Let Them Come: We Have Nothing to Fear From High Levels of Immigration

absolutely in the uh right place for this uh subject tonight uh we are talking as you know about immigration and what better place than uh an institution which celebrates Britain's place in the world and looks outward at the Royal geographical society and and I promise you we and the organizer the debate played no hand in this absolutely the right time for this debate you'll know if you woke up to to uh the today program this morning hearing Theresa May announcing plans to make Britain in her words a really hostile environment for illegal immigrants uh announcing her plans for a series of steps that will make life hard for people who are here illegally uh in terms of uh getting access to health care or uh require or being issued with his driver's license or even opening a new bank account so immigration dominating the news just as we uh gather and at the if you flipped over the newspapers that was what was on the front page and on the back pages Jack Wilshire of Arsenal leading off his own debate on the nature of englishness uh when he said that it wouldn't be right for new players who had only been here for two or three years from abroad to be naturalized and then have a place in the England football team he said it should be uh England for the English uh prompting a reply from Kevin Peterson who pointed out that he along with Andrew Strauss and Jonathan Trot and Matt prior and several other members of the England cricket team didn't hail from these parts which reminded me of the of the joke that was said when England toured South Africa which is where did the England team stay when they tour South Africa answer with their parents um so at both ends of the spectrum either on the front pages or the back pages immigration and the issues that arise from it are very much in our minds so it's the right place the right time time and absolutely the right people arrayed before you here this panel wearing these microphone devices that make them slightly look as if they are the cast of The Book of Mormon um this is because these are very Natty state-of-the-art microphones rather than some sort of facial disfigurement so please do uh look past that um we're going to get underway very very soon I'm just going to give you a few notes about how we do it uh as you know it's a formal debate so opening speeches of eight or nine minutes each from the speakers when they're getting close to time I will Ting and ping my glass by a system of pre-arranged coded signals and they will uh then stop uh we will hear from all of them then we open it for questions and contributions and I put the emphasis really on questions uh from the floor I will make sure that both both uh upper and lower levels uh Ian don't mean in terms of quality I mean in terms of seating uh will contribute but do keep them short and pointed because we want to have as much time as we can to get as many voices in as we can and to hear from our speakers here so let's get straight under way I know you voted on your way here uh a preliminary vote and I'm going to give you the results of that uh after we've heard from our speakers and of course you will then have a chance to vote again the proper vote the casting vote uh with this little card for you put the tear off the card for if you're voting for tear off the card against if you're voting against it is really like rocket science it's terribly complicated I will explain it again later um don't worry about that so the motion before us is let them come we have nothing to fear from high levels of immigration uh to open uh the uh case for the motion our first speaker is an economist formerly at the treasury and the European commission and now chairs one of the most remarkable uh museums in London the first Museum of immigration in all of Europe at 19 princelet Street please welcome our first Speaker for the motion Susie Sims [Applause] hello migration is innate in human beings it's what brings us together but immigration seems to be dividing us it divides poor countries from rich countries it divides even rich countries from each other as in this background of this motion pitching Britain against Bulgaria and Romania it divides people into us and them into who is native who's an immigrant you know that's a surprisingly old question go back 2,000 years and we find tacitus the Roman historian wondering who the Britain are he says well are they natives or immigrants that's open to question then he says well it doesn't really matter we have to remember we're dealing with barbarians now today of course we know who's a native and who's an immigrant except of course we don't because public perceptions are way off the polling organization IPOs Mori recently discovered that people think 31% of the population are foreign born in fact of course the true figure is 13 % and that's really pretty typical for any successful wealthy country so immigrations become or perceive to be a really big issue and when we talk about it we talk about facts and figures we rarely talk about migrants themselves as human beings so I was really excited on my way here this morning this evening when I um I saw this huge migrant Memorial just across the road you must have noticed when you came in the Albert Memorial and there's there's Prince Albert on his throne facing those amazing museums that he created facing the Albert Hall The Village Hall of our nation these are symbols of Britain and they're symbols of britishness and they wouldn't exist were it not for that migrant and they show so much cultural Innovation the fusion of Sciences and arts in this case diversity of Outlook engineering Innovation even Financial innovation of course not every migrant is Prince Albert not every migrant is a good migrant some migrants are lazy or cheats but the story exemplifies what migrants typically bring because they bring energy and flexibility and new ideas they develop new things they modernized institutions that actually often felt very uncomfortable at the time but we now treasure they do bring foreign ways and some of them are ways we don't accept some of them are ways that merge with older traditions and become British by adoption well like Prince Albert's Christmas trees or by Fusion I'm not saying that migration is all good of course there have been problems problems of integration and David goodhart's written a lot about them David may have overstated the case a little but um I'll be clear I accept there are problems of adjustment and there are problems that have suspected some native British communities but I want to focus on where we have clear evidence and we have archaeological evidence we have DNA evidence we have a wealth of economic evidence and despite all the old jokes about laying economists end to end and they never reach a conclusion economists actually agree on the economic evidence around immigration so what do we know we know immigration isn't new the people who say that the British were a homogeneous group of people for hundreds of years until the postwar arrivals well they're just wrong so Barry Kliff one of our greatest living archaeologists concluded we have always been a Mongrel race and we are stronger for it we know that immigrants don't take British jobs in fact they tend to make jobs just think about what happened at times of mass immigration America in the late 19th century Britain in the 1960s we didn't see jobs being lost for natives we saw a growth in jobs overall and there's overwhelming research on Britain now immigrants working in jobs here in Britain have little or no impact on the employment of Natives and that is just as true for unskilled migrants as is as it is for skilled ones if you care about unemployed unskilled young people and I know how passionate haret is about this then the answer is to do something about their situation don't stop unskilled migration which will change nothing now I know there's a presumption that if you're a pr- migration person you're coming from a liberal left perspective but my formative years were spent working in a t treasury for a formidable Tory Chancellor Nigel Lawson and I learned pretty sharpish that markets do a pretty good job and if you want to let the state meddle in free markets then you need some very strong evidence indeed but in fact of course curbing unskilled migration is just much more likely to make matters worse over time as British firms employ more people obviously those people earn money and they want to spend the money and as they spend it on goods and services more people are needed to produce those goods and services and more more jobs get created and over time as migrants do work alongside Natives and if we can help our young people into be working in jobs alongside new migrants then you get a transfer of skills from migrants transfer of attitudes even a work ethic and that is one of the most important things in the long term because that's what raises productivity and raises competitive competitiveness and we know immigrants put more into the economy than they take out the oecd international organization authoritative recently estimated that immigrants put around 7 billion more into the UK economy than they take out so don't fear immigration on economic grounds immigrants don't take native jobs they tend to make jobs immigrants and net contributors to the public CSE in fact they put more back in than native workers do and immigrants are not sponges as we leared just yesterday the government can't actually provide any evidence of benefit tourism or health tourism not on any significant scale now I've been a migrant worker myself and I came home like so many migrant workers do bringing new skills and attitudes it's actually back with me but I came home because I like this country I want to live here but I want to live in Britain that's a strong economy I want to live in a Britain that can more easily afford the things that we all want whether it's looking after our elderly or educating all our young people into work I want a Britain that stays in the world rich list actually and that's got money to do good in this world and that means staying open to migrants it means recognizing immigrants are assets and not liabilities ask yourself where will all these ambitious flexible hard workers go if we keep them out well they're going to go to China to America to Germany to our competitors so let them come here if we don't we shoot ourselves in the foot we lose the economic benefits of new new jobs higher skills more growth more resources to spend and then we smartly shoot ourselves in the other foot by sending migrants away to help our competitors so don't just let them come welcome [Applause] them wait for speak thank you you Susie our next speaker is going to be the first Speaker against the motion he's the director of the think tank demos and the founder and former editor of prospect magazine and the author most recently of the British dream a trenchant pmic on the subject of immigration our first Speaker against the motion David [Applause] goodart thank you very much Jonathan I think it was a a calm analysis not of pmic but um we'll leave that on one side uh we all seem to be doing a bit of crossdressing tonight um Susie was just brandishing her Tory credentials well I am what used to be called a Hamstead liberal uh as Jonathan just said I run a cental left Think Tank I started a political magazine a liberal political monthly magazine I'm a member of the labor party I have two immigrant grandfathers one Jewish I even live in Islington so I am not against immigration in itself only a trite is against immigration in itself although I did say this at a similar meeting uh rather smaller meeting actually um a few weeks ago and one of the fellow panelists was Peter Hitchins who said I am a trog actually um what really separates us um on the two sides here is one word the word high if we replace the word high with the word moderate all three of us would be in favor of this motion what