The Tories have long cherished deluded notions of being the party of what ex-Prime Minister, John Major, dubbed “family values”.
With all the grey gravitas of a smalltown bank manager blinking through his owlish specs, Major called for society to go, “back to basics”, which was a bit naughty of him given his embroilment in a four-year affair with Edwina Currie, an episode Jeffrey Archer’s wife Mary deemed surprising not for Currie’s indiscretion, but for the “temporary lapse in John Major’s taste”. Miaow.
The problem with this supposed reverence for family is the absence of political policies to substantiate the party’s rhetoric.
Unless, of course, Boris Johnson thought the aim was to have multiple families with undisclosed numbers of children. (Not for HIM the worries of the party’s two-child benefit limit.)
But it is their latest assault on the families of foreign nationals working in Britain that illustrates the government’s complete disinterest in either families or, for that matter, values.
Government legislation will soon prevent foreign students and care workers from bringing their families when they work or study in Britain.
No spouses or children please
The minimum salary for a skilled worker visa will rise from £26,200 to £38,700 in April.
Health and care workers are in short supply and will be exempt from the increase – but no spouses or children, please.
This is, supposedly, an attempt to curb immigration levels, though the government usually claim the major challenge in immigration is the criminal gangs who exploit the vulnerable by operating small boats across the channel.
Is it just semantics, do you think, to quibble over the relative merits of criminal
exploitation by gangsters, and nice, clean political exploitation from millionaire prime
ministers in Gucci shoes, or Home Secretaries with mothers from Sierra Leone who
were nurses and benefitted from immigration policies in previous generations?
Or are policies separating workers from their spouses, and parents from their children,
morally repugnant and egregiously exploitative?
What is our government saying to foreign workers? We know you are poor. We know you are desperate to support your family. So, we will give you employment and pay you a rate that few in this country want to work for. But don’t tell us about your husband or your wife or your children. Don’t give us your dreams or your desires, or expect us to provide you with a life in return for your labour. You have responsibilities; we have rights.
There is more to this than just the collateral damage of foreign families. There is an
economic deficit too.
In this month’s Nature magazine, scientists argue the UK is becoming, “a less attractive place for the world’s brightest and best students and researchers”.
Mike Galsworthy, chair of the European Movement UK group, which is campaigning to reverse Brexit, says, “The UK government says that they love science, but they are showing little awareness of what makes a vibrant science community.”
Our failure to embrace the world is costing us
Our failure to embrace the world is costing us socially and economically.
There is an absurd notion amongst the more eccentric MPS like… now, who for the sake of argument could we choose?
I know – Jacob Rees Mogg…that Britain is still a major empire. But in reality, we are becoming an increasingly isolated little backwater, a desert island where we will be left on the beaches shouting, Crusoe style, “Ship ahoy! Is there anyone out there?”
The answer is loud and clear. Yes – and we’re all doing better than you. A German geneticist at Cologne University posted on social media, “Dear international students and talents from around the world, note that German universities welcome foreign students are tuition-free and many subjects are taught in English.
Germany has become an open and liberal society in contrast to what the UK government is implementing.”
It’s not that difficult to be more liberal than Britain when it comes to families.
The “Migrant Integration Policy Index”, measures how easily countries re-unite
families list 56 countries. Where does Britain come? Stand tall, Jacob and other
Little Britain-ers! We are 55th out of 56 countries.
Our NHS would collapse without outside help.
According to House of Commons briefing papers, almost 20% of NHS workers are foreign, with 8.6 identifying as Asian and 5.2% as EU citizens. ( Post Brexit, EU workers have declined while Asian and African workers have doubled.)
Numbers are even higher amongst doctors: 35% are foreign.
The highest-paid doctors will reach the £38,700 threshold. They can bring families. Nursing and care staff can not.
Are families now means tested? One foreign nurse, a single parent, told a newspaper this week about her four-year-old daughter. The girl is living with the nurse’s parents but asked a heart-breaking question. ”Mummy, when will you send the planes to get us?”
The home office refused her children entry because they can’t see a “serious or compelling reason” to reunite them.
For most of us, that compelling reason is blindingly obvious. She’s their mother. Can’t the party of family values see that?
Catherine Deveney is an award-winning investigative journalist, novelist and television presenter
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