argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-13
Topic: Immigration
Catherine Elizabeth West (Labour, Centre-left): Will my right hon. Friend expand on how many prosecutions there have been in relation to minimum wage regulations and so on in areas of migration where there is clearly an issue in relation to the depressing of wages? How proactive have the Government been when employers have not adopted best practice?
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-13
Topic: Immigration
Ian Austin (Labour, Centre-left): The shadow Home Secretary is completely right to say that the costs and benefits of immigration are not shared across the country. Communities such as ours do not attract many millionaire American bankers, French City traders or German hedge fund managers; we have a completely different sort of immigration that puts pressure on public services. Does he agree that the benefits must be shared equally across the country to enable such communities to provide the housing, employ the teachers and all the rest of it so that we can cope with those pressures?
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-13
Topic: Immigration
Andrew Murray Burnham (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The challenge is to capture the benefits and then have rules that make immigration work for everybody. Let me give him two practical suggestions that I have put forward. First, I believe that we need changes to the EU free movement rules, as part of the renegotiation talks, to stop the undercutting of wages and protect the going rate for skilled workers. Secondly, I believe that unspent EU structural funds, which this Government are not drawing down, should be made available through a rapid migration fund to areas, such as his and mine, that face the biggest pressures on public services, for example to employ extra primary school teachers and GPs. At the moment those areas get no help in dealing with those pressures, so no wonder they feel neglected.
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-13
Topic: Immigration
Andrew Murray Burnham (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. Overall, refugees tend to be younger and not to have dependants. Consequently, the figures I gave at the beginning, which show that they net contribute, rather than take out of the public purse, must be borne in mind when we engage in a debate of this kind.
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-13
Topic: Immigration
Andrew Murray Burnham (Labour, Centre-left): I will make some progress before giving way again As our reasoned amendment makes clear, we are prepared to support practical, proportionate and evidence-based measures that will achieve the stated aims of tackling illegal immigration and illegal working.
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-13
Topic: Other
Andrew Murray Burnham (Labour, Centre-left): I am afraid that the right hon. Lady has not learnt the lessons of her experience in Manchester last week, when she made a number of assertions without having the evidence to support them. She has got the evidence that overall there is a net contribution—she just quoted it. She, more than anyone else in this House, should stick to the evidence at all times and not resort to rhetoric.
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-13
Topic: Immigration
Andrew Murray Burnham (Labour, Centre-left): I will give way in a moment, after I have made some progress I have said that we will support measures to create a director of labour market enforcement, building on legislation passed by the previous Labour Government, particularly the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004. We also support many of the measures set out in part 3 of the Bill to improve enforcement and equip immigration officers with all the necessary powers to do their difficult job in a more complex and changing world. I am pleased to see the Government acting to address the weak points in the UK border, particularly at smaller regional airports and seaports. We support the measures set out in part 6 to tackle problems before people arrive in the UK by extending the reach of the Border Force into UK territorial waters.
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-13
Topic: Immigration
Andrew Murray Burnham (Labour, Centre-left): I am not responsible for all Labour party merchandise. I did not purchase one of those mugs and I am not particularly proud of them. However, if the hon. Lady is saying that there should be no controls on immigration, I am afraid that we will have to part company on that, because there do need to be firm and fair rules to ensure that our immigration system works in the public interest.
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-13
Topic: Immigration
Andrew Murray Burnham (Labour, Centre-left): I was surprised. A fact-check was issued on that very point, and it is quite clear that the central estimates in the paper by UCL’s Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration suggests that European immigrants have made a net contribution of around £20 billion, and immigrants outside Europe make a small net contribution of around £5 billion—[Interruption.] The Home Secretary seems to dispute this, but she got into trouble last week because she did not have balance in her speech. If she is not careful she is going to develop a reputation for lacking balance on this issue.