we're skeptical about is the scale and speed of recent immigration to this country which has been quite historically unprecedented 4 million net immigration of 4 million over over four over over 15 years including many many years of gross inflows of 600,000 people 600,000 people now I think that has had on balance negative effects economically culturally and socially and indeed on balanced Global development as on on the economy first as Susie said immigrants contribute to Innovation uh We've we've got a great record of Jewish East African Asian and other groups creating um great entrepreneurial initiative they fill skill gaps they do dirty jobs that uh locals don't want to do at least at the uh wages on offer um but they do not at this scale improve the economic well-being of the average citizen that is pretty clear and contrary to what Susie says actually what all the academic economics on immigration says is that it's remarkably neutral in its effect on all the main kinds of indicators growth wages employment and so on um nonetheless it is also pretty well accepted that it's Mar it's beneficial for better off people for employers and it's less beneficial for people in the bottom half or third particularly of the labor market Market we have 20% of people uh in in low skill people in Britain are born abroad that is bound to have downward pressure on wages and there's plenty of evidence of the fact that it does of course many people that come here are complimentary to existing workers um but there is obviously displacement to there is clearly displacement at the at the bottom ends we created 2.7 million new jobs between 1995 and 20 2010 2.1 million were taken by people born outside this country now it's not it's not it's not as simple in a way as that sounds but clearly there has been some displacement and it and this whole question is very different at times when unemployment is High I mean when when when you have full employment as we did in the 60s then it's a very different kind of story and I do worry that we are warehousing too many of our own weakest performers in the labor market and we are in you know inviting ing in often much more highly motivated people from Eastern Europe the Latvian graduate you know with a with a lower wage demand and a higher work ethic and it's a form of unfair competition on our hoodies um and and this damages the social contract in Britain um you know which is a which is a pretty serious matter for all of us um on on fiscal things Susie talked about fiscal things it's true some groups particularly East Europeans they they they come after they've been educated and they go often before they they're so they're here for the you know for a few years of their working life they tend to that they tend to pay in more than they take out although if you add in tax credits people argue about it's not a huge amount um but we also import have imported over recent decades you know multigenerational poverty I mean the overall picture is not at all clear on the fiscal side but just to conclude on the economics what large scale immigration does I think is exacerbates some of the worst habits of the British economy the short-termism the failure to train uh the the lack of investment um all of which is exacerbated now immigration isn't just about economics obviously economic data it's about people both the people that come here and the people that are already here and clearly to most people in this country or to to to many people in this country anyway the numbers have been unsettlingly high in recent years people do value and quite reasonably enough continuity familiarity stability in their living arrangements the left used to understand this you remember Michael Young in the 1950s writing passionately about the way in which workingclass communities were inantly moved from from one area to another uh without taking into account patterns of life and so on we saw this with uh the destruction of mining communities in the 1980s the left seemed to understand the you know the human need for for settled patterns of Life there was even a marvelous in The Observer the other day from Ed valum talking about Notting Hill and how the old Notting Hill Middle Class had been discombobulated by the new super rich who were coming in and building swimming pools in their basement and so on um I mean just a few a few stats on the degree of change that that I'm talking about in 10 London Burrows that's 10 out of 33 London Burrows more than half of the population changes every 5 years more than half of the population that's an extraordinary degree of churn and it's only slightly lower levels in some of our other big cities integration has been very successful in some places and very unsuccessful in other places let me just give you one statistic which which sums up the the relative lack of success in some places um in a study of the 2011 census by the academic Eric calman he looked at he did a w analysis of the 2011 census he discovered that 45% of minority Britain ethnic minority Britain lived in wards where 45 sorry it was 45% who lived in WS where um less than half of the population was white British in some cases a lot less than half was white British now that number was only 25% in 2001 so you can sort of see the degree of concentration in some places in other places there's been dispersal and and happily mixed communities but it's not everywhere and speed and scale helps to create that if too many people come in too quickly it becomes you know countries like communities have absorptive capacities which I think people on the other side often don't grasp um at Prospect magazine we did an interview with with uh with Ken who's on the other side in 2007 and we talked about when would London go majority minority and he said probably not in in our lifetimes in fact as we were speaking it probably already was majority minority as you know from the 2011 census London is now 45% white British having been 60% white British in 2001 one you're you're seeing huge movements in the outer Burrows places like barking and dagenham 40,000 white British people left between 2011 2001 and and 2011 that this causes a kind of hunkering down in in the population if people if it happens too quickly if people don't have the time to to create connections across ethnic and other boundaries then they withdraw from the public space Robert putam the American political scientist who's a great liberal and he didn't like his own findings but he found in America that that there was this phenomenon of hunkering down so people even in their own communities become more aranged from each other in areas of great uh rapid change and fragmentation and I think in the long-term survival of of of welfare states and and decent polities um uh requires a degree of of of common norms and and cross-ethnic and cross-class communication uh that is put in Jeopardy by these kinds of changes my final area is this the this idea of global balance now if you take the brightest and the best the most ambitious and best educated people from poor countries it is bound to hamper their development um as with immigration into countries like ours at modal moderate levels and particularly people go back after they've got an education or they've had some experience of working here it can be enormously mutually beneficial but as the development Economist Paul ker who some of you will know he's the author of the book The Bottom billion he spent his entire career worrying about the welfare of the poorest people in the world he has he has turned against the consensus amongst development economists and now argues that it is indeed against the interests of poor countries to send their best people in our Direction um my final Point much of the benefit that Susie was talking about I agree with too but the point is we could have those benefits in this country with net immigration of 880,000 that would still mean gross inflows of about 300,000 that's hardly a closed society and I think we could we could have all the Stu International students the refugees the highly skilled people that we want so I think you should vote against this motion you're not a bad person if you do so nor do you have to be a supporter of ukip and with all um with all due regard to to Nigel I want to be tough t on ukip's populism but also tough on the causes of populism from the other side of this debate thank you very [Applause] much thank you uh to David goodart our next speaker and our second speaker for the motion is a political Legend in this city he served as the mayor of London until the voters deci decided he should spend more time with his NES uh during that time as mayor of London he promoted the city as a place of internationalism and multiculturalism he is of course our second speaker for the motion please welcome Ken Livingston thanks let me he Jews bring Crime and disease to Britain now who wants to guess which paper that that was a headline in it was of course the daily M I'd love to be able to tell you that it was one of the earliest stories by a cub reporter Paul daker but it actually goes back to 1906 and I can't remember a time in my lifetime when there hasn't been one group or other being demonized by the wring media I grew up in a London after the war where the Irish were ridiculed and looked down upon the first influx of Caribbean immigration it was a big political issue and of course we had Enoch power on his rivers of blood speech which didn't quite turn out as he predicted and more recently of course it's been Muslims and the male and the express of working up to January the 1st when it'll be Romanians and bulgarians it's been a great way to sell papers and a great way for unprincipled politicians to Pander to Prejudice and get votes on the on the back of it but the simple fact is London which has had a greater influx of immigration than I imagine and a more diverse range of immigrants than any other city in the Western World London is the only city in Europe that matches American levels of productivity and competitiveness we are 20% ahead of the next city we are twice the European average and so yes immigration brings problems of adjustment and accommodation but it's brought a level of benefit which has helped to fuel a The Rebirth of London London was a declining City when I was born I well just before the war started the the the population was 8 and a half million by the time we got to the mid 80s it was down to 6 and half million we're back to eight we're on our way to n and it's the most amazing and dynamic city to live in and it's the diversity of that City that makes makes it so wonderful now all of this has been a against a background in which no government has ever had a program to deal with immigration it's just been left to happen the debate simply has been about how much we should restrict it never been a program to help the assimilation of immigrants I mean when I was mayor you could go down to Tower hamlets and see Bangladeshi women queuing to try and get into the colleges where they were able to learn English as a second language and year by year by year half of them turned away because the the courses were full any government worth its metal and of course I'm denouncing all of them I would have actually had the programs in place to make certain that everybody arrived who couldn't speak English should be enrolled on a course so they could not underfunding it and in a sense it wasn't so much of a problem in in the immediate postwar period up up till 1979 because we had an Economy based on Full Employment and a full employment system is one in which the welfare deal is a lot lower than if you live with permanent levels of unemployment between one and 3 million and right the way through that period we were creating new homes for people to live in I quite a bit of dynamism in our economy I since 1979 of course we've lived with a much lower rate of growth of GDP much lower rate of investment and a catastrophic decline in housing so it's not that immigrants