plenty of action- Just not where it counts!
Half the world seems on the move to the EU. Why what and who is driving this and why? Its probably not accidental.
Meanwhile the lawyers and others paid by the taxpayers are getting well stuck in. Its a great excuse we need more resource! So hence cuts happen elsewhere hence the parade of bleeding stumps and no cuts at the top.
PS.
My tinfoil hat is really shaping up. A surprisingly comfortable and well fitting with reality hat as far as i can see.
That is what we are inadvertently allowed to see. I could give examples but their is no need for those that are capable of independent thought at this point.
The real problem comes when the new electorate and newer residents become unsettled they don’t quite have the same cultural response.
The sheep down on animal farm or the serfs on the plantation are getting restless.
Sometimes i wonder if its a plan to instigate troubles and promote an event to distract from other events. I really hope i am wrong.
Keep up the effort and do what you can, while you can.
August 27, 2015
We need to find faster methods of deporting illegal immigrants and those whose application for asylum is rejected.
Where they have papers that confirm their country of origin, then deportation should be automatic and immediate with any appeal only allowed from their country of origin.
Where they have no papers they should be returned immediately to the country from which they entered the UK.
Where they have to be retained in the UK before deportation this should never be on bail or a promise to report. They should immediately be moved to a camp where they can be confined. If they have to live in conditions of minimum subsistence then they are more likely to volunteer to return home.
August 27, 2015
I think that today’s immigration figures are a resigning matter. It could be argued that the Home Secretary should go but, I would suggest that as he has been so vocal on – and involved with – this issue, the Prime Minister should resign.
David Cameron has great qualities and will be missed by the Conservative Party but we must see someone take responsibility for this failure.
In my opinion, the PM must go.
August 27, 2015
What great qualities has Cameron got? He seems to me to be pretty vacuous. He will go down as one of the least memorable and remembered PMs. He has done nothing to make his mark. He just seems to let it all wash over him. They used to call Blair ‘Teflon Tony’ – heaven knows how Cameron seems to do nothing and get away with it.
How’s the re-negotiation going? Oh yes, we are not allowed to know what he is trying to re-negotiate so he can’t be accused of failure.
August 27, 2015
He’s a brilliant PR man. He’s great at the despatch box but, most important of all, he is great on the telly and that matters more than anything else these days.
That’s why he will be missed if he goes (which he should IMHO)
August 27, 2015
It matters not a jot to me how good any politician is on the telly. Its what they do, and not what they say, that counts. Its all too often about the next big speech. A bit less preaching and a lot more action is what is required.
August 28, 2015
He isn’t great at the despatch box! He could bully Miliband junior sometimes but, quite often, Miliband looked intelligent and mature next to him. Cameron never answers questions properly and has descended way below the ‘punch and judy’ politics he said he would not engage in. PMQs is a national disgrace. I really hope no-one from abroad watches it.
Great on the telly!! How so? Vacuous and NEVER gets asked hard questions. No-one has ever asked him why he has the nerve to withhold from us all what he is allegedly trying to negotiate.
August 27, 2015
Off-topic, why should any of those listed here:
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/08/27/flash-uk-govt-appoints-new-peers-full-list/
be given the right to vote on all UK legislation for the rest of their natural lives?
August 27, 2015
Mr Brokenshire getting his excuses in early again I see.
How would have thought that the most politically correct pro Eu Conservative government ever would have problems with record immigration.
Still not a peep from Mr Redwood about how the party’s hands are tied by political correctness – honesty needed. Blame the French.. immigration won’t be tackled because you are frightened of those on the left screaming racist.
Some of us have been saying for years that Cameron is a dripping wet liberal sleeper wrecking the party from within.
Mr Blair (or ‘the master’ as he is known to his protégé Cameron) must be proud.
August 27, 2015
Having watched quite a lot of news today, what strikes me is that pragmatic politicians all over Europe are looking for solutions to uncontrolled immigration, but EU spokesmen are stating – as if it’s a threat – that any change will threaten the EU. Someone needs to make it clear that these Eurocrats are not speaking for the majority.
My local MP is very junior therefore eminently ‘whippable’. You, Mr Redwood, are one of the few politicians who are genuinely repected and concerned, and who actually listen to us. Please do something.
August 27, 2015
The Government COULD control immigration.
It could require Businesses which want to import a non-EU migrant to work to make a one-off down-payment to the Treasury of £100,000 per immigrant. That would make them think twice.
But the Conservative Government won’t.
It could leave the EU and regain control of our borders. But the Conservative Government won’t.