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-13
Topic: Civil Rights
Andrew Murray Burnham (Labour, Centre-left): No, I am going to make some progress The other measure that we support in the Bill is the requirement for all front-line public service staff to speak fluent English, which of course is a sensible proposal. However, I believe that, in legislating on these matters, we all have a responsibility to bear in mind at all times that this is the most difficult and sensitive of policy areas. Unlike other issues that we debate in this House, this one has the potential to cause real harm and strife in our communities We will support the Government when they get the balance right, but I want to be clear about what we will not do. We will not support legislation that is introduced in haste or that is not backed up by clear evidence. That is the problem with the Bill. Parts of it appear to have been drafted on the same beer mat and in the same pub as the Home Secretary’s speech to the Conservative party conference in Manchester. It is legislation driven by a desire to be seen to be doing something and to get headlines.
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-13
Topic: Immigration
Andrew Murray Burnham (Labour, Centre-left): I think that is where the Home Secretary is beginning to cut an isolated figure, as she did last week at her party’s conference. I understand that her own Cabinet colleagues are making the same argument to her—the Chancellor of the Exchequer got dangerously close to making the same argument on his recent trip to China. The hon. Lady is right. If we are looking for an area where there is economic benefit to the country in the long term, it is absolutely that of welcoming to this country students who will then commit themselves to the country for the rest of their working lives The critical response to the Home Secretary’s speech last week did not come just from the usual suspects on the Labour Benches. The Daily Telegraph called it "awful, ugly, misleading, cynical and irresponsible", while the Institute of Directors, no less, dismissed it as "irresponsible rhetoric and pandering to anti-immigration sentiment"— serious words. They were not alone. The public can spot any attempt to play politics with this issue from a million miles away, and that is why the Home Secretary got the reaction she did. She claimed in Manchester that immigration was undermining social cohesion. I put it to her that legislating in haste without clear evidence and bringing forward half-baked, divisive measures is far more likely to do precisely that.
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-13
Topic: Immigration
Barry Strachan Gardiner (Labour, Centre-left): The shadow Home Secretary will know that my constituency was the first in the UK to have more people voting at the last election who were born outside the UK but now had the right to live and vote here. The panic that these measures is causing among landlords in my constituency, and the fears that they have because of the uncertainties of this Bill, will mean widespread discrimination for incoming students and other people who landlords fear may get them into trouble. They simply will not rent these properties. That is a major problem for this Bill and for good community relations in this country.
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-13
Topic: Immigration
Andrew Murray Burnham (Labour, Centre-left): Justice does not accept the assurances that were given by the Home Secretary. I can therefore tell the hon. Lady that we will co-operate with her in Committee, if she takes part in it, to get those assurances into the Bill, because she is right to call for them Let me turn to human rights and civil liberties. The Bill extends the power of the Executive in a number of troubling ways. Part 4, as the Home Secretary said, proposes a major extension of the "deport first, appeal later" approach from foreign national offenders to all human rights claims. What case has the Home Office made to persuade Members that it can safely be given such sweeping powers? It has hardly covered itself in glory over the years with the speed or quality of its decision making. Let us remember that this is a Department that today has a backlog of over 300,000 immigration cases—a Department where up to 50% of the initial decisions that it makes are found to be wrong on appeal. With these figures in mind, are we really ready to give the Home Secretary much greater powers to remove migrants before their appeals have been determined? Again, the Government are asking us to legislate before the impact of the last extension has been fully evaluated. The Equality and Human Rights Commission says that, by denying people the ability to be present at their own appeal, the Bill is potentially in breach of articles 6, 8 and 13 of the European convention on human rights I ask all colleagues on both sides of the House to think, before they vote tonight, of the genuine cases they have dealt with and the people they have got to know at their surgeries whom they have rightly helped to stay here in challenging a Home Office decision. They should think of them before they legislate to allow people in a similar position to be removed without being able to attend their own appeal.
