Speeches by Atkinson.

“Can I drill down on this? Is the issue the numbers that have arrived, or is it the potential scale of the recourse to public funds as a result of the numbers?”

“There is a set of communities that would say, “We never came seeking public funds,” and that decoupling recourse to public funds and settled status—for example, by linking it to citizenship rather than settled status—would be an option that would increase integration and manage the recourse to the public purse. Is that…”

“Specifically on that point, Home Secretary, accepting everything you have said—there has been abuse, and no one would doubt the Home Office’s work on clamping down on that—that would mean there are 40,000 people currently in the country genuinely working as adult social care workers. The ministerial foreword to the soc…”

“Adult social care is clearly stretched. How genuinely joined up are you with the Department of Health and Social Care on this? We have had evidence saying that the Government is about to publish an NHS workforce strategy but there is no adult social care strategy planned at all; there is no analysis that can be seen of…”

“Home Secretary, you have, as you say, set out a longer implementation period for changes to forces. Whatever their views on their local force, what everyone probably would not want to see is chopping and changing because of different Governments choosing to change boundaries every now and then on force sizes. Clearly, …”

“When you call the police, they should come. When you report a crime, it should be properly investigated. But too many constituents of mine, and I am sure many others, do not feel that that is currently the case. Recognising that you have set out a longer implementation period for macro change, what can constituents of …”

“Will that be coming in more quickly? In the next year or two, will people be able to start seeing those standards?”

“I will come back on worker protections in a minute, if I may, Peter. On the wider point around transitional protections not necessarily for specific groups but for people existing in the UK who came to the UK on the promise of a five-year route to ILR and Mr Percival and Professor Green, do you have a view on transitio…”

“So would you say that when migrants lose their sponsor through no fault of their own at the moment the support is sufficient? Does the system work for those people?”

“Professor Green, do you have any view on sector specific sponsorship as opposed to employer?”

“Thank you. I will come back to the impact on workers and, Peter, perhaps you first. On the implications for workers if they have to maintain a sponsored visa for 15 years or longer and I think you alluded before and I have also heard some stories of sponsoring employers using sponsor status as a lever in a pretty unscr…”

“There has been some suggestion and the Home Office consultation talks about a potential mixture of different options including extending the no recourse to public funds conditions. There has been some suggestion that there could be a retention of the current route to settlement, the five-year path of ILR but an extensi…”

“Let us move on. Clearly the proposal as it stands would apply to people already in the UK and we have talked a bit about that already. Even if the Government were to make these changes for future migrants do you think there should be transitional protections for people who are already in the UK and if so what do you th…”

“I will come on to transitional protections and the impact on workers but if I can just ask a very quick follow-up on the thing about salary thresholds. Do you think there is a differential regional impact on this? I am thinking of parts of the country such as mine, Sunderland, that I represent clearly has a relatively …”

“I thank my hon. Friend for the speech he is making. Does he agree that although the Government seek through their proposals to increase integration, by limiting ILR to those who stay beyond 10 years we are actually going to reduce integration in exactly the sort of instance that he has outlined? That risks undermining …”

“Thank you. In what circumstances does the Home Office have oversight of whether employers have carried out those checks?”

“Ms Hunt, by way of introduction, can you briefly explain employers’ current legal obligations to carry out right-to-work checks?”

“There is some merit in the hon. Gentleman’s proposal, not just for medical training but across the clinical workforce. As Members have acknowledged, we pay significant sums of public money training clinical staff, but the graduates incur significant student debt. If a UK-trained undergraduate student decides to work ab…”

“I welcome the Government bringing forward this legislation, and not just in response to the significant concerns that doctors currently have about access to training places, but as an important part of a reset, with a longer-term approach, to ensure that we have an NHS workforce that is fit for the future. I am going t…”

“I welcome the 15% off business rates for pubs in Sunderland. As we are a music city—live music is core to our identity and regeneration—I particularly welcome the steps that the Minister has announced for live music venues, and his engagement with me and the Music Venue Trust. Could he say a little bit about the method…”