HC Deb 25 November 1970 vol 807 cc561-72

Again considered in Committee.

Question again proposed, That the Amendment be made.

Mr. Sharples

Those hon. Members who have been here and have listened to the debate throughout will know that it has been constructive and that the element of political controversy along party lines has not been apparent. At least, that was so until the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Cardiff, South-East, who had not been here for much of the time, made a most extraordinary party political speech, for reasons which, I suppose, must be apparent only to him. The whole content and nature of his speech was completely out of context in relation to the remainder of the debate, and that will be recognised not only on this side but on his own side as well among those of his hon. Friends who have been here and have heard the speeches.

The debate has had three main themes. First, though this has not taken most of the attention, the Committee has discussed the situation existing under the law as it stands at present. That is what the debate really ought to have been about, because we are not discussing future legislation. We are discussing an expiring law which must be renewed, if only for a comparatively short time.

The second main theme of the debate has been the situation of United Kingdom passport holders in East Africa. The third theme has been, so to speak, a preliminary Second Reading debate upon a Bill which has not yet been presented to Parliament.

My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary referred in opening to the broad principles of that Bill and to the proposals which we put forward at the time of the general election. I have listened, as my right hon. Friend will have listened, to the various views advanced about the broad principles of the Bill, but it is not my intention tonight to go further into the arguments which will be considered at the proper time, that is, when the Bill comes up for Second Reading.

I come now to some of the specific points raised by hon. and right hon. Members on both sides. The right hon. Gentleman for Middlesbrough, East (Mr. Bottomley) spoke of the valuable work done by the Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration. I congratulate both the right hon. Member and my hon. Friend the Member for Dorking (Sir G. Sinclair) on the very useful paper produced under the auspices of the Runnymede Trust. It is a most valuable document, which deserves careful study. It will be of great assistance to those wishing to study further not only the work of the Select Committee but the very valuable evidence which was presented to it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Fowler) and the hon. Member for Hackney, Central (Mr. Clinton Davis), who has apologised to me because he has had to leave the Chamber, referred to the work of the police in immigration control and the matters which they must follow up in connection with immigrants already here. I was very glad that the hon. Gentleman paid tribute to the work of the police in his constituency. I know that they have a very difficult time. My hon. Friend raised the question of the use of the police in making inquiries of immigrant sponsors. Evidence was presented to the Select Committee on this matter. There are very real difficulties in finding other agencies to make the inquiries. It has been suggested that the work should be undertaken by local authorities, but there are great difficulties about this. Apart from the attitude of the local authorities there are legal complications.

The hon. Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Merlyn Rees), who, unlike his right hon. Friend, made a constructive and thoughtful speech, and my hon. Friend the Member for Brierley Hill (Mr. Montgomery), referred to the question of illegal immigration and the evasion of controls. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary very rightly said that it would be absolutely wrong to overestimate the picture. He referred to certain figures which have been bandied about without, so far as I know, any basis. None the less, the whole Committee will agree that it is essential that we should deal effectively with illegal immigration and the evasion of immigration control. The police are reviewing their arrangements for doing this.

We are well aware that we should also look further afield and, besides tightening up the controls here, do what we can to stop illegal immigrants from setting out for these shores. This will involve approaches to a number of countries and those approaches are taking place.

We are also improving our arrangements to deal with evasion by persons admitted legally who attempt to stay here in breach of their conditions. For example, there has been quite a lot of Press publicity about charter flight passengers. Special steps are now taken to check up on visitors who arrive on charter flights but fail to embark on the return flight. A special record is made of their names and arrangements are made to, follow this up as quickly as possible, if necessary through the police.

We are also taking steps to verify the bona fides of prospective Commonwealth students, for whom the best guarantee of admission is always an entry certificate. As an aid to getting rid of those who overstay their allotted time, deportation provisions are now included in the Immigration Appeals Act, 1969.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Brierley Hill that those who trade on immigrants by bringing them here illegally, often at considerable cost to the immigrant who does not know what he is paying for, should be treated with the utmost severity of the law.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) raised the question of doctors, as he did in the article which he wrote in the Daily Telegraph and which I read with great interest yesterday. The position with regard to doctors is quite interesting. In 1967, a total of 2,031 B vouchers were issued for doctors and in 1968 the figure was 3,082. In July 1969 a limit on B vouchers for doctors of 2,000 per year was imposed by the last Government. Then in November, 1969, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman), then Secretary of State for Social Services, introduced new conditions for doctors wanting to practise in this country.

Under this scheme they had to have an attachment or produce evidence of a certain degree of competence before they were allowed to practise here. As a result of the introduction of these conditions there was and there is a pool of doctors requiring places under the attachment scheme. The policy has been under both Governments to give the places which are available for attachments to those who are already here. The result is that few places are now available for those wishing to come here to practise as doctors because the first priority in the attachment scheme, as I have said, is given to those already here. In the first nine months of 1970, a total of 317 vouchers were issued to doctors and it is unlikely that the total for the year will exceed 600.

The hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. David Steel) suggested that there had been some friction between the British and Indian Governments about the position of United Kingdom passport holders from East Africa. I assure him that this is not so. The 1968 agreement with India is working well and since that agreement thousands of people from East Africa—United Kingdom passport holders—have been admitted to India, and we are very grateful to the Indian Government for the attitude they are taking to this matter.

Mr. Steel

The point I was making was that I understood that there were some applications from among that number then to come to this country under the agreement we made with the Government of India. Can the hon. Gentleman tell us how many of them have applied and how many have been given permission to come from India? I think that this is where the friction has arisen.

Mr. Sharples

I am unable to give those figures, but I assure the hon. Gentleman that there is no friction between the British and Indian Governments on this matter.

The hon. Gentleman also asked for figures about those in East Africa who are wanting to come here. The authorised intake at present is 1,500 heads of families each year, or 6,000 including dependants. We and the previous Government have admitted more than 15,000 since the 1968 Act came into force and more than 50,000—and this is a figure which needs to be borne in mind—since the beginning of 1965. That includes those who came here before the restrictions under the 1968 Act came into force.

The estimated figure which I have been given of those United Kingdom passport holders who are still in East Africa varies between 150,000 and 200,000, but we do not know how many of those will wish eventually to come here. There are at present nearly 9,000 heads of households, mostly in Kenya and Uganda, in the voucher queue and this means, taking into account the families who go with them, that there are at present some 30,000 people waiting to come here. It is a fact that the queue for vouchers is substantially greater now than it was a year ago. In this connection I cannot add to what my right hon. Friend said about the future. As the House knows, we are reviewing the situation.

The hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles also referred to the European Commission on Human Rights at Strasbourg. What has happened is not exactly as he put it. The Commission decided to admit for further consideration, on their legal and factual merits, applications by a number of United Kingdom passport holders from East Africa who alleged that their treatment under the 1968 Act constituted a violation of certain articles of the European Convention on Human Rights. I must emphasise that holding a case to be admissible, as the European Commission has, does not prejudge the factual decision on its merits. The Commission is still a long way from such a decision and it should not be assumed that its decision will necessarily go one way or the other.

Persons from East Africa are admitted on a quota, including dependants, of some 6,000 a year, and here I should like to refer particularly to queue jumpers. They are people who come here and who jump the queue illegally and then complain that they are not allowed to bring their families with them. This is not a situation of our making. If a queue jumper tries to beat the queue he deprives another man, who may legitimately be waiting for a voucher, of the chance of coming here and bringing his family with him, and this is something which should be recognised.

Mr. Steel

Does the hon. Gentleman accept what I and others have said about the destitution which queue waiters are suffering in East Africa? Does he accept that it is not their fault and that they are the victims of the actions of the two Governments concerned?

Mr. Sharpies

Certainly I do. We must recognise that there is destitution among certain people in this community. But this has been brought about by a racial policy which would be deplored in this country and which is practised by certain East African Governments.

I now turn to the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell). He has produced a projection of the speech that he made in this debate last year and has carried forward the projection of his assessment of future population statistics. No one would wish to minimise the work and research that he must have put into the preparation of those figures and estimates. I would certainly not argue figures or projections with him this evening.

My own inclination is to treat all projections, whether official or unofficial and however carefully prepared—there have been projections by a number of different bodies—with some doubt. I have looked back at the questions and the answers on this subject over recent years, and I find that both have varied. One of the difficulties is the number of different starting points. There is the basic data from which any examination must start. My right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford said that the accounting system was deficient. I would not disagree, but so are the assumptions upon which calculations of future trends can be made.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West referred to his assessment last year of the situation in Birmingham as a grotesque underestimate. That illustrated the difficulties that he may have had in making his assessment on the basis of the data and the assumptions available to us today. He referred to the interesting paper produced by Mr. Clifford Thomas, but he again said that the assumptions which square with the facts at present may not be relevant to a future situation—and there is the real difficulty of the assumptions from which we start.

On the data, we may be helped when we have the results of the 1971 census. For the first time this will include information on the country of birth of a person's parents. The assumptions, however, involve so many imponderables that I doubt whether we shall ever get full agreement on them. But there are certain facts which are quite clear, and it is on these that we should concentrate.

Mr. Bidwell

The hon. Gentleman will agree that there will be in that census no reference to colour of skin, and that it would be quite wrong to do so. There- fore, people who tried to calculate on this basis will be in serious difficulties.

Mr. Sharples

I understand that there will be reference to the country of birth, of a person's parents.

There are some facts which we must face for the future. First, whatever we may do about limitation of entry or, more important, restriction of the rate of permanent settlement, we shall have for the future a much larger element of the population who are coloured than we had before the 1950s. What is important is the relationship which we established—the descendants of those who have lived in this country for generations—with those who have arrived here and the descendants of those who have arrived here in recent years.

We talk a great deal about the immigrant population, but the fact which we must face is that the children of those who came here as immigrants may be coloured, but they were born here, brought up here and they go to school here, and they will not only expect, but have the right to expect equal opportunities in work, housing and everything else with their white compatriots. The generation of people born here, whether of coloured or white parents, are British by birth in every sense of the word.