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-13
Topic: Immigration
Wesley Paul William Streeting (Labour, Centre-left): I can give my right hon. Friend exactly such an example. One of the many cases my office is dealing with at the moment is that of a Sri Lankan Tamil whose application has been refused and who bears the mental and physical scars of torture. His application is now on appeal. If the Home Secretary’s proposals had been in place, he would already have been returned to Sri Lanka, where, given the human rights situation there, his life would potentially be at risk. I cannot support those measures and I do not understand how the Home Secretary can propose them.
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-13
Topic: Immigration
Andrew Murray Burnham (Labour, Centre-left): I think that in their heart of hearts a lot of Government Members are not able to support the measures, because they have seen in their surgeries cases similar to that mentioned by my hon. Friend. They will know people who would have been deported if this Bill had been in place and who would not have been able to exercise their legitimate right to be present in person at their own appeal. That is why my hon. Friend is right to say that this is wrong The Bill also extends the power of the Executive to override the independent decisions of the first-tier tribunal with regard to immigration bail. It also allows the Home Secretary to impose bail conditions, including Executive electronic tagging. That raises important issues about the rights of people in our judicial system, and it could undermine the independence of our courts. Again, what confidence has the Home Office given us that it can be trusted with those powers? There is evidence that, under the coalition Government between 2011 and 2014, £15 million was paid out in damages for unlawful detention and abuse of the powers the Home Office already has.
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-13
Topic: Other
Natascha Engel (Labour, Centre-left): Order. Before I call the SNP spokesperson, who will not be subject to a time limit, I must say that 33 Members wish to speak in the debate, which means that after he sits down there will be a limit of six minutes per speech. With that in mind, I call Stuart C. McDonald.
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-13
Topic: Immigration
Andrew Murray Burnham (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful for the spirit in which the hon. Gentleman has introduced his remarks and for what he has said. He talked about right to rent. Does he agree that, in the absence of any evidence from the Government on the pilot, we have to accept what has been produced by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants? As I said in my speech, its findings are extremely troubling. If we accept those findings, it is impossible to support the Bill tonight because of its potential to cause widespread discrimination against British citizens too.
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-13
Topic: Immigration
Gerald Bernard Kaufman (Labour, Centre-left): The Home Secretary made her notorious speech in Manchester just a few minutes from my constituency. Had she come down the road, she would have seen tens of thousands of people who came under the contemptuous label she uttered this afternoon: "these people". "These people", of whom there are tens of thousands in my constituency, originate from south Asia, east and west Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere. We are a city of diversity and integration, and the two go together The hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) referred to Romanians. Recently in my constituency, an organisation has been set up by people of Romanian origin to integrate further into this country. Next Saturday in my constituency, we will be celebrating Nigerian independence day. This is a country of diversity that ever since the Romans has had people of overseas origin becoming part of its functioning. The Bill attacks them. It is an attack on anybody who is not what might be referred to as a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant I got a letter from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs about a constituent who had been asked to clarify his Christian name. To anyone of any intelligence, the man was a Muslim. That kind of approach happens under this Government: it has never happened before, even under previous Conservative Governments. The Bill creates a new subterranean, pseudo police force to carry out Government policy without being members of the Government’s staff Landlords have been recruited, whether they want to be or not—the National Landlords Association has issued a document expressing considerable resentment—to impose a law that they had no say in creating. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees says that landlords are less likely to rent to those with foreign accents or names, or those who do not possess a British passport. That is my parents. They never learned to speak English fluently; they never got British passports —yet they were part of this country and part of a community. Landlords and bank staff are being turned into Government agents. Under this Bill, we have a new bail system that has nothing to do with judges or magistrates and nothing to do with the law—except the law created by this Government The national health service wants to bring people from India to be nurses in Manchester, but they cannot get the certificates because the process is so opaque. People coming here as refugees are scared stiff for their lives—something that, thank God, we in this country are not—and are subjected to all kinds of interrogation.
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-13
Topic: Immigration
Andrew Murray Burnham (Labour, Centre-left): As well as providing him with a little more time, I would like my right hon. Friend to consider the effect on his constituency and mine of the changes to the immigration rules that the Government want to introduce with respect to earnings. This could force a lot of nurses currently working in the NHS to leave the country. Nurse training has been cut and the NHS is over-reliant on agency staff; now the Government are about to force thousands of nurses to go back. Does he agree with me that we need a rethink and a change of heart on this issue?
