Jill Rutter writes on migration issues and through IPPR will be publishing a paper on integration in February 2013.
A month after Ed Miliband’s speech on migrant integration and nearly 12 months after his Department published its integration strategy, Eric Pickles made his first speech on this issue in a speech hosted by Policy Exchange and British Future. Devoid of serious policy debate and riddled with Daily Mail prejudices, it was a speech that left many in the audience in bemused silence.
Pickles began his speech by listing the cultural successes of last summer: the Olympics and Paralympics, the Jubilee weekend, Big Lunches, the Big Bandstand Marathon and so on, praising the volunteers who made so many of these events a success. So far, so good. But Olympic nostalgia soon gave way to a lengthy and crude attack on the last government’s record on integration:
“some policymakers of the past want Stalinist five years plans. They believe in focus groups, beanbags and box ticking….we will snap the shackles of the PC past and let localism run free.”
The remainder of the speech mostly comprised rhetoric, with three further references to Stalinism and strong assertions about the UK as a Christian nation and that integration is being undermined by “aggressive securalism”. The only policy announcement of any note was a statement that the Government was going to set up a competition to recognise innovative ways of teaching English to adults.
The Pickles’ speech highlighted the gap in thinking between Labour and the Government on integration. Miliband’s speech in December 2012 talked about the UK’s successes as well as its integration challenges. It also presented policy solutions for dealing with issues such as poor housing, exploitative gangmasters and the occupational segregation of migrants in some poorly paid sectors of the UK economy – in social care and catering and food processing, for example. Any discussion of policy was absent from the Pickles’ intervention.
While the Pickles’ speech left many wondering about his competency, it came as no surprise to those who had read the Department for Communities and Local Government’s integration strategy of published in February 2012. Today’s speech was very much along the same lines as Creating the Conditions for Integration, last year’s paper.
Creating the Conditions for Integration had been planned for a considerable period of time, but was blocked for many months by Downing Street and other departments concerned by its lack of rigour. When this slender document of 20 pages eventually came out it mostly comprised long lists of existing social policy interventions which could be seen, however tenuously, as bearing on integration: early education, the Pupil Premium so on. In the remaining few pages, there was an uneasy mixture of negative ministerial rhetoric, claiming that “state-sponsored multiculturalism” had failed alongside more balanced official commentary.
As with the Pickles’ speech, there was a great deal that is missing from Creating the Conditions for Integration. Work is a significant driver of integration – we meet and mix with others in the workplace. While some migrant groups have low levels of labour market participation, there was little mention in the integration strategy about occupational segregation or about how the Work Programme should meet the specific needs of migrants who have not faired well in the labour market. Shockingly, no central government programme of work is attached to Creating the Conditions for Integration at all.
Creating the Conditions for Integration appears to be a manifestation of the Government’s ‘localism’ agenda. Ostensibly advanced as a means of giving power back to local communities, many commentators have highlighted its inconsistency. The Coalition Government’s desire to intervene on local issues appears to be as strong as ever – where it wishes – for example, in education. At the same time, localism means that this Government is quite content to wash its hands of difficult or unpopular issues such as migrant integration.
Yet all research about migrant integration – both from the UK and beyond – shows that political leadership is needed to ensure successful programmes to support those migrants who struggle to make their way. National leadership and debate about integration and cohesion make it more likely local political leaders will talk about these issues, however difficult they can be. Where there is clear national leadership, local government and the third sector are more likely to acknowledge the specific needs of migrant communities and mainstream public services adapt to their needs. Where there is national leadership, accompanied by flexibility in public service delivery, genuine local innovation can flourish. This is what real localism is about. It is not the irresponsible wash your hands rhetoric of Eric Pickles.
22 Responses to “The Pickles Integration Speech – big on rhetoric, small on ideas”
LB
It doesn’t address the point.
Why should we have migrants who do not pay more in taxes than the state spends on them?
If you have people who pay less tax than this, then this means someone else is being made poor to have them here.
[That ignores the money they send home]
If you want to reduce tax evasion, make taxes simpler. Make taxes lower.
However, the government is trying to extract more money, from people who think they are being screwed.
Take France, they are leaving. 44 bn EUR of assets left French banks last month alone.
UK,. 16,000 million pound earners a year. Well there used to be. That’s not 6,000. They aren’t going to come back for while. It’s pretty much all legal. They have put the assets off shore into companies. Invested outside the UK. All legal, its EU law. Freedom of movement of capital and people (the migration bit).
You have to accept the consequences. Migration of poor people, means people in the UK get poorer. Migration of capital means a falling tax base.
If you carry on spending, and hiding debts off the books, the state goes bust. Greek is a mild version of this.
I predict the consequence is that we will have violence in France and the UK. Imagine being told, we’ve spent your pension money. You can’t have your pension.
CausticWally
You obviously really loathe the poor LB. If we concede your appalling argument that people’s worth is measured by the revenue they generate for the state it is only a matter of time before you turn to culling the native born hard-up. Your castigation of the rich here is only for show, since you don’t propose a single measure to deal with their transgressions.
Me, I prefer the poor any day. Like it says on the Statue of Liberty, “Give me your poor, huddled masses yearning to be free.” In my book it amongst them that you’ll find the human material to build a truly democratic nation. If it takes a revolution to get there, bring it on.
LB
I’ve looked through the fiscal studies paper.
The problem is that you’ve still missed the point.
1. Why should we accept any migrant on benefits? That’s pulling resources from the poor. That’s making the poor poorer.
2. Even if you don’t claim benefits, welfare, it doesn’t mean that you consume more resources than you pay into the system. So the 13% and 29% are irrelevant. That number should be zero.
LB
No I don’t loathe the poor.
1. I loathe those on welfare, who can work, not working. The costs to other people and in particular the poor is horrendous.
2. I really loathe the state. The reason is the state has made the poor poor. I’m not talking about trickle down. I’m talking about taking 430,000 directly from people’s pockets.
3. Will there be a revolution? Yes. It’s just as likely to be a fascist one as a socialist nirvana like North Korea
CausticWally
Loathe the state? You love the state LB. Go back and read everything you’ve written above. The entirety of your judgements about who’s a good guy and who’s bad hinges on the statist criteria of the tax system. You want HMRC and god knows whatever other state agency state agency you can enlist to get on the job of deciding who can stay and who can go. You suck up the immigration control system as your highest ideal – which s nothing more than the state taking decisions about our right to move across the face of the earth.
With your outlook I’m surprise you feel negative about the North Korean hell-hole – surely the most efficient state on the planet when it comes to checking up on who is paying taxes, who is worthy of living in its paradise, and who is privileged enough to be allowed to cross its borders.
Don’t forget to say your prayers to your God the Mighty State before you go to sleep tonight……