came here and took our jobs and took our homes we failed the political class of all parties to build the homes for our population and create the good Hightech High skill high-paying jobs instead we've seen a degradation to a low wage econ economy and whole groups of people left behind it's easy to then focus on immigrants and say this is the problem no it's a failure of political leadership under labor and conservative governments to put in place the structures that would have made our society much more successful just take housing I mean in that period up until 1979 under labor and touring governments we built between a quarter of a million and 350,000 homes a year half to rent local councils the other half div Vine over this last 35 years that numbers come down at the moment to just about 110,000 not actually building homes for rent creating a huge housing crisis and don't for one minute believe well there's a real problem we're already crowded where will you put those Homes New York and Paris like London have 8 million citizens in New York and Paris they're concentrated in half the space that London has London is the least densely populated major city in Europe it's our failure to build when I was mayor now I'm sure Boris has still got the same figures we had available Brownfield sites enough to build a third of a million homes you could break the back of our housing crisis with the political will and Leadership to do it and then on jobs Government after government has seen our rate of investment Decline and done damn all about it hoping that the bankers could lift us all up to a new noera and we'd all benefit as they trickled down on the rest of us or piss on us as most people would have actually described it Germany did better Germany maintained a much larger manufacturing set sector made certain that Banks were prioritizing investment in their domestic economy not speculating abroad the result they still have a manufacturing sector that provides jobs for workingclass men what you also o had is it's only in the last couple of three four years that China's overtaken Germany as an exporter of manufactured goods Germany still exports manufactured goods to China I mean we aren't lacking good jobs because immigrants took them we're lacking good jobs because successive governments failed to make certain we had the levels of investment that allow an economy to grow and modernize level of investment at the moment in Britain 14% of our GDP in America 19% in France 20% in China 48% but they have much better control over their Bankers over there I a much more rigorous regime of discipline if they get it wrong I mean that's the failure whole areas as the docks Clos as our manufacturing clothes were left to R never the programs put in place for real retraining and achieving that level investment that could have actually um created those jobs and those opportunities with the result that yes there has been a degree of resentment particularly amongst workingclass communities who seen the quality of their life diminished within the lifetime and well in the last 30 or 40 years and under all governments not making a party political point about this so what do we do about this I think we got to actually accept that yes immigration is tremendous boost particularly in a world that's now completely Global if you go back to the collapse of the Soviet Union the world before in the world now is totally transformed the level of international trade the level of movement of peoples and no one is going to be able to take us back to the past that's the reality of it we live in the global world if you want to wct barriers you will wither behind them just as the Soviet Union's economy withered behind the barriers it erected between itself and the rest of the World Market what we've got to do is tackle those got to build the homes so that the homes are there for people that need them at a price that they can afford and that means letting councils build to rent we've got to get the levels of investment up tell our Bankers don't spend all your time speculating internationally I mean in Germany they have Regional Banks Banks invest in rebuilding their Regional economies and that's the reality if we are prepared to put in place the programs there is no problem with immigration it's the favor of politicians that have allowed problems and it it was clearly a catastrophe error of judgment for the last Labor government to take the advice of its civil servants that once a the barriers to internal EU migration came down and all the new accession nations from Eastern Europe could come here that only be 10,000 people come they got it out by about 20 times and nothing was put in place for that and of course in London you had a lot of people oh we can get a plumber at last do you remember that line I I get a plumber for years but of course in many other areas of the country agricultural wages were depressed because people could be employed who were prepared to work for Less you've got to make certain that if we're having an open immigration policy and I believe we should you've got to put in place the housing and investment and wage um policies um to actually deal with that I don't want to live in a low-wage economy I want my children and grandchildren to grow up in an economy that's up there competing and investing and innovating with the rest of the world and if you put barriers to international migration we will slowly wither and we will decline thank you very [Applause] much thank you our second speaker against the motion is a journalist an author and a research fellow at the right leaning Think Tank the center for policy studies she's also the author of a really unusual and very good book which I must recommend to you called among the hoods my years with a teenage gang nothing to laugh at there that's the title of the book um the author of that book and our second speaker against the motion Harriet Sergeant so let them come we have nothing to fear from high levels of immigration well who is this we if it's me immigration is great we middle classes are can now afford services that were previously out of our reach take my nails this morning I had a Vietnamese manicure which cost me $10 if I'd gone to have an English manicure it would have cost me 30 or4 but let me tell you another side to this Wii six years ago I did a report on why black Caribbean and white workingclass boys are failing I met Dave he's was white he's white he was then 23 and living on benefits in Hai ings he's was very bright but like a third of boys on free School meals his school had failed to teach him to read and write properly Dave didn't want to be on benefits he wanted a job a home for he had a girlfriend and a baby and he wanted to take care of them but he is only qualified for menial work and in Hastings there's not very much of that the week before he' applied for a job as a dustman only to be told that there are hundred other people had gone for the same job so then he'd gone to an agency but they said he had no chance because I am English they only took polls on their books polls he said to me sadly do all the jobs around here now is that a surprise when Poland is in the top 10 of the oecd's literary league and that the UK like poor Dave doesn't even make it into the top 20 and Dave's case is not unique of the two million jobs created under labor 80% according to on figures which went to foreign Nationals poor State schooling and immigration have taken away Dave's future so I get a cheap manicure and Dave is rotting on benefits immigration is not about race it's about class you have a situation that is great for us we are not up against polls who want our jobs or not yet but it is disastrous for the very people that I thought the left Were Meant to represent what does it say about the craziness of our immigration system that red Ken is here standing up up for well-educated and skilled immigrants and that is left to me I mean for goodness sake I write for the Daily Mail it is left to me to stand up for the poor and the dispossessed let's look at another part of this we six years ago I befriended a South London gang they and their families are most reli on the state it is them and not us who at the mercy of our overcrowded hospitals schools and housing these young men are equally at the mercy of our prejudices the kind of prejudice that David aronovich displays in his column how many times have I been told how many times have I read oh we need immigration because our people just won't work wrong immigrants work and my South London gang reject work for the same reason money let me explain that with another bit of this we the Swagger a black cariban in his 20s and why he does not work after I encouraged him he got a job at Twickenham stadium in Hospitality he loved it but he was a little bit surprised that he was the only English person there we soon discovered why with his first pay packet he was a third worse off on it than when he was on benefits which one of us would work if we lost a third of our income and then the Bays came because he now had a job he had to pay council tax but he didn't have the money to pay council tax and I can tell you all that the bays are very frightening I know because I was there when they came we had to escape by climbing out of the kitchen window work is a luxury he could not afford for the polls that he was working with it was a very different story on the minimum wage here they as he saw on a TV program can save and buy a four-bedroom house with a nice Garden back in Poland and even send their children to polish private school as Swagger said to me if the minimum wage got me that in London and private school for the kids I would be out there working all hours instead I get the BFFs kicking down my front door my final bit of this we is sunshine another member of my South London gang I be friend Ed and it is the opportunities he lacks compared to his grandfather his grandfather had a traditional education in Jamaica and then came over as an immigrant uh to the UK where he got um an excellent four-year apprenticeship in a car factory it set him up for a life he's worked all his life he owns his own home for his grandson it is a very different story his grandson came out of school with not nearly the the the level of Education of his grandfather and then when I tried to find something for Sunshine it it it was it was very difficult I mean on the job apprenticeships of that quality just barely exist you have to pay for a course which is can be anything from £5,000 upwards and there's no guarantee of a job at the end of it because why would a firm go to the expense and trouble of providing vocational training when they can already get trained Eastern Europeans off the shelf Poland for example has excellent vocational training but what is the result instead of being a homeowner and a taxpayer like his grandfather Sunshine is on benefits according to the London School of Economics the cost of this Lost Generation is 90 million pounds a week so the we in this motion is these young men if we are answering this question they have a lot to fear Dave said to me I see men in their 40s who've been on benefits all their life they spend their day taking drugs and drinking I don't blame them but it's too early for me I don't want to be beat like that unfortunately immigration a is beating him so I urge you to think of sunshine and Swagger and Dave they are the we vote against the motion thank you our next speaker is the last speaker in favor of the motion to remind you again let them come we have nothing to fear from high levels of immigration he is the multiple award-winning columnist and since this appears to be fashionable these days uh a former member of the Communist party uh we it's important a columnist for the independent the guardian the observer in the past and now uh for the times please welcome as I say the last week before the motion David aronovich thank you if I adopt a slightly peculiar stance I have this sort of weird