Yesterday the House gave a second reading to the Immigration Bill. This bill strengthens the powers of the authorities to remove illegal migrants. It introduces a deport first appeal later policy to prevent an individual deemed illegal using appeal rights to remain in the UK. It requires all public sector workers dealing with the public to speak fluent English. It makes it a crime for an illegal migrant to open a bank account, obtain a driving licence, rent a home or take a job.

The new law will help the authorities in detecting illegal migrants who have got through the border controls. Many illegals enter the country legally as visitors or students, only to outstay their visa. Anyone offering a job, renting a property, handling a bank account for an illegal migrant will be assisting a crime. Illegal migrants may be located and apprehended if they try to carry out any of the usual tasks of daily life requiring them to drive, to use a bank account or live in a house or flat. Some will object to private landlords and banks having a role in enforcing our border controls, whilst others will welcome this use of intelligence from the community. Immigration officers will gain additional powers to help them require illegal migrants to leave the country.

I made the point to Mrs May in the debate that it is best if illegals are detected at the port of attempted entry and not allowed in. She agreed, but reminded me of the numbers who enter legally only to become illegal later.

There will be a new Director of labour market enforcement. Exploitation of illegal migrants by bad employers is already against the law. The new regime will make it more likely employers of illegal labour will be found and prosecuted. The employment of illegal labour often leads to other abuses, with low pay, long hours, and lack of many of the normal terms of an employment contract.

Marrying the needs of a free society with the wish to control illegal migration is not easy. We want students to come to study at UK universities, investors to come and set up businesses here, visitors to come and enjoy our facilities and friends and family from abroad to be able to visit their contacts in the UK. We want these normal exchanges and movements to happen freely and as easily as possible. At the same time we wish to stop illegal migrants coming here, or visitors turning into illegal migrants, as there needs to be a control on how many additional permanent residents and workers the economy can absorb.

Mr Burnham for Labour showed some evolution in their thinking. They did not oppose all parts of the Bill, and he did say he wishes to place limits on the free movement of labour from the rest of the EU. Labour now recognises that large scale migration can depress wages and place undue strains on public services in places receiving substantial numbers of new residents.

The unexpected reform in the Chancellor’s speech to the Conservative conference was his proposal on business rates. He has offered to local government the transfer of all business rate revenue. This £26 billion a year would replace all the current grant income Councils receive from central government.

The reform will be complex. In order to make it work the Treasury will need to identify additional spending areas to transfer to local government, as business rate revenue exceeds grants. These will need to be agreed with Councils and the necessary arrangements put in place for them to run this extra spending.

The Treasury will wish to keep an overall limit on the level of business rates. They were transferred to central government for that very reason, to prevent local Councils trying to extract too much from business, which can work in the short term but creates longer term problems as business leaves a high tax area or fails to come to invest there.

The Treasury will also need to provide a means of sending some of the business rate money collected in a successful and prosperous area to poorer parts of the country. The City of London is the most extreme example, with a huge business rate income but few overnight residents to spend the tax on. As now there will need to be some formula for evening out the money, and a  new mechanism to claw it back from Councils in receipt of it.

Areas with elected Mayors will be able to increase the tax for better infrastructure. This power will need careful use, as business is more worried in the short term by the level of the tax than by what the tax will be spent on.

Andy Burnham says the government is wrong to tell landlords not to let property to illegal immigrants.  He thinks landlords should let property to whoever asks to rent, for fear of showing discrimination.

I have owned my own home for most of my adult lifetime, and I do not have a property to let out. I wish to see property to rent, at sensible prices, kept in good repair and made available to any UK legal resident who needs it. By the same reasoning I want to see tenants look after the property they rent, pay their rent on time, and stick to tenancy agreements. It takes a decent landlord and a co-operative tenant to have a good relationship.

Problems arise if either side violates these principles. Bad landlords overcharge on the rent and service charges. They may  fail to maintain the property, might  allow in other tenants who interfere with the neighbours’ peaceful enjoyment of their rented home, could  overcrowd properties, and sometimes terminate tenancy agreements unreasonably or pressurise tenants into leaving. Bad tenants fail to pay their rent on time, may build up arrears, can leave without notice, some damage the property, and or prove to be bad neighbours.

