Good morning and welcome to the 14th meeting of the Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Relations Committee in session 5. Can I remind members to turn off mobile devices and any members using electronic devices to access committee papers could ensure that they were turned to silence? Apologies have been received from Jackson Carlaw MSP, who is attending the Scottish Parliament's corporate body this morning and who may come later to the meeting. Our first item of business today is a round table session on the implications of the EU referendum for Scotland, and we are focusing today on EU migration. I would like to welcome all our witnesses who have joined us today. I think that the best way to start off is if we go round the table and introduce ourselves. I will start with Stuart McMillan. Stuart McMillan MSP, MSP for Gronkh Nimboglite. Christina Boswell, Professor of Politics, University of Edinburgh. Rachael Hamilton, MSP South of Scotland. Llorian Cook from Coeslaw. Ross Greer, MSP for the West of Scotland. Colin Moulson, from Pife Migrants Forum. Tavish Scott, MSP for Scotland. Angela Halland, Strategic Analysis, Scottish Government. Rebecca Kay, Professor of Russian Gender Studies, University of Glasgow. Kirsty McLaughlin, National Records of Scotland. Richard Lochhead, MSP for Murray. Robert Wright, Professor of Economics. Rosie Strathgladden. Emma Harper, MSP for South Scotland region. Lewis Macdonald, MSP for North East Scotland, and deputy convener. Joan McAlpine, MSP for South of Scotland, and I'm the convener of the committee. We have been provided with some excellent written research by Spice, the Scottish Parliament's information service. One of the things that struck me was the estimated 181,000 EU nationals who are resident in Scotland, with the majority being from EU accession nations. The increase in population between 2000 and 2015 is 5.7 per cent in Scotland, and apparently the increase in Scotland is higher in terms of people born outside the UK. The increase is higher here in that period of time than the rest of the UK. I would like to start off by asking some of our witnesses to reflect on the impact of that migration, the impact on Scotland with the benefits and the challenges of it. Who would like to start off? I think that in terms of population growth, it's very different, as Kirsty will tell in much more detail. It's very different across different local authority areas. In terms of attracting people to local areas, population growth is a huge issue for some local authorities, not so much for other local authorities, but we looked at the last single outcome agreements and looked at every local authorities single outcome agreement, and just under half had population growth as one of their key outcomes. It is hugely important to local authorities, and it is recognised that migration is a key factor within that. Professor Wright. We have to sort of state some facts to begin with, right? If you look at the population growth in Scotland, it is not immigration or net migration that is driving it. What drives population growth is fertility. Fertility is below a relacement level and has been so for four and a half decades. The Scottish population will not grow much in the future and will not grow rapidly. However, where the immigration comes in is particularly important is that immigrants tend to be younger, and therefore they are more so in the child-bearing age group, so this is why we see high fertility amongst immigrants. Basically, they are younger, and also this is what grows the labour force, and this is the key. This has always been the key since Jack McConnell said you need to grow the population to grow the labour force, because without a growing labour force, with the appropriate skills, you will not get the economic growth that pushes our standard of living up and has done so for almost all of this century. I think that this discussion of population growth, whether the population of Scotland is going to grow rapidly or slowly or whatever, is not the central issue. It is certainly not an issue that focuses the intentions or interests on the importance of migration to grow the labour force and the implications for Brexit, where if it goes through, in one scenario that is most likely, then the free movement of people from these eight countries will be stopped. We have got all the numbers from Kirsty, how many people are in those age groups, and their impact on the labour force growth. This is the key question. What do you do? You need these people to grow the labour force. Basically, the channel will be closed, then how do you get those people if you cannot get them the way you used to because you have a referendum to decide to leave the EU? Population growth, to me, is not the issue. Kirsty McLaughlin, just to reiterate what Robert said, it is more the conveige structure of the population that is going to be affected by not having EU migrants. I think that I have circulated various charts here. If you look at what would happen in an illustrative projection of what would happen if there was no future EU migration, we did a rough approximation of the proportion of in-migrants that were from the EU and then projected for the population. Figure 3 shows what would happen