Exiting the EU and Workers’ Rights — House of Commons, 2016-11-07
Topic: Immigration
Anna Mary Soubry (Conservative, Centre-right): Indeed. It is right that we in this place should assist the Government in determining our objectives—our underlying principles. I want our Government to go into the negotiations wanting us to stay a member of the single market, with all that that entails. They might not be able to achieve that, but they need some guiding principles and I want that to be one of them This Government have a proud record of defending the rights of workers. It is the Conservative party that has restored our economy, which is the foundation of everything else that we do. This is the party that is seeing employment going upwards and the number of people on jobseeker’s allowance going down. It is this party that could claim responsibility—effectively, by virtue of our economic policies—for that huge rise in employment, which means more jobs. If we really want to help workers in our country, we should make sure that they have good, safe, sustainable employment. I am also proud that it is this party that not only introduced the national living wage, but has taken so many millions of low-paid workers out of taxation. There is far more that can be done to protect the rights of workers. I completely agree that conditions in places such as Sports Direct are totally unacceptable. I wish the local Member of Parliament had raised the matter in this place considerably sooner. I am delighted that our Prime Minister has made it clear that she takes the firm view that among her priorities are workers’ rights, and responsibility among businesses for how they employ people and protect their rights. For what it is worth, I agree that we should have workers on the boards of businesses It is important to talk about British people’s rights to free movement and travel so that they may go to other countries in the EU and work. Immigration—migration of labour—is a two-way process. Undoubtedly, our economy benefits greatly from the fact that people come here, whether they are low-skilled, no-skilled, middling skilled or high-skilled. We benefit from them coming to our country and working in our businesses and industry. We would be lost without them. When constituents of mine say, "We want less immigration. We want to send these people home"—that is the tone of the debate that is breaking out in our country—I say to them in quite robust tones, as the House may imagine, "Who is going to do the jobs? Who is going to do the work?" If we look at those areas with the highest rates of employment, that is where there are more migrant workers, because they do the jobs that need to be done. This is a two-way process I hope that the Government will think carefully before they rush down a route that leads to over-reducing and over-curtailing the number of migrants coming into our country, for all the reasons that are not the subject of this debate. Many hundreds of thousands of British people have the right to go and work freely in the EU. I think that that right is worthy of being protected This debate is not the most important of all those that we shall have when we consider and, more importantly, decide how we leave the European Union. I do not know who chooses the topics—[Interruption.] It is the Government. May I gently suggest to the Government that we should have real debates about the real difficulties, the real dilemmas and the need to make sure that we get the right guiding principles as we leave the European Union There is one last thing, which is very important. We talk about the 17 million people who voted leave, but we are in real danger in our country if we forget the more than 16 million people who did not vote to leave. At the moment, they feel forgotten and marginalised. Some of them feel bullied, threatened and intimidated on Twitter and other social media, and that is not acceptable. The job of all of us now is to bring people together and to move forward, not to reheat and rehash all the arguments we have had. We must come together, respect all points of view and move forward as we leave the EU.