Those who seek to exploit the differece, whether they be black or white, do no service to those whose interests they purport to represent. For the future, our policy for the control of entry will be changed. The restriction on settlement will be very much tougher than it was in the past. At the same time, as my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary stressed, our obligation to those who are already here remains the same. Our obligation to those already born or yet to be born, no matter the colour of their parents, is perfectly clear. It is an obligation which we in the Conservative Party intend to fulfil.

Mr. Callaghan

Would the hon. Gentleman deal with the question of Commonwealth consultation? Are the Government's proposals being put forward for consultation to Commonwealth Governments, or will they be put to the Prime Ministers' Conference in Singapore?

Mr. Sharples

We shall be able to discuss that matter when the Bill is presented to Parliament. I have nothing to say on it at present.

Mr. Callaghan

Does that mean that no consultation is going on? Will not the Government learn the lesson of the South African arms fiasco?

Mr. Merlyn Rees

As I said at the beginning of the debate, our purpose was to sound out ideas at this stage in the life of the Government. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Question proposed, That Clause 1 stand part of the Bill.

Mr. David Waddington (Nelson and Colne)

I do not propose to reopen the debate on immigration. I merely say en passant that I have sat here since four o'clock this afternoon, and it is a great pity if back-bench Members, although theoretically they are allowed to continue the debate almost indefinitely, are put in such a position that if they spoke they would be speaking too late to expect a reply from a Minister.

I wish to deal with a matter which hon. Members may not have noticed. Clause 1 is divided into two parts. We are not only renewing the laws concerning the control of Commonwealth immigration and immigration by aliens but extending a very important part of the Licensing Act, 1964.

Mr. Callaghan

I agree with the hon. Member's sentiments, but I hope that there is no misapprehension about this matter. If the Minister intends to reply to the hon. Gentleman on the Question, That the Clause stand part of the Bill, the hon. Member is entitled to put any question that he wishes to put. I do not think that he is under any disadvantage.

Mr. Waddington

The matter is better left. I do not wish to repeat the remarks of my hon. Friend the Minister of State. But when the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) breezes into the Chamber at a very late stage, not having heard much of the debate, and speaks and then, as is customary, the Government spokesman replies immediately afterwards, it is not a very opportune moment for another back-bench Member—the last back-bench Member wishing to speak—to try to reopen the debate.

10.30 p.m.

The matter which I wanted to raise relates to subsection (2), which has the effect of extending for yet another year that part of the Licensing Act which created licensing planning committees in licensing planning areas. I would not expect my hon. Friend the Minister, at this late hour and without notice, to reply here and now to the questions which I am posing, but it seems to me to be somewhat extraordinary that we should have spent all day debating immigration, that the same thing happened last year and the year before, and that nobody has ever thought of raising the question of whether licensing planning committees any longer serve a useful purpose.

It is, unfortunately, a fact of political life that we set up these bodies and then we perpetuate their existence year after year, entirely forgetting the purpose of their existence, and we continue to perpetuate them. I hope that, in any event, before next year I will hear from the Government, first, how many of these licensing planning areas are left, whether the Government think that these licensing planning committees any longer serve a useful purpose and how long the Government intend that they should remain.

I remind the Committee once more that these licensing planning committees were set up in areas which had suffered extensive war damage, so that the functions of licensing justices and local planning authorities should be co-ordinated. It seems rather strange that 25 years after the event these bodies are still in existence.

Mr. Sharples

I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Waddington) has raised this matter. He is absolutely right to raise it at this stage. I think I am right in saying that had he attempted to raise it on the Amendment which has just been withdrawn, he would have been out of order. My hon. Friend is quite correct in seeking to raise the matter in debating the Question, That Clause 1 stand part of the Bill.

The position is that there are now 17 licensing planning areas—London, Birmingham, Bristol, Canterbury, Coventry, East Ham, West Ham, Gosport, Grimsby, Kingston upon Hull, Manchester, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Sheffield, Southampton, Sunderland and Swansea. Of the 33 areas that were originally constituted, licensing planning in 15 of them was ended between 1955 and 1963 and in a further area—South Shields—in April this year.

The Ramsay Willis Committee was set up in April, 1964, and was asked to report upon whether there was a continuing need for licensing planning machinery in the areas concerned. The Report of the Committee was published as a White Paper on 13th July, 1965. Its main recommendation was for licensing planning to continue in a modified form, which would be voluntary in principle but mandatory in certain circumstances. It would involve consultation between licensing justices and the local planning authority and could be applied to any area of development.

All the authorities have recently been asked whether they wish to continue. I understand that the vast majority—except one, South Shields, which has been abolished—have all said that they wish to do so. It is our intention to take note of what my hon. Friend has said and to give further consideration to the matter.

Mr. Callaghan

Without depriving the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Waddington) of his morals—and I accept what he says; it is miserable to sit here from 4 o'clock until half-past ten—I am sorry to say to him that the subject was raised last year also and that a reply was given by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardigan (Mr. Elystan Morgan).

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Bill reported, without Amendment.

Question, That the Bill be now read the Third time, put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 55 (Third Reading), and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.