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-13
Topic: Immigration
Gerald Bernard Kaufman (Labour, Centre-left): When I go, as I no doubt shortly shall, for my flu jab, the person who gives it to me would not be regarded by many people who support this Bill as British, but services are being provided for people in this country. The work situation is going to be made more difficult, with potential employees afraid that they will be prosecuted for recruiting people illegally I do not know whether the Home Secretary went to any of the many wonderful Asian restaurants when she was in Manchester. My constituency has a "curry mile", which is one of the best places to go to in the whole of the world for an overseas diet. I wonder how many of them will be under suspicion by the Home Office trying to decide, minutiae by minutiae, whether people are the "right kind" of British, who seem to be the only kind of British that they want to welcome into this country As the TUC says, huge poverty will be created by this Government. The children of asylum seekers will live in houses for which the amount of money being made available is £30 and a little bit more. I am proud of this country; I love this country. I do not know, however, whether the Government who are introducing this Bill love the country that Britain really is rather than the country into which they would like to transform it.
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-13
Topic: Immigration
Ian Austin (Labour, Centre-left): In April 1939, a 10-year-old Jewish boy from a place called Ostrava in what was then Czechoslovakia was put on a train by his mum and teenage sisters. He never saw them again; they were killed during the war He was the only member of his family able to leave. He arrived in the UK only able to speak three words of English but became the youngest grammar school head teacher in the country, and was honoured by the Queen with an MBE for his education and charity work. He adopted four children, of whom I am the second, so I know all about the benefits that immigration can bring to individuals, our communities and our country I also know that immigration is something many people are very worried about. Research from the Oxford Migration Observatory shows immigration has ranked in the top five issues for many years and has ranked as the top issue for our country in many of the most recent polls. There is no point in mainstream politicians trying to ignore this or refusing to listen to people. It is our job to listen to people on this and come up with fair and reasonable ways of addressing their concerns. It is when we fail to do so that reasonable people with legitimate concerns turn to UKIP or, in the past, the BNP So I have worked hard to listen to local people in Dudley and I have held dozens of community meetings over the last couple of years on this issue. The truth is that most people are reasonable, fair and pragmatic when it comes to immigration and other contentious issues. Detailed research from British Future shows most people wanting fair controls on immigration but not a closed border. Mainstream politicians should be working in their communities to come up with fair and reasonable solutions to tackle exploitation, the undercutting of wages or some of the other challenges presented by immigration That is not, as some have said, "trying to out-UKIP UKIP". It is being part of a mainstream Labour party that takes the concerns and worries that ordinary people have seriously. The vast majority of the hundreds of people who came to my meetings on immigration and the many thousands who completed the detailed surveys I distributed agree that we should welcome people who come to Britain and work hard and contribute, and they agree that Britain has always provided a safe haven for people fleeing persecution abroad Because of that, I welcome plans to help to train the next generation of skilled workers here in Britain instead of hiring from abroad. Our proposals at the election would have required large firms to take on a local apprentice every time they took on a skilled foreign worker, so I think this should go further, but it is good that some funding from skilled worker visas will now be put towards apprenticeships.
Immigration Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-13
Topic: Immigration
Paul Christopher Blomfield (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, as he puts his finger on one of the crucial issues in the 2015 Act about which many of us have reservations and which needs to be addressed. That is exactly the point that I am making: unless we give migrants the confidence to come forward and whistleblow on exploitation we will weaken the position and strengthen the hands of the gangmasters. Sadly, the Bill as it stands will fail to meet the Prime Minister’s aspiration to prevent exploitation and to stop migrants undercutting British workers. I genuinely hope that the Minister, for whom I have high regard, will take on board the comments of those of us who worked constructively with the Government during the passage of the Modern Slavery Bill so that we do not undo its legacy.