headset that wasn't meant for somebody with a head as fat as mine um and honestly I've had urinary catheters that weren't as tight really and actually we're considerably more comfortable um in a way it's odd that we on this side are proposing the motion because according to the the polling done by the conservative Lord Ashcraft significant polling is a uh a very big funer of good political information about 177% of the country and no more supports the proposition of the motion uh about 60% would support the opposition to the motion in a way you've got to ask yourself why it is that we are having to propose a motion and the opposition and not proposing instead their motion which is that mass immigration has been bad for Britain uh incidentally before we go on um uh I wasn't aware that there was such a thing as a Vietnamese manicure and an English manicure uh I presume on the Vietnamese manicure they give you little pictures of hoochi Min on the cuticles uh and so on or is the only difference the price Harriet is it just the price it's the price so it's only the price the only price difference between the Vietnamese manicure and the English manicure is the price that's begging the question why you didn't go to the English one if you felt that strongly about it but nevertheless what I'm saying is I think it would have been much more difficult for the opposition to be the proposition which is to prove to you that mass migration had been harmful we've already heard that that the best case really that the opposition can make is that the economics are neutral they grudgingly would admit that there is a significant amount of benefit and yet we know that the PO show that the vast majority of British or large majority of British people think that mass migration has been harmful in other words they've somehow absorbed a message that even the opposition to this motion don't accept um no no it's not just exactly David precisely going to be my point and we will get on to your notion about what else it's about in a moment it's not just about economics it's not primarily about economics a lot of people think it is but in fact it isn't because we can agree that by and large at the very least there has been some benefit to migration and I think that Susie and Ken and I would argue that the figures actually show that there has been significant benefit to this country from Mass migration uh and significant benefit in terms of innovation and also in terms of that thing that it's strange to find the right not believing in anymore in terms of competition remember competition if you face competition the idea is you improve according to the opposition of this motion these as have understood them if you face competition actually you give up that's actually the model which we're supposed to which is an unusual model to discover people on the conservative side of the argument D are actually supporting nevertheless the next the next thing that we can dispense with are the things which are essentially our myths about immigrants which people believe which we know are not true and which by and large the opposition have not tried to Pedal to us which is to their credit myth that uh immigrants are more likely to claim benefits and so on in fact there seems to be a and this is not very surprising because by and large the people who migrate tend to be more motivated they tend to be younger thus they help us out with a demographic problem maybe in the short term until we need new groups of immigrants but nevertheless they do because by being younger they're more likely to be in the income tax bracket and therefore to pay Taxation and they're less likely to claim and indeed that appears to be the pattern that they put more back in than they take out and they contribute more than uh than people who are not migrants this is not an excuse incidentally for deporting non-migrants out of the country on the basis of they don't contribute enough although actually if you take David goodhart's position that what we need to reach is a situation of net migration of 80,000 one way in which you could ex get to a net migration of 880,000 is by deporting a few more people who are already here and that would bring your net clearer down to the figure which just shows how ridiculous net migration figures are one way or the other I mean how utterly completely arbitrary and absurd but as David says this is not just about economics nor is it about the myth what you've discovered recently is that far from being too dim and bringing the educational level down which was what used to be said about migrants they are now too clever and as a result people can't compete with them significantly and so on and it just isn't fair instead of being shers Etc and coming over here for our National Health Service it turns out that actually they don't Sher anything like enough which means which means that you get to the appalling position whereby an employer faced with an illiterate ex-gang member on the one hand and a poll on the other makes the lazy decision to employ the poll whereas according to Harriet's notion if the poll weren't there at all the employer would heartily and immediately endorse the former illiterate the illiterate former gang member well here's here's here's the question no you can't here's the question would you is that what you would do it isn't which suggests that actually we want to locate this problem somewhere else and I hope to come to that before I finish my speech so we next come to the if you like the nub of David goodhart's objection to mass migration um he says it's a matter of the speed with which it's happened and let's start first of all by suggest by by remembering that this of course is not about race you used not to be allowed to talk about immigration because you'd be called racist now you can't suggest that anybody who's opposed to immigration does so partially because of race you're got allowed to say it it gets people extremely cross and yet when I turn to David's own book I find a section right at the beginning about the speed not with which there are a number of migrants into this country but the speed and he referred to it with which we are going black um a Dem this is a demographic Revolution says David uh why is it a demographic Revolution because according to the on since of 2011 the population of England Wales that was not white British in 2011 was a fraction under 20% but by the time of the next census in 2021 the visible minority population the visible minority presumably being David people who don't look like most of us look yeah people of non European background as the visible minority will have risen from 14% today to around 20% for England and Wales and a few years later for the whole of the United Kingdom that means says David the visible minority proportion of the population including people of mixed backgrounds will have trebled in just 25 years to which my immediate reaction is so what so what if they have those would include for instance my mixed race nephew and my two n mixed race sons of and Daughters of my other nephews and so on and presumably that will also go for a large number of people a number of people in this room as well uh uh it is hard for me to see this as being itself a problem but David then goes on London remains around 57% white including non-british whites and 40 3% visible minority but we'll also certainly almost certainly be minority Vis majority visible minority majority visible minority by the time of the next census and he says if Britain had a clear and confident sense of itself that wouldn't be a problem but since it doesn't then it actually is uh in other words the problem here is the speed with which we're turn turning black if we could just turn black a little bit more slowly then in fact we would like it better and yet this is not a conversation about race uh it is of course partially not entirely but partially a conversation about race but as the conversation about as the discussion about vocational training proves it is actually about something else as well today we've seen the bringing in uh and the introduction and the publishing of of the immigration bill now the interesting thing about the immigration bill is it seeks to solve a problem we don't have I.E that there are a lots of immigrants using our services uh uh beyond what other people do it also tries to tackle the problem of illegal immigration by making people like landlords and hospitals Etc check people's status before they take them on and incidentally I do hope you were asked about yours before you came in this evening I really do I wouldn't like to think that there were any illegal immigrants taking places in this Hall away from perfect legal I think we should all do our bit I really do to make sure that none of them get in any illegal immigrants here put your hands up out go off go ridiculous um but it isn't really about that it's a cynical bill it's a cynical bill because actually the very people it's Target at don't believe it will work and the government introducing it doesn't believe it will work they simply want to tell those people including farage's uh uh uh voters that actually it's safe to come back to them and vote for them it won't actually have any effect on immigration actually I'm pretty sure that Nigel farage will say the same thing in a moment's time but actually when he does it will be self-serving except when I do it's not okay time is very updated you're going to have to I just want to finish with what lord ashof said at the end of his report because it struck me as being true the reason why immigration has become so important he said people's concerns about immigration are of a bigger set of anxieties they see the pace of change continuing and even accelerating and they know Britain in 20 years will look different from the Britain of today it was very interesting that all David's examples about major change actually did not involve immigration at all as it happens and they know Britain in 20 years will look different from the Britain of today let alone that of 20 years ago some welcome that many are ambivalent and others are scared in the end migration is inseparable from global economic conditions governments appear as powerless to manage the first as to deal with the consequences of the second what this motion invites you to do is to see the benefit of immigration but not join with those who say that somehow or other the problem of change is mostly a problem of immigration it is not it is a problem of a people adapting to the new and we don't help them to do it by pointing the finger of blame at people actually who are not responsible vote for the motion thank you thank you very much our final speaker is the white male middle-aged former stock broker who says he wants to change the face of British politics he is of course the you'll get there in the end he is of course the leader of the UK independence party ukip which calls for an end to mass what it calls Mass uncontrolled immigration please welcome the last speaker against the motion Nigel farage well Jonathan thank you and good evening what you forgot to say was and the descendant of political refugees because my forbears were French and they were Protestant and they were Hugo and rather than be burnt at the stake they came to this country and it's interesting that if you think of all the countries in Europe Europe the one that has been the most open the one that has been the most welcoming whether it was to the Hugo whether it was to two big migrations of Jews whether it was to the Uganda Asians that Arman threatened to kill this country has been the most open and has been the most welcoming and yet just 10 years ago when I stood up and said that I thought it was the height of irresponsibility to open our doors unconditionally to eight former communist countries in Eastern Europe I was H down and abused and called all the names under the sun um and and and told effectively that it wasn't even respectable to have a debate about