Speeches by Murray.

“I want to come back to no recourse to public funds in just a second. Before we move on, one of the other proposals is that you would have family members on different routes to settlement. What is the impact of that, and would it be very unusual? Does it happen in other countries?”

“I can understand that, in those cases, this could increase the likelihood that there is a cohort of people who were born in the UK and have lived their whole lives in the UK, but who are struggling to get British citizenship, but I am trying to understand the scale of the problem that we could be creating. Even under t…”

“Thank you, that is very helpful. Can I ask about a different category of children: people who are born to migrant parents in the UK? Let me check that I am understanding the scenario here. Let’s say that a migrant couple get a job in the UK, come to the UK on a visa route, work, and have a baby who is born in the UK. I…”

“What do you think the broad impact of the proposals in the consultation will be on children and young people, and how do we need to be thinking about this?”

“I am thinking about people who come from overseas to work hard in our public services and then find that the immigration rules have shifted around them. What is the risk of another Windrush scenario with these changes?”

“How does it incentivise them not to give a pay increase? Sorry, I am not following.”

“It sounds like you are saying that even if a Government really toughen settlement policy, they should not expect to see a corresponding decline in migration.”

“I have a couple more questions. We are talking about the purpose and aims of earned settlement. Let me test a hypothesis on you and see what you think. A Government have very few levers to influence behaviour of people in the country. We have the education system, through which we can teach people English and how we wa…”

“The increase or decrease—what is the influence of settlement policy on net migration?”

“Thank you for coming in. I have a few follow-up questions. Before that, I declare the support that my office receives from RAMP. Net migration has been very high over the last decade. Obviously, it is coming down now, but it peaked at around 900,000 net migrants a year. How far do you think that was influenced by UK se…”

“I have a tiny follow-up. I may be paraphrasing a bit, but my understanding is that if you apply for French citizenship, you go an interview, which is in the language, and you are asked to describe your engagement with French culture. I think they ask you about French films, French literature and what you do in the comm…”

“I take your point. I was not so much asking whether it was mad or not mad; I was asking what the impact on child poverty would be. Will it go up or down? Or, given that we already have statutory duties to protect children, will it stay the same?”

“I want to ask one more question—sorry to take up so much time. We alluded to no recourse to public funds. Obviously, this will extend the amount of time people and families with children are on no recourse to public funds. However, we also have other laws in this country: local authorities have statutory duties to prov…”

“Or members of Select Committees.”

“So it is the same 10-year route. I had not clocked the impact on children, so that is really useful. I have two more questions. First, am I correct in thinking that a child’s path to settlement will be dependent on their parent’s contributions and consistency of earnings? What are the implications of that? How fair is …”

“Sorry, but this is an aspect of immigration rules that I have not got my head around. Obviously, we have had the 10-year route, which we all know about. Are you saying that there is a different 10-year route for those who arrived as children?”

“Why is that?”

“That is interesting—I did not know that.”

“Thank you, Mr Dowd. I was on the point of winding up there, do not worry. My hon. Friend made an excellent point; he and I could spend hours discussing the Government architecture distinctions between the UK, France and, I would argue, Scotland—Scotland makes different mistakes in its Government structures in compariso…”

“The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that relationships between political leaders are critical to developing relationships between nations, and I look forward to the work we will be doing on the APPG in that regard. I welcome the return of the Erasmus+ and youth experience schemes. I studied in France under Erasmus a…”