In the course of my adult life, Lib Lab and CON have completely wrecked this country. They’ve destroyed our Sovereignty and independence. They’ve destroyed our social cohesion. They’ve destroyed our nation.
I loathe the Conservative Party.
August 27, 2015
You’re a liar.
Maastricht was signed by the Tories and uncontrolled mass immigration started then and continued it to today’s record levels, long after Labour were kicked out of office.
It’s over and you well know it. So why are you still taking the money ?
For most people there will be nothing but falling living standards and huge demographic changes during this government and beyond.
Please resign.
Reply This government is taking action to curb immigration and intends to strengthen UK law so it can deport people. It has also introduced limits on legal migration from outside the EU which is down on the Labour level.
August 27, 2015
Why is it that when UKIP wins the EU elections it’s “Ah. But Europe is not really the serious government. We can ignore this.” yet when it comes the the vital issue of legal immigration it’s “Ah. We can’t do anything about it. We are under Europe – we have to take it seriously.”
So which is it ?
I posit that it’s whichever the British Parliament chooses – and the British Parliament chooses to go against the will of the British people every time.
You are taking the money under false pretences. Please resign, John.
Reply So when are our UKIP MEPs going to change EU rules on free movement?
August 27, 2015
Reply to Reply
If our UKIP MEPs put down such a motion, I wonder how many Conservative MEPS would vote for it (apart from Dan Hannan, of course) ?
In any event it would be a waste of time :
Almost all MEPS are signed up members of the EU Gravy Train and won’t do anything to rock the ( gravy ) boat !
Democratic it ‘aint.
August 27, 2015
Reply to replay “Reply So when are our UKIP MEPs going to change EU rules on free movement?”
So you do think how the British public voted is a joke then.
My comment was about the British Parliament’s selective hearing – not the power of the EU (which we now know renders you all redundant.)
August 27, 2015
Reply to reply “So when are our UKIP MEPs going to change EU rules on free movement?”
The overwhelming British public voted UKIP in the EU elections. Who does the UK Government listen to ? Their masters in Europe, of course. Neither government intends to change the rules on free movement – both intend to ignore the will of the people or, at best, decieve them… as you seem to be doing.
I have read hundreds (if not thousands) of your posts. I invite readers to do the same. You claim to mention immigration a lot but I see scant evidence of this.
The vast majority of posts discuss the economic outlook without mention of immigration.
“I’m not going to write about immigration every day.” I recall you saying. Well, other than it being inconvenient for you, why ever not ? I’d say it’s pretty vital in most subjects.
You mock UKIP (aka the majority who voted in the EU elections) but most of what you say is rendered irrelevant and pointless (except to create a facade of importance for you and your government) by omission of this vital detail. Be it job creation, unemployment, housing, schools, transport… whatever – no comment of yours can be taken seriously if it omits mention the vital element which is a rapidly growing population.
No reliable estimates or forecasts can be made. You may as well just be reading tea leaves for all the semblance it bears to reality.
We predicted long ago what would happen as regards third world immigration. That word was getting out that Britain was taking all comers and here is the rush.
We were right.
This is going to be a long five years in which any economic achievements of yours are going to be washed away the minute they arrive by a tidal wave of welfare dependency, wage depression and demand on limited resources.
This country is a tinder box waiting to go up. Stop cutting the police and stop cutting the army.
Reply Why do you bother to read my views and respond when you are so scornful and dismissive of me? I do write about your chosen subject quite often. I have just had two days on it again. I do include migration in my posts on housing demand, public spending pressures and other economic matters. I want the UK to control her own borders. I do not mock UKIP. I want to know what our UKIP MEPs are doing in the EP to control our borders.Why can’t you answer?
August 28, 2015
John. (reply to reply my 10.27)
I’m not standing for office because I know that little can be done. UKIP have been useful in illustrating to us who our Parliamentarians are obedient to. The people gave you all a clear signal that they dislike the EU – yet we still get more and more EU.
I ask you this and it’s a yes or no answer:
Do you think we are suffering an urgent immigration crisis ?
Yes or no.
If ‘yes’ then it must feature prominently if nearly every of your posts henceforth. On anything relating to domestic human demand has to be almost Farage like in its inclusion (thus far it is no) – because Farage was absolutely right about demand side economics.
If your answer was ‘no’ then you are out of touch with the majority of the public.
Once again – I thank you for this full and frank debate. One which I would prefer not to be having with you.
Reply I have called for urgent action to deal with the present level of migration, because I support the Conservative stated policy aims and want them to get on with achieving them as soon as possible. I do not intend to turn this website into an immigration only site, as I have lots of other work to do for my constituents with my campaigns on taxes, housing, England, transport, EU etc which I promised to do in the recent election. UKIP came a poor fourth in Wokingham.