immigration in this country well that has changed and that's the most important thing tonight is we are actually talking about this subject and I'm not against immigration but I'm against uncontrolled immigration we need to control immigration we need to choose the people that are coming to live work and settle in in this country and and and not one of us on our side is against immigration or against immigrants you know there's no doubt the food is better uh no question about it um you know I'm just about old enough to remember how appalling food was even in London so that's good and a bit of diversity in life particularly in our cities is fun and it's good but we must think about this in terms of it being a numbers game and we need to think about this with some sense of historic iCal context you know I mentioned the Uganda Asians when they came there was a massive National debate could this country cope with the sheer number of people and in the end the decision was taken uh that whether we could cope or not morally we had an absolute duty to help those people and 27,000 people came from Uganda um and have all done phenomenally well and in fact if you think back to you know Ken talked about the 1950s and about win rush and about the beginning of Caribbean immigration if you look at the way we handled immigration postwar 30 to 50,000 people a year came and settled in this country consistently over half a century until of course that is Mr Blair got into office and decided that he wanted to rub the noses of the right in diversity and started to pursue an immigration policy on a scale that we've never seen before added to which with EU membership in 2004 we open the doors yet further you know David blunkett told us an extra 13,000 would come a year from Eastern Europe and 800,000 came in the first two years in the whole history of these islands we have never seen migration on the scale that we've seen in the last 15 years uh from from 30 to 50,000 a year it is now 450 to 500 ,000 people a year that are coming into this country it's a minimum net 4 million increase since 1997 so it's very important to get a handle on it now look I I completely understand that for the rich for people living in Kensington this is marvelous it's cheaper chauffers it's cheaper nannies and cheaper gardeners in the cotsworld where you go at the weekends I mean all of that's lovely and I totally understand that if you're a big employer that it's a good thing because it means cheaper labor and it's had a positive effect on wage inflation in this country all of that in economic terms is totally undeniable but what is also undeniable despite the claims of the other side is that we have had an overs Supply in the unskilled labor market in this country since 2005 and as a direct result of that youth unemployment in Britain has gone from 600,000 in 2005 to over a million today and it is direct and it is causal and yes I know there are problems with British with with British education and I accept that but David you know not all these youngsters are illiterate gang members and I really get upset with this myth that Blair started and that all the national newspapers now push that almost all young British people are lazy and useless I can tell you in the earlier part of this year I spent a fortnite night touring the length and breadth of England in the in the run up to the county elections and everywhere I went I found desperate young people really wanting to get work but now feeling discriminated against in their own country the first person I met that that made me realize this was a 16-year-old girl in Petra who told me she couldn't get a job at the local packing Factory because she couldn't speak Polish and if you now in many of those Eastern counties wanted to go and get the jobs picking cauliflowers or cabbages or fruit in season you've got no chance because the gang Masters are in control and it's polls and lithuanians and perhaps even Portuguese that get the jobs we have through irresponsible Open Door immigration on a scale never seen in Britain before effectively betrayed workingclass people in this country and it's led to great social division uh in in in many parts of the country we're now divided by language I don't think it's a good thing that 82% of primary school children in newm come from families in which English is not the first language that's not uniting people that's not bringing people together that's actually dividing people and all over this country not just in the big cities but actually uh in the market towns everywhere I've seen it I get the feeling that this country is less happy with itself less at ease and we have growing social tension now we intend of course to continue with this process because we intend next year on the 1st of January to open our doors unconditionally to two countries that are even poorer to two countries that sadly have not recovered from communism to two countries that have within them a completely dispossessed discriminated against group um of people the Roma numbering between four and five million um and I think really why I'm urging you to vote against this motion is that it is irresponsible to have an open door not to have some degree of control and it's something that is clearly not wanted in this country you David said 60% well whether it's 60 or 70 or 80 or whatever it is the overwhelming majority of people in Britain want us to have some degree of control and that doesn't mean we don't want any immigration of course we do we want many of the brightest and the best coming into this country especially into London and into our wealth creating industries of course we want people of course I want us to have an immigration policy based very much on the one that the Australians have let's have control let's get good people let's get people that want to integrate and will integrate but you cannot support a motion that says that high which means basically no control over immigration is a good thing for Britain and while the use of the word fear uh in the motion perhaps is pushing it a bit we should at least I would suggest be deeply concerned that Brit successive British governments the Coalition following on from labor have learned nothing from the lessons of the past we do not need massive oversupply in the unskilled labor market in this country we need to get a grip and Take Back Control of our borders properly thank [Applause] you thank you thank [Applause] you thank you very much that brings uh that was the last of the formal speeches for and against the motion it's going to be your turn next before we get to that before we open up the I want to uh give you the result of the vote that you the votes you cast as you came uh into the Hall here and uh all to play for really absolutely split I would say evenly before the debate 30% % of you were for the motion the believed in other words yes let them come 30% of you just under a third said that against that motion in other words don't let them all come uh just over a third at 37% and then the don't knows the group that are absolutely crucial to be and all to be played for exactly onethird 33% of you would don't knows so they're the group that all of our speakers here are working hard to Target the swing voters as it were and uh we'll compare again those numbers once you vote uh at the end so let's now open uh up to questions contributions Etc I see a hand here there we have people with microphones I'm going to take these in a group so if the microphone can come here and have we got somebody there we'll do those first too and uh where is there a microphone over there yes have you got a microphone so if you get it to that hand nearest you okay so we'll start with you yeah thank you I think it needs to be made clear that micro and have no recourse to public funds it's very clearly stamped in their passport which makes me wonder what how how the panel thinks when does someone stop being a migrant do they have to have been living here for a certain number of years is it when you're naturalized do you have to have been born here Do you parents have to be born here um just a comment to Harriet on her example of swagger in the poles briefly yeah a Polish person earning the same amount as a as Swagger seems to have enough money to pay for their lifestyle in the UK as well as send money home for a four-bedroom house and the kids school fees and pay council tax yes wagger doesn't have enough money to pay council tax and just a final comment on Australia in terms of family immigration rules Australia has no income requirement for its citizens and residents to bring in a spouse unlike the 18,600 which we have here they also encourage the adult dependent relatives to come in at a younger age when they're healthier in order to encourage integration I'm going to have to cut because otherwise if everybody speaks as long as you do we we won't get be able to leave yeah let's hear from you thank you though I've got a note of the question and the points yeah the nasty right- Wingers like Nigel farage would like to restrict the rights of fantastic salvation women like Malala from coming to this country the nasty left wiers are are happy for fantastic South Asian girls like Malala to be aborted would these left Wingers be willing to clearly state that not only are they willing for South Asian women to live in this country but to live okay I feel you've slightly taken this into a different territory that issue that issue has been debated by intelligence squ and will be again but we're probably not the one for tonight who's got the mic for in there yeah uh would David aranovich be happy to share with us his views on the correlation between numbers coming in and the prospects for integration assimilation but particularly any link that he could see see between numbers and what I would think is a simulation I hope he accepts that concept thank you are you clear on what he's asking there because I'm wonder if we just need to press you say what would be an acceptable number is that what you're asking yes how easy would I mean is there a link between how easy it is for immigrants coming into this country to become part of the whole part of we and the numbers it's an old question it's a numbers question as far said it is a numbers game is there somebody with has a microphone nearby here okay one there I'm going to just get four in now yeah a question for the uh speakers against the motion I just wanted to know how they would address the pension underfunding problem that this country faces in uh both private Enterprises and uh for public prospective retirees without the benefits of mass immigration right how will there be enough money to pay for people's pensions without IM thank you I know there's lots of hands I'm only going to take clusters of three or four uh and then and but I will come back so hands down while we get some answers to those questions um what about the David rovic to you in a way is there any limit or are the numbers Limitless that you think Britain can absorb and can be yeah absorbed into the country no I don't you know I don't think that you can say that they're Limitless but what I'm saying what I think is that we' haven't reached the limits but I that the question that was being asked really was uh goes back to this question of the speed with which people come in uh and the problems of integration simulation and so on um and if we look at the bus of things which surround that let's say the debate about forced marriages not arranged marriages forced marriages um or let's say the wearing of the nicab and so on we or or the business of people being sent back to Pakistan girls being sent back to Pakistan without finishing their education it is clear that in some what we call migrant communities there are significant problems of transition and there still continue to be significant problems of transition and each time we come up against that we have to try and deal with it it's equally clear that amongst other uh uh migrant communities there