over the next 10 years, and Figure 4 shows over the next 25 years. As Robert said, the impact is really on the younger age group. Migrants are quite young working age and children. It is a much greater impact on Scotland than it is on the rest of the UK. The UK has a younger age profile. We have a lot of baby boomers, fertility and lower. We have all got ageing populations, but it is really the working age population that seems to be the one that is going to impact the most. Can I just come in there to say something to help this discussion along? These zero net migration projections are very informative. You can think of them two ways. The door is shut, nobody leaves, nobody comes, or somehow you can think about the number of people coming equals the number of people leaving. There are two different scenarios, but do not forget, even if you are Nigel Farage and you want to stop immigration or somebody wants to stop immigration totally to Scotland, it does not stop people leaving. People will leave because they are leaving as well as coming. We can stop people coming because if we leave the EU we have an immigration system that will allow that, but it does not stop people leaving Scotland. These are optimistic projections. They say that this story is a good story relative to what it will likely be if there is a big reduction in immigration. I think that Christina Boswell wanted to come in. This might potentially be moving the debate on policy issues, but I think that we have got to premise our discussion on a realistic sense of what the scenarios are, the policy scenarios. We are talking about this possible scenario of no future EU immigration in the event of a cessation of free movement rights. I find that highly implausible. I think that much more likely is that the UK Government will have to find ways of preserving, largely preserving, to some extent, the volume and also the composition of current EU flows. We can discuss what the policy scenarios are for the UK Government to do that, but I do not think that anybody, even the most rabid Brexiteers, is suggesting that there will be a cessation of flows of EU nationals to the UK. The question is what will be the post-Brexit policy scenarios and how might a Scottish Government try to influence and shape what those policy scenarios are and what those programmes are in a way that is most beneficial to Scotland? I can elaborate on that point, but I just want to inject that sort of policy factor into the debate. Rebecca Kee? I think that it is sort of leading on from that. I understand why a Scotland-wide level and a higher policy level has interest in the make-up of the population and workforce issues particularly. Of course, economic factors are also important to migrants themselves, but I think that it is important to recognise that in the actual experiences of people who come to live here and make lives here, there are many other reasons that influence a decision to come here in the first place and a decision to stay longer term and that those need to be factored into policy responses both in terms of Brexit negotiations but also things that can currently be done by the Scottish Government and by local authorities to deal with the uncertainties that Brexit has caused to look at migrants' lives in the round and what encourages people to come but also encourages them to stay and that that might have a very big influence on factors beyond the actual legislation that says whether or not people can come but whether people see Scotland as a place they want to come to and indeed once they're here whether they see it as a place that they and their children potentially have a future in and I think there's quite a lot that we could discuss around that. Okay, thank you. Angela Callum? I just wanted to make a point about what we know about the migrants who are already here and obviously the best source we've got on that is the census although now the census data is getting quite old but Scottish Government published a report last year on the characteristics of EEA and non-EEA migrants recent and established and in October we published a follow-up which extended that to actually compare them with the Scottish born population and the rest of the UK born population and it's very very clear to see that recent EEA migrants in particular are much more likely to be in employment or students so actually if we're thinking about what our situation is and how those migrants are adding value to the Scottish economy I think it's useful to actually start with that in mind. Thank you and I think we have Lorraine Cook wanted to come in. Can I just clarify about outcomes and what Robert was saying about population growth? If you unpick these outcomes and look at them in more detail I said it very broad brush but really they're looking at working age population and local authorities are acutely aware of their age and population and the different makeup and demographics within their local areas but also picking up on what Rebecca was saying about the importance of well the sort of sense of imposed uncertainty that people are living in and the importance of leadership and importance of getting that message across. There's been different announcements from chief executives and leaders and of