The home secretary’s latest wheeze – to insist migrants have command of the English language to A-level standard – is a headline-grabbing gesture that won’t prevent a single illegal Channel crossing, writes John Rentoul
Shabana Mahmood has made a good start at the Home Office, saying the right things about regaining control of Britain’s borders and starting to deliver some policy changes.
The number of people who arrived by dinghy and have subsequently been returned to France remains small, but it is growing. Mahmood rewrote the guidelines on modern slavery within hours of a migrant using the Modern Slavery Act to avoid deportation. And she has spoken blunt truths to her squeamish party about the need to control immigration as the condition of a compassionate policy.
She did not say, though, that “Britain has lost control of its borders” – that was a newspaper headline on a preview of her speech today, in which she will say “the failure to bring order to our borders is eroding trust not just in us as political leaders… but in the credibility of the state itself”.
She sticks to the line, which is that the previous government lost control and Labour is now working ceaselessly to restore it, while always making the argument to her reluctant party as to why it matters.
So far – and she has been in office for only 40 days – she has brought a welcome sense of urgency to the issue on which this government’s fate could turn. She knows she has to stop the boats or Nigel Farage will become prime minister.
It was disappointing, therefore, that she diverted herself this week into recycling one of the oldest and most pointless gimmicks in the long history of immigration “crackdowns”.
She announced on Tuesday that immigrants will need A-level standard English to work in Britain. The idea that “immigrants must be required to learn English” for the sake of “integration” has been a staple of policy, for both governments and oppositions, for decades.
It is irrelevant. Immigrants’ fluency in English is not the problem. Almost all immigrants are keen to speak the language, which is in fact one of the “pull factors” attracting people to Britain.
In any case, it is already policy for people coming to the UK for work. If people do come who cannot speak English, they are almost all family members of existing immigrants. The new rules will not apply to them.
Applicants for work visas are required to show a good command of English. Raising the standard is just gesture politics. The Home Office estimates that the new test will result in a decrease of between 400 and 1,500 visa applicants next year. Against a background of falling legal immigration, this is neither here nor there.
Legal immigration is not the problem. The Conservative government had already taken action to cut the numbers after they realised – much too late – that Boris Johnson had allowed net immigration to quadruple. Johnson himself was out and about yesterday claiming that it wasn’t his fault because the Home Office didn’t have “real-time figures” to tell him what was happening. His protestations will not save his reputation: it is not as if he tried very hard to find out what was going on.
Rishi Sunak and James Cleverly cleared up some of the mess, leaving Labour to claim credit for getting the legal immigration numbers down.
But that leaves the problem of the small boats. That is where both Tory and Labour governments have failed to “bring order to our borders”, and that is where Mahmood’s energies should remain focused.
This is the make-or-break issue for her and for the government. Will she be the latest in a long line of home secretaries who have talked tough and failed to deliver? Or is she finally going to solve the insoluble legal and logistical puzzle of how to prevent uninvited migrants from crossing the Channel and being allowed to stay in the country?
She should skip the headline gimmicks and stay focused on dealing with the only issue that really matters.