are nearly no problems of transition so it makes it very difficult and I think well for instance it's very difficult I think to argue that you can tell by walking down the street and by conversation uh walking down the street unless you hear the conversation what is a young pole and what is uh somebody who was born in you know you you you not now back into the visible minority territory that you condemn no no no I I I I I I have not yet heard of of Polish Catholics wearing the nicab for instance um uh and so and so nor nor do I think is that that kind of density or of Separation that you get in the northern mil towns in particular where you get very significant problems of community separation all I'm saying is that for the vast majority of migrants don't fit into the categories that seem to have enormous difficulties with integration and assimilation okay um Nigel farage I'm going to make this quite quick because I want to get more people in uh you were the one who mentioned Australia and the questioner said that there is actually no income uh requirement in Australia and so would you be happy with that for example well I mean you can't go to Australia if you have a serious criminal record you can't go to Australia not the very beginning it was rather different they rather reversed that they rather reversed that that's rather new yeah you know yes it used to be mandatory of course but um you can't go to Australia if You' got a life-threatening disease uh you have to be basically under the age of 45 um and you have to have some skill or trade of some kind to bring um and if you listen to successive Australian Prime Ministers they're very very clear they couldn't care less where you come from what your religion is what your color is but when you come here you become part of the Australian dream and I would argue that is a good sensible model for us to think about some new immigration rules once we've got once we've got back control of our borders you mentioned the no she was talking about the rule for spouses but you just mentioned life-threatening diseases is that something you think is a danger here with immigrants coming here they bring in diseases it's very interesting the NHS debate on this is very interesting because the argument always gets put oh well of course if we didn't have migrant workers uh you know the hospitals couldn't possibly run uh but we're beginning to hear the counterargument slowly but surely that actually many many billions of pounds a year are being used effectively to treat people who are coming here for the reasons of Health tourism and I think well we don't know David and that's the point and and and you know it's exactly the same it's exactly the same you know it's billions you don't much it is it's exactly the same as the government made it up as the government admitted as the government admitted two days ago you know part of the r that's been going on you know what is the cost cost of social benefits to Eastern Europeans in this country and the government doesn't have any figures and the NHS doesn't have any figures so it's quite difficult for us to get a handle on this surely well well we don't do that you see cuz we try and deal objectively in fact um and that's the whole point about about the immigration debate that the facts are that that more people settled in this country in 2010 than came between 1066 and and 1950 and that giv you some idea of what of what we're talking about we've got the there's so many people that want to come in please don't try and come back in again um to there were two questions uh that were directed at this side of the table so David goodart do you want to just address this point about how well we pay our pensions dependence uh if we don't have immigrants in the workforce and do it briefly you can and then I'm going to take another round um I I I do first of all though just want to come back on um David aronovich is rather sort of snide implication that I I was uneasy about the ratio nature of the change in this country um race has not been Central to debate tonight it is not Central to the to National debate now as it was in the postcolonial period in the 1950s 60s and 7s the point is in 1950 Britain was almost entirely white so the the measurement of demographic change is partly the measurement of the different different ethnic composition of the country I mean if you're saying that it's not reasonable to talk about these changes long you you're put pushing the debate back and I'm as everybody on your side seems to be in the 1980s you're having a debate about whether immigration is a good thing or a bad thing we're not having a debate we're we're having a debate here about whether High immigration should be happening or not and one of the reasons one of the really poor reasons for having very high levels of immigration is pension point but all the serious economists have long since rejected this idea because you get on to a treadmill I mean unless you want the the population of Britain in 1900 was 30 million the population of Britain in 2000 was about 60 million if you want the age structure remain the same the population of Britain at the end of this Century will have to be 120 million now people who want the age structure to say say well we got to have lots and lots of immigrants we have that we get onto this treadmill of population increase and the point is you know that the immigrants get old too they quite quickly Converge on the family size of the existing population it really is no answer at all okay because you're I'm going to come back to all of you so don't worry about that you've got a questioner there and I know lots of people to get in so I'll try and get as many of you as you can and if you're brief that will help me yeah hi um my question goes out to whoever is in charge of the procurement of Talking Heads uh why is it that in a debate on immigration there are no immigrants but rather someone who can trace his immigration his family history back to the henaut or someone with a friend in South London um okay um if it's thank you um I'll speak on behalf of the organizers here just on that very specific point while of course we have the most Stellar panel we could ever have dreamed of the in organizers do tell me they did try indeed to get an exactly the speaker and they approach several people they approach several people and they did actually decline the invitation so that point was thought of let's hear the question from you then hello my name is suan hanock um it seems to me that the entire panel agrees that the real problem is poor education and the fact that all these terrible immigrants are simply better now if you believe in a free economy and free markets why don't you just make your product better and then you don't have anything to fear okay thank you thank you um some somebody has got the microphone next there yeah um the whole debate tonight seems to have been a little one-sided in the sense that um we've only talked about people coming into this country and it's effectively a debate about protectionism now can you imagine having a debate about trade where we say we would really like to export to every country in the world but we won't let them import anything here and so the other side of this debate is if we want to close down our borders we will have to accept that we will not be able to work or live in any other country as British people because I can't imagine that the entire world will keep open their borders for us to move to if we want to put controls in place in the other direction and so the the population of Brit British people living in France and Spain but also in North America and many other places will be dramatically affected by these kind of changes thank you that's a sharp question I'll make sure it comes out I'm also aware by the way that so far the two questions we've got have been directed at this end of the table so if you do have a question that is challenging the side for the motion that will be good so maybe keep your hand up for that but we you've got the microphone here I hope young woman who spoke to us before told us of her confidence speaking before a big audience here we go um I have a question for and against maybe just do the one for because we're short of time yeah um I was going to say that since one of the speakers said that London's population is drastically changing every five years don't you think that London will lose its ability to provide people with like a communal sense of existence there okay and and you because you think that's a threat if it keeps churning it will lose that sense of community yes thank you okay and then there's a lady here who should have the microphone being brought to her I you did have your hand before yeah you've got it okay off you go yes hi this is for either side really but um I'm an American I came here three years ago to get a master's degree and I stayed here on a poststudy work visa which allowed people who got a degree here to stay for two years and spend some time in society working and contributing back while I was on that Visa this debate about numbers and focusing on numbers really came to the four and they canel the poststudy work visa program it was one of the first ones to go so I'm just wondering if anyone has any thoughts about making this an issue about net migration and numbers and whether that has effects on certain non-eu migrants or groups of migrants that might be easier to regulate than than others because that your fear is that might be deterring people like you who want to come here to study Etc absolutely or people who have studied and want to stay okay um thank you I know there's more people who want to get in if we have time I'm going to do another round and if I can even get in another one after that I will but let's put these questions to you why don't we start with you Susie Sims this um point about the churn the questioner asked you know if the population in London just take London as an example is going through that kind of turn and up and churn and upheaval how do you maintain the kind of sense of community in a city as big as this if the population is moving as much as it is I see why that appears to be a worry but one of the things I would do is just point out at how many other periods in the past if we take a long enough view this has happened you know because this nonsense about talking about levels of numbers it really breaks my heart we just have to think in terms of percentages when we worry about absorption and change and we're talking about 1% of the population a year it's 1% coming in it doesn't matter across the whole country but in an area of huge immigration like London global global cities like London like Paris like Berlin like New York are cities that are Chang changing faster that's the world that we live in that's a global world you want to be in cities that are attracting people to come in and you want to hold the good people when they do come and we just need to find ways in which we build on small communities that give people a sense of Engagement with where they live but also recognizing that they're part of a big city and a big world that's changing very fast okay Harry Sergeant I want to put to you the the point because it relates in a way to the stories you were telling about uh the the teenage gang that you worked with for your book this idea that the question is said Well if you know if you believe in free markets and the product's not good enough the product in this case being workers uh who are British born then you've just got to make the product better so they can compete and it picks up the challenge David aronovich said you know we used to people on the right used to say competition was great now you seem to be arguing the comp you know if competition's too strong people would give up so what's your response to that me well I I say yes I mean I mean my I'm passionately Keen that the education that these young men are just having their lives wasted and that of course