TUC’s Paul Nowak and John Amaechi perfectly dismantle anti-immigration rhetoric on Question Time

The general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, Paul Nowak, and psychologist John Amaechi delivered powerful rebuttals of anti-immigration narratives on Question Time last night. 

In a discussion about whether Labour’s new immigration policy is ‘yet another U-turn’, Nowak highlighted the importance of treating migrants with dignity. 

Nowak welcomed the home secretary Shabana Mahmood’s decision to scrap plans to make foreign care workers who are already in the UK wait 15 years to qualify for settlement.

Under the revised policy, care workers who earn at least £25,000 a year and arrived in the UK before May 2025 will continue to qualify for settlement after five years.

Nowak said: “It was a welcome step back, 200,000 people responded to the government’s consultation, I think it’s the second biggest consultation response in history after equal marriage.”

Turning to the debate around immigration, the TUC boss said: “I’ll get to the policy issues in a moment but I’ll tell you this about migration. Quite often it turns into a political ping pong match, and what we’re actually talking about is people.”

Speaking about Liverpool, where Question Time was held yesterday, he added: “This is a city that was built on migration. Both my grandads came to this country during the Second World War, one with the Polish RAF, one from Hong Kong.”

Nowak said both of his grandfathers had met Liverpool Irish women and they stayed and settled in the UK.

“I think it would have been untenable for them to be in a situation when they were in Liverpool and told, well it doesn’t matter, you could be here 15 years, 20 years and we’ll decide when you can stay,” he said.

Nowak questioned: “How do you plan your life, buy a house, put the kids in school, decide what you’re going to do about work?”.

He said Mahmood was “right” to “take a step back” and said it was “untenable” for the government to change the rules for migrants already living in the UK. 

Nowak said he’d like to see the government extend the policy for prison and transport workers and those working in research and development.

Host Fiona Bruce asked Nowak who should not be allowed to enter the country. 

Nowak said “I think people should be able to apply to come to this country and then the government has got to set the guidelines for who can stay and work.”

Amaechi, a former basketball player and psychologist, also challenged anti-migrant rhetoric during the discussion.

He said: “Can I suggest that when we have this conversation sometimes no one I think is arguing there should be just an open door for anybody, but at the same time you listen to this conversation and it’s like the policy was made for the apocryphal grotesque stereotype of what an immigrant is.”

To a round of applause, Amaechi added: “Yes there are fraudsters in this world and guess what they aren’t all just black and brown people coming to this country.”

Speaking about having worked in the NHS for 10 years, Amaechi said that many people doing the jobs “we would find the most undesirable did it with passion and we stood by as they protected our loved ones in their most vulnerable moments”.

He added: “And I’m not saying that that is the picture of all migrants too, but surely a more charitable picture than the fraudsters and the connivers and the criminals, as if we do not have them here in aplenty”.

Amaechi also challenged government policies that require migrants to earn a certain amount to be able to settle.

He said: “Any time that you look at a policy that starts to tell people coming here that they’re only valuable if you make more than this amount of money, then all of us here should look out.”

A young woman in the audience said Amaechi had “hit the nail on the head” with his comments, and asked: “When do we stop scapegoating immigrants in general?”.

She added: “When is there a reflection on the government to put out to people that ‘hang on, immigration isn’t actually this massive issue that it’s made out to be, there’s a lot of fearmongering going on.”

The audience member said that as a student her issue isn’t “someone who is coming here as a migrant to work hard, my issue is getting graduate roles”.

She said she doesn’t view an immigrant “as the reason why I can’t get a graduate job” or “the reason why mincemeat costs £7 and petrol prices are constantly increasing”.

She finished by asking: “So is the government ever going to do something to sort of stop that narrative and tell people ‘actually immigrants are regular people like you and me’?”.

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward