Allowing asylum seekers to work could help solve social care staffing crisis: Andy Brown

What has happened is pretty much the exact opposite. A huge majority has not produced a brave and determined pioneering government. It has produced one that seems scared of its own shadow and only brave about making clumsy misjudgements. Such as rewarding many of those who voted for it with the scrapping of their winter fuel allowance and then hoping it can fix the damage with a partial u-turn.

More worryingly the change of tack has also resulted in the shameful spectacle of a Labour Prime Minister having to send out the spin doctors to try and explain why he had used language which was chillingly reminiscent of Enoch Powell.

Apparently, the once brave human rights lawyer who has become our leader now thinks it is a good idea to try and make cheap comments about immigrants. Before entering office he warned us all of the dangers of pandering to racism.

In power he is now telling us that Britain is importing too many care workers and is at risk of becoming a nation of strangers.

There are very few people in this country who believe that in current circumstances we can have open access borders and allow completely free movement of people. There are also few people who believe this country should never allow anyone to move here regardless of how badly we need their skills or how badly they need to escape from a war zone or how much they have helped Britain abroad.

So, it is important to get rid of as much ideology and emotion as possible from the immigration debate and focus on what this country actually needs and what it can control.

We don’t need people arriving on our shores in small boats who have risked their lives crossing one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. We do need to get serious about the fact that our population is getting a lot older and there aren’t enough people to do some very important jobs.

The average age of people in the latest data I could find was 40.6. That means there are a lot of people in their 80s and 90s and beyond who need looking after and not a lot of young people to do the job. In Japan where they have had almost no immigration the situation is massively worse with the average age being 49.5.

It is a strange government that thinks the best way to deal with this is by banning care workers from coming into this country. They are a crucial resource for most local authority care services and for private providers. There simply aren’t enough young people in Britain to enable us to transform large numbers of them into dedicated care workers with the knowledge, the patience and the respect for the elderly necessary to do the job well.

In other words, limiting the immigration of care workers is certain to cause harm to people who have lived their whole lives in this country and now need looking after.

In theory the government can get people off disability benefits and put them to work to ease the problem. In practice you can’t easily make someone who has a bad back capable of lifting a patient onto a bed or ensure that someone with a history of mental illness will be robust enough to cope with the crisis if a person with dementia kicks off and turns violent.

It doesn’t matter how much you bully the disabled by reducing their benefits you can’t cure the fundamental problem of an ageing population without immigration. It is not possible to go back in a time machine and force people to conceive more children. So, allowing fit and healthy young people who want to work here to do the jobs is a much better idea than demonising them.

The quickest and most cost effective way of saving money and finding an extra workforce without increasing immigration is to change the rules about work that are applied to asylum seekers who are already here. It annoys some very reasonable people to see others sit idly in hotel rooms for week after week whilst they wait for a decision on their right to remain.

That could be cured overnight if we allowed asylum seekers to work and pay tax and rent whilst their cases are being considered.

At the moment asylum seekers are actively banned from working because Ministers are scared of being seen to be soft on immigration. That helps no one. We could ease the staffing crisis in care, the NHS, and the construction industry overnight and cut costs for taxpayers if the government had the courage to change this dreadful policy.

Unfortunately, on that point the gentleman is still not for turning.

Andy Brown is the Green Party councillor for Aire Valley in North Yorkshire.