The National Health Service, education, economic recovery and welfare reform are all subjects I regularly discuss with constituents across Bolton West but the single most common issue that people choose to raise with me is immigration. There has long been a concern about it both in terms of the numbers and the motivation of migrants. Are there too many and do they wish to get a job, settle in and adopt a British way of life and values?
There are various reasons why it has been a difficult subject to discuss. Enoch Powell’s famous Birmingham Speech and the following strike and march in support of him by working class London dockers made the subject very difficult. Today, many people are worried about discussing the subject as they fear being labelled a racist and some elected politicians are all too willing to suggest that association.
The Guardian’s northern editor, Helen Pidd, has written a fascinating article about immigration in Bolton’s context. In the article, I was delighted to read Chris Houghton’s highlighting of Conservative Cllr Mudasir Dean’s successful campaign to promote the Union Flag. Many immigrants and their descendants are British, are proud to be British and contribute enormously to our great nation.
Labour will not discuss immigration in a sensible way and just seem to think that ‘managing’ it slightly better is enough if they win the 2015 General election. The Coalition Government has set a tough target of bringing immigration down to the level of 10s of thousands but this is going to be difficult to meet. Immigration from outside the EU is under control and has come down substantially but, whilst we are in the EU, we cannot control EU immigration but we are reducing the pull factors.
MY VIEW: I don’t yet know what will be in the Conservative Manifesto for the 2015 General Election but I believe that we should have an extended period of Balanced Migration. This means that the number of people migrating to Britain should be limited to the number of people leaving Britain. This will reduce pressures on the NHS, schools and infrastructure. It will also allow Britain to be more selective on the contribution that we wish migrants to make.