August 27, 2015
It’s a funny kind of “action to curb immigration” which results in a massive rise in immigration.
If the Cons are trying, they’ve failed.
Personally, I don’t think they’re even trying. They WANT mass immigration.
August 27, 2015
Reply to reply “Reply This government is taking action to curb immigration and intends to strengthen UK law so it can deport people. It has also introduced limits on legal migration from outside the EU which is down on the Labour level.”
There are two points to answer here:
1) “This government is taking action to curb immigration and intends to strengthen UK law so it can deport people.”
You are diverting from the real issue. LEGAL immigration has hit record levels today, under the first Tory majority in decades. You can’t deport your way out of this problem. Stop pretending that you can. The majority of migrants have committed no crime.
2) “It has also introduced limits on legal migration from outside the EU which is down on the Labour level”
This is a Cameroonian sleight of hand – he used it at the last election. As previous contributors to this thread have said, other countries can determine who can become an EU citizen, ergo anyone can migrate to Britain from anywhere, in unlimited numbers, from another EU state.
I think you know this already. Stop using get out clauses and stop insulting our intelligence.
That said, thank you for posting my harsh comment. It still stands as I believe it to be the truth and I feel that you should resign.
Both you and your government have failed terribly and the future can deliver nothing but hardship and social deterioration for our people. If we are to be ruled by Europe then do the decent thing and stop taking the money.
August 27, 2015
Someone from Big Business, it could have been the CBI, warned today that lessening of immigration would have dire consequences for British business as it would leave a terrible skills shortage. Hmm, well Mr Farage always speaks of the stereotypical Indian IT Engineering Specialist as someone who would qualify to enter the UK easily. Aside from a whizz kid in IT from India who hates three times the salary he would get in the USA, one wonders exactly…precisely… which skills the CBI are talking about.
I’ve met and spoken at length with several migrants from various countries here in England in their homes. Some and only some were obviously very intelligent. None were bringing into the UK needed skills however. There are good reasons for that of which perhaps our CBI person would be unaware. Most if not all skills in industry are not transferable.
Housebuilding techniques, regulations, materials terms for this and that are virtually incompatible from country to country. So too with fitters, mechanics, joiners, oh and obviously gas fitters ( the ones who service your gas central heating ) and a myriad other occupations and skill sets. They are country and industry-specific, all with their rules, regulations and specific and unique skills. Do not underrate the working classes! It is an easy mistake to make. Anyone could be a CBI spokesperson.
Much nonsense is being spoken about the value of migrants to our economy but with very little on the ground investigation.
Mr Cameron does not appear to be doing anything at all to lessen immigration. If he is, then one wonders what gob-smacking figures for immigration would have come out today had he not tried so terribly hard.
August 28, 2015
There is already an oversupply of IT workers, they are not on the shortage skills list. They are here in massive numbers from India as uncapped visa classes are used. Nigel should know better.
August 27, 2015
I don’t know the EXACT cost of maintaining and running Royal Navy ships which help migrants cross the Med, but I’d guess the cost of that is a hundred times the cost of maintaining fences, sniffer dogs and a few police in Calais. That makes a nonsense of government claims to want to restrain migration rather than encourage it.
August 27, 2015
Thanks for confirming JR that the Con Party have no idea how to deal with the out of control immigration problem . They do however know how to keep UKIP out of the House of Lords . Well done .
August 28, 2015
And out of the House of Commons, with one exception.
Keeping UKIP out of Parliament is far more important to the Tory leaders than keeping immigrants out of the country.
August 27, 2015
Figures just released for last year indicate that net immigration was 330,000 – presumably gross immigration was significantly. More than half of these were from non-EU countries, so let us not limit the discussion to immigration from the EU.
Students account for more than half of the non-EU immigrants. Do we know – or even believe – that they go back home on completion of their studies? In many instances I think not. Given the presence of many ethnic ‘communities’ – separate residential areas – in the UK, disappearance among a sympathetic community might be easy. So tracing illegal immigrants is intrinsically difficult.
To me, the goal is still integration, including intermarriage, between the indigenous population and immigrants. That will involve the gradual dispersion of ‘communities’ and a dilution of their identity. That goal cannot be achieved unless there is a more or less total ban on immigration. Let us pursue that idea for the next 15 years, to make up for the over high level of immigration since the 2001 Census.
Resistance from the EU and the UN is not our biggest problem – we can easily repel this if the political will is there. Much more worrying is resistance from certain types of business and from business umbrella organisations. Both the IoD and the CBI are agitating for little or no immigration control. Such businesses will just have to do with less labour and use it more efficiently.
