Ian Birrell in The Independent
Myths and mantras are swirling around the increasingly-toxic immigration debate as mainstream parties flounder in the
face of Ukip’s insurgency. These include the old favourite that no-one is ever
allowed to discuss the issue due to political correctness, when papers and
political discourse have been swamped by the subject for years. Or claims the
British public was never asked about allowing in floods of foreigners, despite
elections contested by parties displaying a range of stances from sympathy to
outright hostility.
But perhaps the
biggest falsehood, frequently heard reverberating around the Westminster
echo chamber, is that immigrants undermine Britain ’s public services. We hear
this charge from across the spectrum as panicking parties chase after Nigel
Farage, the Pied Piper of pessimism. Yet the truth is rather different. If
there is a cover-up committed by Westminster
as large chunks of the electorate seem to believe, it is by politicians abusing
the issue of immigration to hoodwink voters and hide their own deficiencies.
Take the health
service. There is regular tiresome talk of crackdowns on ‘health tourism’,
although the young European migrants moving to this country are far less likely
to be a drain on health care than the one million mainly-elderly Britons who have
moved to Spain .
Indeed, some Polish acquaintances say they fly home even for dental treatment
rather than risk our rickety health services.
Yet as Stephen
Nickell from the Office for Budget Responsibility reminded MPs last week, the
NHS would be in dire straits without migrant staff. They have come from more
than 200 countries. More than one quarter of doctors and one in seven of all
qualified clinical staff in hospitals and surgeries are foreign nationals -
along with a huge number of carers (as I have seen from grateful personal
experience with my profoundly disabled daughter).
Instead of condemning immigrants for
threatening the welfare state, politicians should be praising them to the
heavens for supporting the nation’s most precious public service. And this is
ignoring the dry economic reality that they contribute more to the exchequer
than they take out, as shown by scores of studies, as well as being more likely
than native-born Britons to set up businesses and less likely to claim benefits.
Then there are
schools. One of the most remarkable recent stories in global education has been
the astonishing turnaround of London
schools, improving much faster than those elsewhere in the country. The
performance gap between rich and poor children has also narrowed, with pupils
from some of the capital’s impoverished areas now outperforming their peers
from far more affluent areas. For all the scaremongering about schools under
pressure from migrants, standards soared at a time when the capital bore the brunt
of Britain ’s
recent heavy influx of newcomers.
Academics are
grappling with this phenomenon. And their studies indicate immigration lies
behind this transformation, as well as helping drive London ’s economic and cultural dynamism. One
report found an arrival of Polish pupils lifted overall school results and
boosted classmates’ performance, even when they had little or no English.
Another from Bristol
University last month
concluded the improvements were down to diversity, saying schools with high numbers
of ethnic minority and migrant pupils gained best results because of their
higher aspirations.
So much for Farage’s
claims that immigrants are wrecking public services and ruining the quality of
life in Britain .
In truth, they are doing the precise opposite - propping up the health service
he professes suddenly to revere and driving up school standards. Perhaps this
was what Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, meant when he
spoke on the radio recently about children with poor English changing the
character of schools? Sadly, I fear it not; it was just another salvo in a
crude political arms race.
Clearly
there are pressures when a country’s population increases fast - although our
rise is also down to welcome increases in life expectancy and birthrates. Yet
migrants have become the proxy for any problem, the easy target for almost any
issue. But if there are too few doctors’ surgeries and primary schools, whose
fault is that? Who should be blamed for decades of failure to build enough
houses? Or for the low skills of too many school leavers and the shameful
poverty of expectation that failed generations of working class kids?
Immigrants contributing to our prosperity and public services - or politicians
who failed to plan for the future?
This stench of
hypocrisy wafts perhaps most strongly over the issue of housing. For at least
two decades, Britain
has been building about half the number of new homes needed; last year, for
instance, only 110,000 of the 250,000 needed new homes were completed. Yet
despite a few tentative attempts by the coalition, politicians have ducked
difficult - and potentially unpopular - questions over planning, social housing
and green belts, resulting in severe shortages of homes, soaring prices and
rising rents.
Now immigrants get
the blame and there are complaints of over-crowding; in fact, less than
one-tenth of England
is urban development and nearly half this is gardens and parks. There has been
a slight lift in house building this year - although few will thank those
Polish plumbers and Estonian electricians doing much of the work. Sadly, it is
far easier to scapegoat foreigners than it is to face up to political failure
and tackle tough questions on public services.
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