Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-09-30
Topic: Labor
Robin Granville Hodgson (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I support this amendment, as the House would expect, but before I get there, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, threw down a challenge and I had better get to that first. I am pleased to be able to tell him that I paid for every single bit of that pamphlet. Every single envelope, stamp, and bit of printing was paid for by me and I am happy to share the receipts and information with him if he wishes. The only time that I used any of the facilities of the House was to distribute the pamphlet, a copy of which went to every Member of your Lordships’ House and every Member of the House of Commons I support the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Green, and my noble friends Lady Neville-Rolfe and Lord Horam. I do not want to go over all that again now. In my remarks on Amendment 6, which we have just dealt with, I explained how employers have become addicted to cheap labour from overseas because it is in their commercial interests to do so. As a result, we have become thoughtless and careless about the employment opportunities for our settled population. We have young people locked into zero-hours contracts. We have members of minority communities locked into low-paid, low-prospect jobs. Increasingly, and really seriously because they are a larger part of our population, the over-50s find it hard to get jobs even as we raise the retirement age. A 2018 House of Commons report revealed that 1 million people over 50 would like to work or work more; 14% of 50 year-olds are out of work and 35% of 60 year-olds are out of work. Removing the resident labour market test opens them up to an even greater degree of unemployment risk As many noble Lords have said, as the impact of the pandemic makes itself felt, all these problems will get worse. How do we protect and look after our settled population in these circumstances, particularly since these same economic pressures will make employers ever keener to game the system and access cheaper labour from overseas? The first line of protection would have been a cap but we are not going to have it because my noble friend the Minister has told us so. This amendment is a second line of protection, as explained by the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, since the resident labour market test prevents the grosser excesses of undercutting wages by recruiting from overseas I apologise to the House for not having been present in Committee, but I have read the debates and, following a point made by my noble friend Lord Horam, I was really astonished by a comment made by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, at col. 843 of Hansard, about the trade unions. Why every union at the Trades Union Congress is not down here supporting this amendment as a way of helping and protecting the working man they seek to represent, absolutely astonishes me. Now, that is for the party opposite to sort out The strains that our society will face do not just come from the pandemic. They will come also from the impact of the fourth industrial revolution—from artificial intelligence and robotics, not often mentioned in our debate so far. In those circumstances, policies that will likely result in close to 1,200 people arriving on an average day cannot be sensible A key determinant of a person’s self-confidence and sense of self-worth is, undoubtedly, purposeful and secure work. Professor David Blanchflower said in his book Not Working, published last year: "Unemployment hurts and it hurts a lot." The amendment, if the Government accepted it, would help reduce but, sadly, not eliminate that level of hurt, which is why I support it.