And the elderly will have to cope by working longer.
August 28, 2015
My proposal is simple: you only allow a maximum of N “students” from country X to be in the UK at any time, and if those who have come from X do not go back home at the end of their agreed period of study, and so N is exceeded, then you do not allow any more “students” to come from that country. Only if the number drops to N can any more come, and then only on a strict “one out, so one can come in” basis.
August 27, 2015
Another act of ineptitude by the Conservative party.
Mr Heath told us we were joining a ‘Common market’ not a political union.
Mrs Thatcher scrapped our aircraft carriers opening the door to the invasion of the Falkland Islands. It left us with just the ageing Vulcan bomber (that needed to be re-fuelled 4 times to reach the Falklands) to repel the Argentinian invaders.
Yet we are led to believe this was one of the party’s finest hours.
John Major said it was ‘Game set and Match for Britain’ as he was signing away another chunk of our birthright…and a great deal of our money which was spent chasing the Dm and paying the cost of mega high interest rates.
Now David Cameron nods through record levels of immigration whilst pretending to do something. Yet we keep being told Mr Cameron’s position is ‘safe’.
Isn’t there anyone in the Conservative party that is prepared to tell Mr Cameron to ‘take a short walk from a long pier’…that’s if he can be found on one of the rare occasions he isn’t on holiday…
There next act of treachery will be to lock us into the Eu permanently….
August 28, 2015
Hopefully from the responses here John can see the majority do not support his lax attitude to the government on this. The political class are profoundly wrong on this. The government does have the power to fix this. This issue shows what a sham our supposed democracy is.
August 28, 2015
John Redwood identifies the problems and difficulties well but where is the action to deal with them?
All of the government power and resources should be able to restrict immigration – if they have the will?
It is becoming increasingly clear that the liberal governing elite have no intention of controlling immigration in any serious way.
August 28, 2015
We now know what’s coming if we sign up to EU control of immigration. Yeah or Nay on each application will be controlled by Brussels – with Germany a strong influence – and quotas for each country will be IMPOSED.
August 29, 2015
Some analysis you may be interested to websearch the article and read in full.
Housing,growth etc
UK Immigration Crisis Hits New Record, Trending Towards Becoming a Catastrophe
August 29, 2015
be careful for what you wish for, this from the Telegraph is good
Few government policies have failed quite as spectacularly as David Cameron’s “no ifs, no buts” commitment to reduce net immigration to the tens of thousands.
Not only has the target been missed by a country mile, futile attempts to meet it have deprived British business of the overseas skills necessary to thrive.
It’s profoundly damaged Britain’s reputation abroad as the open, tolerant economy it pretends to be, and given how obviously unworkable the policy was in the first place – a net target is as much dependent on the numbers leaving as arriving – it’s not clear it even succeeded in winning any votes.
I can’t claim to have the answers to what is politically an intractable issue, but four points seem worth making.
One is that Britain has to get much better at training its own people for the abundant job opportunities now available. More has to be done to incentivise the natives to fill them.
Another is that the genie is out of the bottle on immigration. Even countries that operate points-based systems struggle to control their borders.
The belief that leaving the European Union would solve the problem is for the birds. Even Switzerland, which has a far higher proportion of foreign born residents than Britain, is forced to agree free movement as the quid pro-quo for access to the single market.
A third, related point is that relatively high levels of immigration are part of the price you pay for a successful economy.
Unlike much of the rest of Europe, Britain is growing strongly, and is therefore a magnet for the dispossessed and the go-getters. If we were to run up the draw bridge, the economy would suffer. It’s a simple choice – pure and poor, or diverse and rich. Forget the anti-corporatism that tends to go with the fortress Britain ticket; it would be small businesses that would suffer most.
Finally, if we want to prevent the sort of humanitarian crisis we see at Europe’s borders, we should stop pointless and destabilising overseas adventurism of the type practiced in Iraq and Libya. Too late now.
August 31, 2015
Because I have previously put forward in this debate the possibility that free movement of “people” or even workers is not a founding or fundamental principle of the EU (or its previous iterations) and in light of the Home Secretary’s recent statement – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34100643 – I thought I might continue with reference to the derivation of the free movement of people for the purpose of finding work, which I think is based, from my own research, on the Opinion of the Advocate General in November of 1990 in Antonissen (C292-89) and subsequent secondary legislation (e.g. DIRECTIVE 2004/38/EC), and therefore I would propose that treaty change is not required to amend the so-called “fundamental principle”.