we've got to give them um the skills and the motivation that the immigrants have and I um rather like Nigel have you know been around the country and interviewed large numbers of these young people and have been completely brokenhearted here they're bright they're ambitious but they just simply have not g been given the very basic tools to compete so I agree that that is quite unfair I also um I think picking up that there was a question about this kind of free market which I thought was a great question um and you know I'm all for free markets but then you've got to at the same time have a kind of level market and the moment the sort of um the the the the the the push and the pull is is so very different I mean um how would you make the market level well the minimum wage I mean just to give an example um the minimum wage here is is is four times um the average wage in Poland and nine times in Romania so it's rather like me suddenly hearing that there's an EU country that was offering four times our average wage our average wage is around about 26,000 was offering four times our average wage for for to do sort of um cleaning or washing or whatever okay I mean I would immediately get my daughter who is the uh young um same agees immigrants you know ambitious and skilled like them I say look you can go put her on a plane and send her off in all seriousness why why because I mean it's the equivalent I'm just trying to give it's the equivalent of £100,000 for us but well that leads to then the other question which was this is a two-way street and if we close the borders so that people can't come in then our British citizens can't go out to the rest of the world and work there farage what about that because British workers are all over the world entrepreneurs in America and Australia free trade deal two Street surely free trade deals are never accompanied by total Open Door free flows of people who can go and live work and settle somewhere free trade deals nearly always have with them you know sensible reciprocal work permit schemes and there is an encouragement of people working in each other's countries and I sometimes think what we've gone wrong with this is we've forgotten what work permits are because we've sort of we we we've done away with that people don't come here to work so much now they come here actually to settle and to use the Health Service and if they need to claim benefit or put their kids through primary school so let's think a little bit more perhaps about work permits and you know I'll tell you this on this point about free trade even Milton fredman the high priest of free markets even fredman who believed in the free flow of goods capital and services even fredman never believed in the free flow of people especially between rich and poor country thank you here's what we're going to do I'm going to get squeezing these last few and then we're going to have closing speeches here while you vote so these last three need to be really brief gentleman here and then we're going to get the microphone to the young man there and in between we're going to go to the lady who's got the microphone over there and that's going to be all I'm afraid yeah good both sides explain how they're going to pay for their respective policies housing if it's unlimited who's going to pay if you're going to restrict how are you going to pay to improve the infrastructure at a time of shortages of money thank you if we can get this microphone back to the very young man in a white shirt there keep your hand up yeah that's it so we can know where to get to and then the lady is got the microphone here yeah yes oh okay so it's no not the rest of you just the the young person there who has a hand up there we go good wait just wait because we're going to hear from the lady here yeah so we heard two arguments one that it isn't about race and two that it is about class um firstly on the point about it being about class and saying that um the it is the working class that have to fear the immigrants I think the working class have to fear us and the politicians because for the past 20 years we have not put in the public policy to give them the chance to be able to compete and secondly the point you make about London being 45% white British I'd like to point out that I am very British I may not be white but I'm very British and therefore um statements like that really don't help these type of debates okay thank you thank you and then this is going to be the last contribution from the floor yeah hi um this is a question um um for the opposition but I suppose could be commented on by the proposition as well and there seems to be inconsistency in your um speeches first David you say how there's this like terrible brain drain in which um all the intelligent people from the um countries which people are immigrating from IAD of coming here and sad of taking all the talent away and we should rather keep the um intelligent and educated people there and then we hear from n of Rage that we should actually be handpicking our people so we only get the bright and intelligent people who going to contribute to our economy which if either of you are actually right ah very okay so you sented a contradiction on that side thank you for that here's where we've got to the moment where you are all going to vote people will be moving around among you uh with ballot boxes if you are voting for the motion in other words you are believe immigrants can come let them come you're voting with this team over here with Susie Ken and David tear off the bit that says four and and if you are against you're with Nigel Harret and David please plop the bit that says against keep sh we still going to have speeches so I need you to keep the volume down if you want to abstain you put the entire card in the box the whole card in the box now keep the volume you don't need this is It's a silent ballot as well as a secret ballot sh you need to keep the volume level low because we now have summing up speeches which you may hear as you uh come come to finalize your vote we're going to do this in reverse order just 2 minutes each cuz we are running against the clock and I'm going to start with in reverse order so Nigel farage let's start with you what and it closing remarks and perhaps pick up the questioner there who said he spotted a contradiction some saying pick the best and the brightest others saying it's because the best and the brightest are coming they're denying jobs to our young people here so Nigel farage you can do it at the table here actually thank you the argument wasn't the argument wasn't that the argument was we do not need to have a massive oversupply of the unskilled labor market Market of course we want good skilled people innovators wealth creators to come to our country even though we accept it will be to the detriment of other countries uh Jonathan thank you uh for the conduct of this evening I want to make one very simple point to you ladies and gentlemen this is a numbers game just think about the history of this country think about how we've managed migration think about how we've proudly uh given Refuge to those fleeing in fear of their lives and add up all of those numbers and they are as nothing compared to what has happened in the last 15 years we have seen if we if we get out of the wealthier parts of London and go to the poorer bits of London or get or get out into the rest of the country um I think that the proposes of this motion have got slightly Rose tinted spectacles something very dramatic has happened in the course of the last 15 years a country that was generally very much at ease with itself is now I found in many parts of the country incredibly tense we have Division and growing enties in our Market towns and cities that I never thought we'd see and I don't want to see we already have a massive social problem in integrating the 4 million people that have come here in the last 15 years the last thing we need to do is to carry on with a policy of Open Door irresponsible uncontrolled immigration this motion is in itself irresponsible nobody nobody sensibly could say that we shouldn't have some degree of control over this issue we can argue then whether it's a net 80,000 a year or 50,000 a year or whatever it is but at least then we would be in control um I thought 50,000 was nearer the mark but either way we need to be in control of it we need to be selective it is irresponsible and we are betraying our workingclass communities in this country and many as Harriet mentioned of our ethnic minorities feel betrayed by what has happened since 1997 and indeed they have and so I urge you to vote for common sense and to oppose this motion thank you very much thank you so if you if you agree with Nigel farage remember you're slipping in the piece of a that says against our next person to sum up uh in state you can do it from here uh David aronovich two minutes to you thank you um I can't help wondering that when Nigel's Hugo ancestors came over there was n the leader of a kind of small party around let's call him wat farage um leading a campaign to have them sent back on the basis either that they had life-threatening illnesses the pox or French warts or something like that um or that they were overc competing with Smithfield Weavers Etc who were going to be out of a job and not actually being able to tell you in the end which it was that he was more scared of is just that he wished they wouldn't come whichever it was um in fact fact the scale of immigration that we've seen is not unprecedented David goodhart can only get it to be unprecedented in his book by treating the Irish immigration to this country which was in percentage terms far greater than the immigration we've seen recently by treating as if it was somehow indigenous immigration and the Irish from V the Irish people from Villages like skarin Etc uh in the 1840s were as assimilable and as assimilated to British community is from Brighton to Liverpool um as uh as a British person as an English person would have been as English person would have the said actually an awful lot of it happened incredibly quickly David and it was a very high level immigration as I said you as I said you finessed it let alone finessing internal migration from the country to the towns which happened at a far more significant scale I only say that to say that times of great change see people on the move and what we're very good at if we allow it to happen happen is reconstructing communities and creating new communities and you know what in answer the question that happened that's exactly what has happen in London communities are not just people who are look the same and exist speak exactly the same languages when they start they are much more mobile than that they are communities of Interest people with small children meet each other each other outside schools and discover that they have things in common with each other that's how communities are created and they can be created by all kinds of people in including immigrants and in London this incredibly successful Capital as Ken said they have been uh created and to huge success success in other words Mass migration certainly in this capital and I think in the country has been a great success and we have nothing to fear from it thank you um thank you very much indeed and uh I go next to somebody against the motion and who the next person will be I think is going to be David no in rever har now I'm so sorry so Harr it is you who's up and you've got two minutes uh and particularly I wonder if you could address that question that came at the end which was uh about for example this this worry that people have uh about how long it would take for somebody to count how long one of the very first questions that was asked about how long it takes to assimilate so let's well I mean we've had some brilliant um arguments from the other side but I find that their arguments lack logic and they lack heart I mean what really puzzles me is they seem to love