course Scottish got the first minister but just really making sure people know that they are valued and their contribution within the local area within the country is valued. Thank you. Now we have a first question from our member Rachel Hamilton MSP. It's actually a point. I agree with Christina Boswell said but it's actually a point because we started off looking at how our country would be affected if the doors had been shut from both Professorite and Kirsty McLachlan. I would like to, if you could possibly describe the graph that you have here about the projected needs for EU migration to enable us to have the population that is required here in Scotland. That's possible. Is this your paper? Yes. We started off by looking at how we would be affected if the doors were shut and we didn't have EU migrants coming into Scotland. Does the first graph project what the migration requirements are needed? Well not needed but you're probably better looking at a number five. Figure five shows the principal projection. The projections that were done, the 2014 base projections for getting about Brexit, are the ones that have been, all the assumptions have been tested and checked with expert group and done, ONS carry them out on our behalf. The principal projection is the one that we put most weight on, I suppose. We produce variant projections as well, high fertility, low fertility, high mortality, low mortality, high migration, low migration. There are lots of variants just to show how uncertain it is the further into the future you go. The lighter green blobs, the bars there, are what we published earlier in the year before Brexit. This is what our projections would be. We're just looking at the total population one there. We're projecting that, for the UK as a whole, total population would grow by 15 per cent and, in Scotland, it would be 7 per cent. We also show England, Northern Ireland and Wales. Most of the UK growth is from England, the 17 per cent. That does vary quite a lot. In the age structure, all the different countries in the UK, under pensioners, we're all projected to age. The life expectancy is increasing, so there's going to be more pensioners. Where the difference really is, I think, is looking at the number of children under the principal projection and the working age. Under the principal projection of the children, Scotland's projected to increase the number of children by 1 per cent, whereas England's 10 per cent, the UK as a whole, is 9 per cent. There's quite a big difference in the number of children. The working age population, Scotland's working age population, is projected to increase by 1 per cent over the next 25 years, whereas England's would be 13 per cent and the UK as a whole would be 11 per cent. It's really this kind of balance that the age structure that is different before Brexit came along. That's what we were projecting. Professor Wright wants to comment. The understanding of these kind of population dynamics is rather complicated. Let me try to think about this and answer this question personally in a different way. You look at the situation that we have the most recent data for last year. There was 85,000 immigrants coming to Scotland, according to these estimates. 47,055 per cent came from the rest of the UK, so we have no control over that. Let's become an independent country. You don't have to worry about these people. 37,000, 12 at 40,000, came from the rest of the world. Half of that figure came from the EU, so you're looking at 25 per cent. You're going to be missing 25 per cent if the door is shut. I agree with Christine, but I don't agree totally because it's not so difficult. If you look at what the people from the EU immigrants are actually doing, most of them are in low-skilled jobs, and the UK immigration system has a low-skilled tier that's never been used, tier three. All the rhetoric and discussion we're hearing on television and on the radio is about basically the system of visas, etc. It's just kind of reactivating this tier, and it's not necessarily the case that someone from Poland that would come to work here for two years is going to apply for a tier three visa. So these low-skilled people under the post-Brexit system with a tier three may be attracting low-skilled people who actually have low skills from somewhere else. I do not think, if this Brexit goes through, that we're going to have a lot of polls with high levels of education doing low skilled jobs. I do not think this is going to happen, and it shouldn't because basically what you get is a lot of labour market mismatch. You get people high skill and low skill, you get a lot turnover in the labour market, and this is expensive. Labour market turnover is expensive. You want to try to match people, their skills to the job better. Immigration system in Canada does this. The UK copied that with the points-based system, but never used the tier three because it didn't need to, because they got a lot of low-skilled people who were allowed to live because of the EU arrangement, and live, work, and stay here because of the EU arrangements. So I don't know if that's a partial answer, but it's not everybody, but it's an important component of immigration that comes currently from the EU, 25%. There's two