EU Referendum and EU Reform (EUC Report) — House of Lords, 2016-06-15
Topic: Immigration
Frank Ashcroft Judd (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, like others, I thank most warmly the members of the committees whose reports we are discussing. I particularly thank the leadership of those committees. The noble Lord, Lord Boswell, made a fine, outstanding, balanced and telling introduction to this debate. I have been privileged to serve on a Select Committee under the chairmanship of the noble Earl, Lord Selborne. I remember and treasure that experience because he was a particularly effective chair, not least because of his open-mindedness and his firm views about where the committee should be going Those of us who come down in favour of remaining, as I heavily do, must not run away from the realities that surround us in society as a whole. There are real anxieties, however well or ill-founded, among the people of Britain. I shall pick two which in our future in the Union, which I hope we will have, we must take very seriously. The first is not so often expressed, but I am certain it is there. It is resentment at what people see as elitism in the working of the community, an arrogant bureaucracy which is, for many people, underlined by its very expertise. They do not feel involved in that expertise or relate to it, and therefore it can come across, however unfortunately and however far it may not be true, as a kind of institutional arrogance. What is more, those of us who have been caught up—and I was a Minister working on European affairs way back in the 1970s—become part of that in club. We will have to tackle that issue resolutely in our future in the Union. It is unfortunate that we ever moved away from indirectly elected assemblies, as they then were, because with the large impersonal Parliament we have, there is a tendency for it to be remote from the people, not to have to take as seriously as it should the real issues and anxieties being debated in member countries and their Parliaments and to breed national Parliaments that do not have a feeling of responsibility for European success. From that standpoint, it was sad that we did not remain with an indirectly elected assembly The other big issue has hardly been mentioned in today’s debate. It is immigration. I live in Cumbria. All the social surveys done in Cumbia find that it is one of, if not the, counties with the smallest amount of immigration. They also find that it is one of the counties with the highest rate of anxiety and prejudice about immigration. That is interesting. National Parliaments and Governments have been responsible for greatly neglecting the realities of how immigration works. We have not been giving priority to the housing, schools, hospitals and infrastructure of the areas in which the majority of immigrants settle, and therefore existing issues of deprivation, the unequal provision of services and the rest become underlined. We should also help with positive social policies on integration and on how people can be helped with language and, let us face it, behaviour to become part of the traditions and realities of the society in which they are living If we are speaking of immigration, the point that must be made very firmly is that anything we are encountering and the pressures we see today are small compared to what is going to happen. It is certain that with climate change and the other issues, not least the associated political problems that will arise from them, we will see the issue of immigration growing all the time. Let us remember that countries such as Lebanon and Jordan already have migrant populations that almost equal the size of the population of the country concerned. We will have challenges ahead I have said before in this House that I am not ashamed of putting this as a father and grandfather, although I think it is true for our generation too. The overriding reality is that whether we like it or not or may wish it were not the case—I happen to enjoy it—we are part of a totally interdependent world. That cannot be escaped. It is true economically, in terms of security and increasingly in terms of health and in almost every dimension of life that one can think of. The challenge to us as politicians in various countries is to find a way of meeting that challenge of interdependence and a means of governance that can make a success of an interdependent community rather than turning into a frightened, paralysed international society. What worries me is that within so much of the Brexit debate there are—I am sorry to put this bluntly—all the manifestations of insecurity and inadequacy Do we want a Britain that is self-confident, outward-looking, sees and accepts the challenges and says, "It’s exciting and fulfilling to meet those challenges", or do we want an introspective society frightened of the world and becoming, in its language and in other ways, increasingly aggressive in its defensiveness—a kind of raft floating out into the Atlantic, almost sinking under the weight of the missiles, defence systems and bureaucracies that will then become necessary? I want to belong, and I want my children to be able to belong, to a self-confident, outward-looking Britain that sees itself as part of the world, sees its challenges and says, "We are determined to play our full part in meeting those". Of course Europe is not the total solution—after all, the size of the issues we face is global—but it is a very good starting point for playing a full part, together in Europe, in the wider world.