Murnaghan Immigration Debate with Mark Reckless UKIP, Barbara Roche, former Labour Immigration Minister & Lord Bilimoria 8.03.15

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now immigration of course is one of the key issues of the upcoming election, everyone has a view on it and some politicians know exactly how to use it to their advantage but while lots of attention is given to the official figures, why don’t politicians want to talk it seems about illegal immigration?  Well I am joined now by UKIP MP, Mark Reckless, by the crossbench peer and Chairman of Cobra Beer, Lord Bilimoria and the former Labour Immigration Minister, Barbara Roche, she now chairs a cross party group called the Migration Matters Trust, very good to see you all, thank you all very much indeed for coming along.  Now let’s start with you Mark Reckless, we had those migration figures out and a lot of discussion about them being way, way above Mr Cameron and the Conservative’s target but of course they’d be even higher, one suspects, if you took into account illegal immigration.  By the very nature of it, we just don’t know how many illegal immigrants there are in the country.

MARK RECKLESS: You are absolutely right and I think there have been two particular problems that have led to greater illegal migration than we’d otherwise have.  The first is the lack of exit controls and it seems almost all politicians say we should have exit controls over people coming in and coming out but Labour removed those on people from outside the EU in 1998 and then some years later spent an enormous amount of money on an all-singing, all-dancing IT system which didn’t work to try and calculate and then the Conservative led government came in and instead of trying to make that work better, went into a sort of three years plus legal action against the provider which they then comprehensively lost and had to pay £400 million or so to their contractors.  So that’s why nothing happened, we need to deal with that.

DM: I want to go a bit wider, does something have to happen, why does it matter?  We’ll come back to you, Mark Reckless but Barbara Roche, the estimates are as I said in the introduction there, very hard to get figures on it, 400,000, 800,000, some surveys of food consumption in the UK say we seem to be supporting a population something over 70 million so it could be millions.  Does it matter how many illegal immigrants there are here?

BARBARA ROCHE: It’s a complex issue, I mean the first thing to say is that border control is very important, a mark of any state is that it controls its borders but the other thing to say is this is a complex issue because people’s status can change which is why this is a difficult subject.  So for example somebody comes here as a completely bone fide visitor, passes through control and then perhaps they overstay or somebody …

DM: Students, this is happening all the time.  

BARBARA ROCHE: Or visitors, it can be visitors, that changes.  

MARK RECKLESS: Because of the lack of border controls we don’t know when that changes.  

BARBARA ROCHE: Well maybe they overstay quite quickly and this has always been a problem.  

DM: But you were about to say it doesn’t really matter because then they stay.  

BARBARA ROCH: It does matter, of course it matters.  So they go from a situation where they come in perfectly validly and then it isn’t valid, that’s what sometimes makes the numbers so difficult.  Then of course there are international problems that we know about where we need much more international action to combat people smugglers and, more importantly, people traffickers who bring people into the country to exploit them and sometimes for criminal purposes so that is something that we do actually need proper international co-operation on.  

DM: Okay, Lord Bilimoria, does it matter that there are at least hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants in this country?  Is it damaging?  

LORD BILIMORIA: The issue here about immigration has suddenly become the number one of the top two issues being debated and I think for the wrong reasons and I’m sorry to say, Mark, you and your party have, and Tories have made immigration, the Home Secretary, have the rhetoric has been damaging because it posts a negative perception of all immigration and to me there is good immigration and there is bad immigration …

DM: Well I am focusing on bad immigration, is it bad immigration because it’s illegal?   

LORD BILIMORIA: Immigration has benefited our country, I think has helped us become the country that we are.  However the bad immigration which includes illegal immigration, of course we need to clamp down on that but the problem is the government hasn’t a clue.  If I were to challenge Theresa May, as you’ve just said, how many illegal immigrants are there in this country, she wouldn’t have a clue and one of the reasons Mark is absolutely right is we have not had exit checks.  I’ve been saying this time after time, in parliament and outside, bring back exit checks and I believe we should scan every passport, EU and non-EU, in and out, then we know who’s here, who’s left and who should be here and I know IT companies who would be ready to do that tomorrow.  

DM: So this is on the bad side, the way you’ve termed it Lord Bilimoria, of immigration, we haven’t quite pinned Barbara Roche down on it yet.  So Mark Reckless, you agree with that, what do you do about it then?  Do you have the vans going round not just with the billboards up – and what a success that was – saying go home, do you have the vans going round rounding them up and taking them to the borders?