immigrants when they're just over there somewhere or just on their way here and all just arrived but once they've stay here once they have children here they this this other side just seem to don't forget about them or not like them I mean um I mean David David aronovich on his in his blog uh describes um some of the people that I know as you know festering and littering the streets um which I find actually quite obnoxious but it's once they've been here for a generation he feels that he can say that about them um which doesn't make any sense to me at all I mean what does he think is going to happen when these polls for example when they their children then go through our state education system I mean are they going to be they're going to be as sort of unmotivated and unskilled as the people now that he dismisses us littering our streets I mean I have a friend who works in a pupil referral unit and they already this this is a a school a unit where children who have been really bad and been kicked out of every possible School are sent they already have three polls in that pupil referral unit so you know why do you just lose interest in immigrants when they're the second generation okay I you got 25 30 seconds so just okay I'm just saying I think that migration is allowing us to duck out from the really serious thing that is facing issue that's facing Us in this company country which is lack of social mobility and we are simply not not doing anything about it because we can have immigrants coming in what we should be doing is is is trying to make our own people as skilled and as motivated okay thank you very much that's your closing argument thank you um Ken Livingston it's your chance to sum up and I just want you to pick up one question we didn't get an answer for somebody asked about the housing it was you particularly talk about housing who's going to pay for it they said so if you can pick that two minutes to you I've been a manager for 40 years and every budget I produced has been balanced on Revenue uh and I think there only been about five or six National budgets so that's why a we have the debt problem we have not just the banking crisis Western politicians have always borrowed a when there's recession as kan's advis they never set to the next chapter which say when You' got a boom you pay it back and that's an emic problem so I always prod balance budget so I always had the freedom to borrow money off the bond markets subdue things like the London overground I and that's the key difference now the way in which we could actually build housing without borrowing is say to the bloody Bank of England instead of doing this quantitive easing 375 billion pounds which just flowed into the International Financial system produce the money to build the homes the bank of lingwood would be the owner they'd be managed by local authorities it's not increasing debt it's increasing the asset base of the country then just finally on this is is you what how we Define when someone becomes British or whatever what I like about being British is there are no rules about being bloody British you can live exactly whatever mad way you want as you don't break the law unlike France with some fairly rigid and unpleasant rules and if I think about it if you I represented sto Newton with the largest Orthodox Jewish Community I IM anywhere in Europe a have we been diminished because they've retained much of their culture where other Jews have virtually lost I mean I know Jews who who've never got involved in their religion at all I and each person who comes here makes their own choice I mean 20 years down the road there will be people of Muslim origin who've never read the Quran so the others still devoutly following it we aren't diminished by that diversity I believe we're strengthened by it and just finally I was really struck by I Harriet's opening speech was very similar to mine she identified a problem that has hit the working class there's two answers though was that caused by a immigration or was it caused by the failed neoliberal experiment of Thatcher and Reagan hey because I'm a guardian reader you won't be surprised to discover interesting chart this week about how poorly Britain and America are doing on the three Rs we're at the bottom of that but we're the most unequal of all the societies they were looking at this is the tragedy we're in a mess communities have been destroyed DED because of the failure of our economic policies not because someone came here from abroad okay thank you we hearing a little unpleasant chime which I don't know what that quite denotes but we'll perhaps find out we going to wait a second this is the piece of paper with the results which is crucial um it's true now normally that's a metaphor about what's happening to immigration and our Society but it's actually um maybe more literal um I want to go next to our penultimate speaker uh David goodart and I want you if you can David to take up the point that somebody did ask they said they are British they're not white British but they're British what does that have to do with it she said and it's not helpful so you're summing up um we have to remember that the situation is not a static one um to return to this guy Paul KY who I mentioned in my opening remarks uh about very influential and important development economists his recent book Exodus about why large scale immigration does not help poor countries had at its heart a a model um which describes why immigration sorry imigration will be of a rising scale over the next 100 150 years or so perhaps before the when the world becomes more kind of evenly developed then then immigration is going to cease to become a big issue but for the time being there are three things that mean that it's going to remain a huge issue and there are going to be huge flows unless we have you know responsible Fair restrictions in rich countries one of them is the fact that there's a huge income gap obviously between poor countries and rich countries reduced a little bit by China and India but not very much his second point was that there are now very large diasporas in rich countries like ours which reduced both the psychological and economic cost of movement so I mean you know it was much harder to to be a seek Indian coming to South Hall in 1960 than it is today thirdly there are many more people in poor countries who actually have the we with all the kind of mid middling income people in poor countries and huge proportions of them want to move uh and I and you know who can blame them but it creates this hugely unevenly developed world where that you know the the the most ambitious and brightest people in the poor countries come to the rich countries uh they you know and and and in some cases damage the interest of poor people in rich countries let's have more even development of the world that'll be fairer for everybody um when when a country is changing its its immigration policy as ours is I'm I'm a labor supporter but I think the government is broadly speaking getting it right there are bound to be mistakes they're bound to there are bound to be unfairnesses uh you know you're you're moving from one whole system to another um but I mean I mean David R MIT I mean talks about um I mean the whole point about the labor party was about at least limiting competition in the in the labor market I mean that sort of was what it was for and now the idea is to have not not only no um no protection at all and you know just you know competing with people from all sorts of other countries who have you know who who are coming from have much lower wage expectations and so on we've got to have some degree of fellow citizen favoritism including all citizens of whatever race or religious background I mean of course I believe that I mean it's just just basic um but fellow citizen favoritism that that that gives people a sense of common citizenship and common Norms otherwise we're not going to have a welfare state in 30 or 40 years time okay um Susie SS you're are going to be our final speaker thank you we we do we do now have the results so if you can confine this to really a very brief intervention from you minute or two maximum that would be great and off you go sus times well I want to know where this warehouses where we're putting our weakest performers cuz I think I've got a couple of candidates um they're not very good at sums not very good at numbers I'm not going to bother trying to teach David goodart economics because better people than me have been trying over the past year or two uh to teach him about the lump of Labor f Y and uh he's not got it yet and I don't suppose he's going to he's also not very good at reading um Paul kier's book it's not a great book he's he's a terrific Economist and he knows an enormous amount about poor countries um but he doesn't say the things that David says he says we have to really worry about accelerating not current levels accelerating levels of uh losses of people permanently from very poor countries that's a legitimate worry and a legitimate concern you don't solve it however by putting up barriers and preventing them coming you solve it by and he's right for once um on more equal distribution between rich and poor countries I'd like Nigel farage to have the guts to come down and see me in 19 prinet Street the Museum of immigration uh it's in the middle of Brick Lane uh where I spend most of my life so I know quite a lot about the people he claims that we don't know anything about uh he might learn something about past immigration instead of telling these fairy stories about how wonderful and lovely and welcoming everything was in the past um so if he'll come that would be fantastic come and speak to some of the people uh in Brick Lane I think the key thing here is that some of the issues that Harriet talked about are Absolut abely desperately important they really are they're at the core of what we ought to care about as an equal society that gives equal and fair opportunities to everybody but we don't do that by scapegoating immigration it's not migrants that caused the class system in this country it's not migrants that caused social immobility and it's not migrants that make it so hard for these young people whom we failed to get get jobs thank you very much thank you I want to thank Susie and all all six speakers I think absolutely terrific quality of debate tonight um the result is fascinating and testament to the fact that our Debaters on both sides succeeded is the fact that the don't knows began the evening at 33% fully a third of everyone here and that figure has shrunk to 2% which is very very unusual and that I think is a tribute to the uh the performances from our speakers before the debate those for the motion who did indeed believe let them come uh was stood at 30% and that has rocketed upward to 47% those those against began the evening at 37% in other words those on this side of the argument who said don't don't let them all come 37% and they too have shot up to 51% it means that the motion has been defeated this side is Victorious thank you hold on to a last thing left I want to remind you all crucial piece of information that the bar upstairs will be open until 915 but for now please join me in thanking our speakers Susie Sims Ken Livingston David aronovich David goodard Harris n faral thank [Applause] you

Channel: Intelligence Squared

Views: 114,862

Keywords: Intelligence Squared, Debate, great oratory, Intelligence Squared debate, speech, top debates, best debates, most interesting debates, educational debates, intelligence2, intelligencesquared, is debate, iq2, iq2 debate, iq squared, Immigration, Immigration debate, David Aaronovitch, Nigel Farage, Ken Livingstone, Susie Symes, Harriet Segreant, David Goodhart, The British Dream, London, Multiculutral, Diversity, overcrowding, Daily Mail, EU, Bulgaria, etabednitargimmi, xenophobia, romania

Id: ciZEUGor-p4

Length: 108min 23sec (6503 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 14 2013