It is time to give the British people a mature debate on immigration
We need to talk about immigration – as a nation, as a society and as policymakers. And it needs to happen in a mature way; neither pandering to the “Britain’s full up” brigade, nor those claiming that there isn’t a nurse with a British accent left in the country. It is a discussion I want the Conservative Party to lead, because this isn’t about slogans on mugs or Breaking Point posters; this is about the need for a rational discussion around economic growth, workforce planning, the capacity of public services, societal change and public consent.
It is also to understand the intensely personal nature of the debate. One in eight people living in the UK was born outside our borders and one in 12 current residents are not UK nationals. That’s 8.6 million husbands, wives, friends, workmates and neighbours who have moved to the UK from somewhere else. When we talk about this issue, we are talking about a huge number of lives. So as we have difficult – but necessary – debates on how we manage borders in the future, let us not forget that behind discussions of numbers and rules and criteria, there lie people and homes and families.
It is important to get this right. It is important to the country in terms of shaping the sort of nation we want to be, but it matters to political parties, too. Those 8.6 million people represent a huge number of voters.
As Conservatives, we have also to acknowledge that many of those voting groups we need to reconnect with – younger voters, those in urban areas – are more likely to be either immigrants themselves or have a number of non-british nationals within their family or social groups. So how do we make a Conservative case for immigration? For a start, we could get the message out more clearly that there is nothing so Conservative as pulling your loved ones close and striving to build a better future for your family, which is what so many immigrants do.
The Conservative Party I know is optimistic in spirit and internationalist in outlook. For me, there are two really important principles on how we approach immigration. Any system needs to have public trust, and businesses need to have people with the skills they require to succeed and grow. For trust, there needs to be transparency as well as a proper explanation of the impact net migration will have.
Under the last Labour government, net annual immigration to the UK quadrupled. Taken collectively, 2.2 million people came to settle – more than twice the population of Birmingham. Housing, urban growth, public service provision were all affected. Following the financial crash of 2008, the UK labour market was on the slide with unemployment rising to 2.5 million, or eight per cent of the population – the highest rate since 1996. By 2010, pollsters reported that immigration was consistently a top concern of voters.
Since then, of course, the British government has failed to hit its self-imposed “tens of thousands” target in any year. Brexit is a big reset button and should – in theory – make that much easier to do so. But we have to ask whether the target continues to be the right one? At just 4.5 per cent, unemployment is currently at its lowest level since 1975 and, with the country on the road to full employment, potential for growth is facing ever greater limitations.
The dependency ratio is growing, too. There is a common misconception that during a person’s working life, they “pay in” to a national pension pot, which then gets drawn upon when they retire. This is not the case. Today’s pensioners are supported by today’s workers. Those workers will, in turn, have their pensions paid by the generation that comes after them, and so on. In Scotland the number of pensioners is due to soar by 28 per cent over the next 25 years, while the number of workers is set to rise by only one per cent. It is clear that if we want Britain’s economy to grow, in order to increase the tax receipts that fund our public services, we need to take action.
Partly, this is addressed by upskilling the existing workforce and one of the criminally overlooked sections of the Conservatives’ UK manifesto was the transformative commitment to technical education. But alone it will not solve the issue of an ageing population, nor will it address the dependency ratio.
The great problem is that the two principles of our immigration policy – public trust and business need for skilled foreign workers – appear to be in conflict. But they don’t need to be. According to the pollster Comres, READ MORE at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion only 24 per cent of British adults think that international students are immigrants. More than 90 per cent say international students should be able to work in the UK for a period of time after they have completed their study.
So let’s start there. If people don’t think that students should be included in the net migration numbers, let’s take them out. Currently, students can secure a post-study work visa if they secure a graduate-level job within three months of graduating. Should that timescale be extended?
Let’s also bring in business to help with the upskilling of its own workforce and to engage more fully with the content of courses provided by further and higher education. Only by demonstrating investment in the UK workforce can we reassure the British people that their prospects are not being damaged by people from outside the UK coming here to work.
Neither of the major parties of government has sought to have a meaningful and sustained discussion with the public about the merits and drawbacks of immigration. Since there will always be immigration and emigration, we Conservatives must start – and sustain – that conversation. Instead of the political discourse treating immigration as a problem to be solved let’s treat it as what it is – a multifaceted issue that requires proper examination and consideration.
Immigration has changed Britain hugely. I believe it has changed it for the better, but undoubtedly there are people that feel that they have been left behind. The time for easy slogans is over. Let’s treat the British public like the grown ups they are and have the mature conversation we need.
Ruth Davidson is leader of the Scottish Conservatives