MARK RECKLESS:  What you need is more and better enforcement and UKIP have said we will hire another two and a half thousand Border Force and Immigration staff and I think we need to be much more proactive in terms of enforcement and the police …   

DM: What will they do, burst into restaurants, collect the illegal workers and drive them to the shores?  

MARK RECKLESS: Well I think that sort of activity, subject to the law, is part of what they need to be doing but not just at restaurants, at places where people are gathering – and it’s well known by people in the trade – for cash in hand work, there should be enforcement there as well at addresses.  If someone overstays their visa, if we can actually go to their address when that was flagged, that would be very useful but it is also very important that we say actually the culture is to tackle this.  I was first asked on this programme today to debate with Nadhim Zahawi, the Conservative MP, who has pulled out and what he’s been putting forward as a member of the Prime Minister’s Policy Board is an amnesty for illegal immigration and that’s exactly what Boris Johnson has pushed as well.  

DM: I’m glad you mentioned that because they are clearly working in the economy in many cases, Barbara Roche, they can’t access the benefits system so what about offering amnesties and then tightening up the borders on the basis that if you don’t want to go the Mark Reckless route and send the vans out there collecting them, have an amnesty and then make sure the borders are tight enough and then it all works?  

BARBARA ROCHE: I think the difficulty with amnesties is that that’s fine but then you have something else and then you have to think about another amnesty so I think amnesties are quite difficult.  What is true is that all political parties, parties that have been in power, have had backlog clearances where they have, because of difficulties in processing have actually granted people stay.  

DM: So de facto?   

BARBARA ROCHE: Well after having done all the proper checks which is why what was very important when I was the Minister was actually to increase the resources so it is right of course that you do need proper resources, you do need obviously to make sure that you proper but fair enforcement, that that works properly and also what you also need to do is to give the resources to the men and women who are in the immigration service.  I spent a long time when I was the Minister at the airports, at Croydon, talking to our immigration staff who are there trying to do a very good job and …

DM: But they need a vast expansion.  Look, it’s a simple question Lord Bilimoria, as I see it you’ve got three options with illegal immigration: you ignore it as seems to have been happening for time immemorial; you regularise it and offer some kind of amnesty or you deport people.  

LORD BILIMORIA: This is talking about shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.  The first thing you do …  

DM: So what do you do now?  

LORD BILIMORIA: … is right now introduce those exit checks.  We’re an island, we’re very lucky and within Europe people can drive through …

DM: Do they get an amnesty?

LORD BILIMORIA: … so with illegal immigrants over here the worst thing about it is they are not operating, they are not paying their taxes, they’re not contributing to the economy as they should be.  If you have legal immigrants they contribute to our economy and the problem is, with these illegal immigrants we don’t know where they are and to victimise restaurants in that way is so unfair.  Indian food, my business, it’s a huge part of our business and the Indian restaurants feel victimised on this.  They have actually created food that the nation absolutely loves and here we are, we paint them with this brush and it’s wrong, it’s unfair.  

DM: So do you think they have been over-targeted, is that what is happening?   

LORD BILIMORIA: The number of complaints I’ve received, and these are restaurants who toil, they are entrepreneurs who strive, who work hard, who have struggled through the recession, create employment, contribute billions, 100,000 employees and then they get victimised.  That’s not fair.  

MARK RECKLESS: But it’s not the reason they are being targeted or victimised, as you put it, it’s quite often when there are raids on these restaurants then people are found who are here illegally who should not be here.  

LORD BILIMORIA: When you say quite often, absolutely not.  What I’m trying to say again is we are focusing on the wrong thing.  On the one hand you have got an industry – and this is just one example – which is contributing to the economy, generating employment, paying taxes, that’s what we should encourage. We should be stopping the illegal immigration.  Having vans going round, that is so wrong.  Even Nigel Farage said that’s going too far, you don’t do it that way.  

BARBARA ROCHE: Karan makes a good point, the point is that where you have legal migration, where people are paying taxes, making a contribution, we know one of the reasons why London has done so well is because of the migration that we have, it’s really the powerhouse, London and the south-east, of our economy so what we need to do is to take the heat out of this debate and have a sensible discussion where look at where is our skills gap, where do we need ….

DM: We are nearly out of time and you just wanted to make one last point.

MARK RECKLESS: We can’t do that within the European Union where unlimited numbers of unskilled labour are just allowed to come into our country.  We should have an Australian style points system where we have a fair non-discriminatory system, admit people on the basis of skills, cut back on the huge amount of immigration we’ve had both legal and illegal but still having people coming in with the skills we need with legal immigration.  

DM: Thank you all very much indeed, I’m afraid we are out of time.   Mark Reckless, Barbara Roche and Lord Bilimoria, thank you all very much indeed.