MPs often   receive more complaints and problems to sort out with the minority of properties that are rented  than the majority that are owner occupied. Parliament provides a legal framework to try to regulate the conduct of b0th parties to a tenancy agreement. The state often stands behind the tenant with Housing benefit and other financial support to make it possible for them to afford the rents. The law tries to protect tenants from bad landlords who fail to maintain their properties or to offer the security of tenure the law requires.

Landlords are currently unhappy about tax changes affecting the eligibility of interest on rental properties they have bought with borrowed money. Asking landlords to help police our borders by requiring them to ensure a tenant is a legal resident in the UK to many makes sense. Some will worry with Andy Burnham about discrimination. Others will worry that it is another imposition on landlords that makes  it less worthwhile at the margin to invest in rental property. What is your view?

Lord Rose lost no time in getting down to threatening us all with dire consequences if we dare to vote for freedom in the EU referendum. He said yesterday we are “stronger, safer and better off inside Europe” rather than “taking a leap into the unknown, risking our prosperity, threatening our safety and diminishing our influence in the world”.

What a depressing and absurd view of the UK. Most countries of the world trade successfully with the EU without being a member. Switzerland and Norway are the most prosperous European countries but are not members. How is leaving the EU any risk to our prosperity? They will want to sell us their goods and will come to a decent trade agreement, as they do with other non EU members. Meanwhile we will be £10 billion better off every year we are out, the money we have to send to the EU and don’t get back.

How is our safety threatened if we leave the EU? Does he have such a low view of our partners that he thinks they will undertake military activities against us? That is absurd. They are peace loving democracies that wish to have peaceful relations with us. We will stay in NATO with most of them as fellow members, with the same mutual obligations and support for each other’s defence as before. The UK leaving the EU will not trigger a western European war.

How also will our influence in the world be diminished? It will be enhanced,  because at last the UK will be free to have her own seat at the World Trade Organisation meetings and at world conferences on matters like climate change, without having to tow the EU line or be represented by an EU figure. Leaving the EU should increase our diplomatic weight and range and enable us to follow UK interests more directly.

Lord Rose needs to tell us more about the wild ride to political union the EU is embarked on. He needs to answer these crucial questions:

How far will political union go, under the 5 Presidents scheme?

How would the UK as a non Euro member avoid being dragged into the political union?

As the Euro will need far bigger transfer payments from rich to poor in the EU, how can the UK stay out of the regional and banking policies which will effect those transfers? Wont the UK be expected to pay her share of the costs of the failings of the Euro?

Why did he and his allies get  the Exchange Rate Mechanism so wrong? Does he now agree that was a European project the UK should not have joined?

Why did so many in the Stay in campaign think the UK should join the Euro ? Does he now agree it was right to stay out?

If it was right to stay out of the Euro why is also right to stay in a growing political union designed with the Euro in mind?

 

Lord Rose is not defending some friendly status quo that delivers us from insecurity. He wants us to stay in the EU on its wild ride to political union. He so far has refused to tell us the truth about the EU project, and seems to want to run a negative and misleading campaign. His views on encouraging more people from Eastern Europe to come here to work long hours for low wages has already brought hostile criticism from the Independent newspaper of all things, not a known lover of the UK leaving the EU.

 

There is little meeting of minds between the Franco German controllers of the EU and its most detached and unhelpful member, the UK.  The meeting between Mr Cameron and Mrs Merkel did its best to bridge the large and growing gap between the UK and the continent, but the truth is the political Channel has just got a lot wider.

The British people do not want to join the common borders project, do not like complete freedom of movement within the EU, and want the UK to gain more control over its borders and welfare system. They support Mr Cameron’s refusal to join a quota system for accepting new arrivals to the EU from outside. They  support his wish to reform welfare in ways which would limit access to benefits for recently arrived people from the continent.

The British people do not want to join the Euro. Even Lord Mandelson, one of the main instigators of Euro enthusiasm in the UK, now accepts the UK is not simply waiting for a more propitious time to join the project. The people who have argued the pro EU case recently against  me in debate have rushed to criticise the Euro and agree with me over its present shortcomings. As the Euro is the main part of the present EU project this places a big obstacle in the way of our friendly membership, and will mean hereafter we will always be demanding exemptions and special treatment from outside the principal centralising force.

The Prime Minister rightly argues we do not want ever closer union. The German Chancellor and the French President made clear this week that they do want ever closer union, and they want it now. They also seemed to imply that if the UK does not want it, it would be best if we left.

The UK wants fewer laws and regulations. The main method of ever closer union is for the EU to take over more and more areas of lawmaking so it has control. It is a fantasy to suppose the EU is about to halve its laws and agree to return large powers to the member states as a whole, as that cuts against the thrust of centralising to back and protect  the Euro. Promises of deregulation in a few areas have been made before, but have never materialised. Usually some figures are trotted out purporting to show some old directives and regulations have been discontinued. Usually what has happened is a far bigger and more comprehensive regulation or directive has taken the place of several smaller ones. The trend is continuously for more and  more EU law which any given member state cannot change if it wishes.

The easiest way of solving the UK problem is for both sides to agree that all we want – on both sides – is a free trade agreement, along with a range of agreements on extradition, air traffic, telecoms and other interconnections similar to those we already have and similar to those we have with non EU members. I hope that is what Mr Cameron concludes.It is the logic of his position, which has included opting out of the Fiscal Treaty, seeking to reduce the EU budget, and asking for fewer laws which have all proved contrary to the wishes of most continental governments.

In the meantime I support Vote Leave, as we do need to explain to people how being out of the current EU will be so much better than being in. Germany and France could be liberated by the absence of the UK seeking to restrain their centralising push for ever closer union. We will be free to pursue our global agenda for freer trade and better relations between states. We will also be £10 billion a year better off, or £300 per family every year we are out.

Mr Fallon has told us that he is seeking to win over more MPs to the idea that the UK should join in bombing ISIL in Syria. He tells us it makes no sense for us to bomb ISIL in Iraq, but not to bomb them if they step over the border into Syria.

There are of course two ways of dealing with this apparent anomaly. We could decide to bomb them in both places as he wishes, or we could decide to bomb them in neither. At some point war in Iraq and Syria has to give way to a peace settlement. At some point people have to lay down their arms and turn to the much maligned arts of politics to seek a way of living together. When that happens in Syria a  thug government has  to talk to terrorist opponents, and the potential moderates have to find their voices and voting support in order to  offer some solutions that are more palatable.

There are reasons why the UK has  not rushed to bomb in Syria as well as in Iraq. Mr Fallon has to recall that when the government last wanted Parliament to vote to support bombing, it was to support bombing against Assad in  the name of his opponents. I refused to do so then not   because I have any love of Assad’s brutal regime, but because I could not see a friendly democratic opposition who could rise up, win the war and offer a peaceful transition to better government. I was worried that harming Assad more could either give opportunity to extremists to take over, or might just prolong the war and bloodshed further.

Iraq and Syria are different, not least because the Iraqi government has asked us to help them by bombing ISIL, whereas Assad does not. The UK sees the Iraqi government as different in kind from the government of Syria. Legally the case is easier for Iraq than for Syria. Politically and morally the UK government is happier to help the government of Iraq than the government of Syria.

In  other ways they are similar. Both countries contain entrenched warring factions. Both have terrorist problems not just from ISIL but also from groups like Al Qaeda and Jabhat al Nusra. Both are split between Sunni and Shia groups. Both have Kurdish areas where the people want an independent state.

The best the UK could offer might be to seek to lead a very difficult initiative to get the forces and factions on the ground and the great and regional powers circling the two conflicts to sit down and discuss borders, systems of government, and who is best equipped to lead. Russia’s intervention is clearly trying to move the forces in Assad’s favour in Syria, not something the west welcomes. The longer the west delays in seeking a negotiated solution, the worse the position on the ground may become.

Poverty is a scourge which always needs fighting. I spoke about this on Monday. I was pleased to see the Prime Minister dedicate himself to an all out assault on poverty yesterday.  Poverty is relative as well as absolute. The west has long since gone beyond making sure people have the basics for life – enough food to survive, a few clothes and shelter. Our welfare systems are designed to let people afford  some of the benefits of the rich society around them in addition to some absolute minimum. The political argument is over how much should people enjoy from benefit payments, who should qualify for benefits,  and what is the best way of encouraging and helping more people into work, and then into better paid work.

In my speech to the Conference fringe meeting I sketched a small  society. Nine people each earned £20,000 a year. The average earnings of the community was £20,000, and there was no inequality. Total earnings were £180,000. A very well paid CEO of a multinational decided he wished to join this community, bringing his income of £820,000 a year. The socialist was against his arrival, as it would generate a huge jump in inequality.

After his arrival the average earnings of the community leapt from £20,000 to £100,000. Inequality shot up from zero, to the highest paid earning 41 times the lowest. The community  now had someone to be jealous of. The total earnings of the community reached £1 million.

Surely, however, the community should welcome his arrival. It would immediately mean the community could collect around £500,000 or more  of additional income, capital and sales taxes from the new arrival, to spend on the  existing community members and their needs. It would allow them to find new markets for their products and services, or to gain higher paid employment by working for the new arrival. Far from the new arrival being bad news, he would generate more growth  and allow the people on £20,000 a year each to earn more and to enjoy more public spending than they could afford for themselves. The inequalities need to be looked at on a post tax basis, not a pre tax basis, and need to take into account the impact of the spending by the more affluent on the incomes of the less affluent.

Poverty is the problem to tackle vigorously. Inequality is very bad if it comes about by the poor getting poorer. If inequality rises because more rich people decide to live here, it can provide money for higher living standards for all.

Mrs May has travelled a long way since 2002 and her modernising  agenda. More recently she asked the Conservstive party to vote to sacrifice criminal justice powers to the EU when we had no need to do so.

Yesterday she posed as a resolute fighter against the EU having power and influence over our borders and migration policy, and warned that allowing too much migration into the UK was damaging to our society.

Mrs May is the senior Minister charged with the duty of getting net inward migration down to tens of thousands from the current level in excess of 300,000 a year. This is a good and popular policy. I am glad she is taking it seriously.

 

It it happens to be remarkably similar to the policy offered by the Coalition government in the last Parliament, when Mrs May was also the responsible senior Minister. Maybe it was too difficult to do with Lib Dems using a veto on measures required to achieve it. Now she is freed of that problem, what we want to hear from Mrs May is the practical steps that she is taking to achieve the policy aim. We do not need dramatic language or warnings. We need her to preside over a harmonious and successful society, and to find fair and effective ways of carrying out her prime policy goal.

I  suspect she knows that we do need to regain control over migration from the EU to fulfil the policy objective.  Her new anti EU rhetoric needs to share with us  how she intends to get back lost powers over our borders from within the EU and how she is contributing to Mr Cameron’s renegotiation. I wish her well with that endeavour.

At the Politeia meeting last night on Stay or Leave we ended up debating sovereignty. Most of us wish to restore or reassert UK sovereignty. If the UK people and their Parliament want to change a law or control our borders, or decide how much to tax and spend we need to be free to do so. None of that is possible under the present Treaties.

 

Some argued that the UK remains sovereign. They pointed out that the EU only has power in the UK thanks to the 1972 European Communities Act. What Parliament granted to the EU it could take away. Clearly having a referendum on whether to stay in the EU is the act of a sovereign country. If we vote to leave then leave we can and leave we shall. We can leave by repealing the 1972 Act.

The problem is if the UK does not wish to exercise this power, at what point does the power cease to exist? At what point are we so dominated by European Treaty law and by EU regulations and directives that we can no longer claim to be sovereign? At what point would seeking the amendment or repeal of the 1972 Act cease to be possible, as we were so bound in by EU laws?

The danger is the EU already has a very different view of our legal position to our view of it. They see us as subject to the superior law of the treaties and European Court. Re asserting sovereignty comes down to a question of political will. Either the government has to show it in its renegotiation, or the British people have to show it in, the referendum. If we leave it too long we will discover our sovereignty is no more, and the EU can control us by court judgements and new laws.

I wish to hear today an optimistic message from Conference. Conservatives must use this period in office to promote greater opportunity and prosperity.

To do so requires lower taxes. People should keep more  of what they earn, and more of what they make by venturing their savings.

Lower tax rates on income and gains will also yield more tax revenue to help those in need. the state should be generous to the disabled, and to the elderly who need care.

To do so requires us both to build more homes and to limit inward migration. House prices are too high and rents too dear in places around the country and especially in London.

To do so requires more gas fuelled power stations providing more reliable and cheaper energy.

To do so requires a transport policy that makes it easier to get work by car or by train, with more commuter rail capacity and more road capacity.

 

I go to Conference to further my campaigns for these improvements.