points there in the briefing that we have, and one is that when the economy is not good, wages are lower, particularly for EU migrants. The second point is that the migrants that they're coming across are almost dumbing down their CVs because they want to get jobs and they end up in low-skilled jobs. They are much more qualified than they actually are for those jobs. There's a cost both to the economy and to the individual about that because a lot of labour market turnover, right? I'm interested in this point, but I think there's a wider point here, and that is around how the system operates currently. It's true to say that many people arrive to do jobs that are lower-skilled than their qualifications, but is it not the case certainly in the north-east of Scotland, but I suspect in other urban areas besides Aberdeen that many people arrive to do relatively low-grade jobs and then very quickly find the way through the labour market into other employment. I'd be interested to hear the views around the table on that issue. In other words, is there social mobility within the EU population more generally? I have the sense that there is in the area that I represent, but I'm not sure how typical that might be. Professor Key wants to come in. In our research, that has appeared to be varied across different regions of Scotland. We've done research in Glasgow Aberdeen, but also Aberdeenshire and Angus, and Aberdeen stood out as an area where there was a relatively attractive labour market. Migrants could upskill more easily or could work in contexts in which they were able to increase their English language skills and therefore put into practice the qualifications and skills they might have brought with them. I realise that this is being a bit picky, but I'm not sure people come here to take up low-skilled jobs. I think they come here to make a life, and the starting point for that is to accept lower-skilled work. In some areas where we've been working, particularly in the more rural regions, we've found people stuck for a very long time in very unskilled work, not commensurate with their qualifications, not commensurate with their skillset, and actually in a vicious circle where the forms of employment they're engaged in particularly make it very difficult for them to increase their English language skills. If you're working double shifts in a fish-gutting factory, then getting to our language classes, and you're working with a workforce that's almost entirely made up of other central east Europeans, then the fact that you're in an English-speaking environment does not mean that your English language might have rapidly increased. So there are two very different experiences. There are very different experiences, but those are also replicated, for example, in Glasgow. We've found people with similar experiences who've gone into work, but that's very dominated by other central east European migrants and have struggled as part of that. I see Mr Wilson from the Fife Migrants Forum nodding your head there. Is that something that we can do? Yeah, that's very, very, very true. There's no stereotypical migrant coming into Scotland that come in for various and numerous reasons. I mean, sometimes it's as simple as somebody comes over to spend a few weeks with a friend and decides they'd like that to see and would maybe start in a low-paid job. Many of the migrants that we have are capable of doing a lot more than the jobs that they're in at present. They're ambitious, and when they do get a knowledge of their environment, they want to move on and want to move on to higher-skilled jobs. I think that's a great thing. I think that it's great for the economy. I mean, just in the last year or so, if we take, for example, Cercode, where I work from, we saw a high street that was just dying, just totally dying, and now we've got probably seven, eight businesses that have been set up by migrants that have arrived in Fife, employing not a lot of people, but providing employment. I'm sorry, can I just follow up those points briefly? Given what you've described about people in a rural poverty trap, essentially, migrant labour, is there evidence of gang masters employing people at illegally low wages below the national minimum wage? Is there evidence of illegal migration from Eastern European countries outwith the EU coming through EU channels? There's certainly evidence of gang masters, and we've had a few cases recently of this being organised from one of these European countries, and providing employers with low-paid employees and exploiting those employees. We've seen evidence of wages being paid, or not paid, through European banks to workers. It seems to be more prevalent at the moment than it has been for a while. We've looked less at questions about gang masters or illegal migration or irregular migration status, but certainly we've found a huge variance in the ways in which employers treat their workers and that that has an enormous knock-on effect for people's ability, including to progress. For migrants themselves, working on a farm where somebody's paying wages irregularly, providing very low standard accommodation, not facilitating transport within a region where public transport might be difficult, is very different from the experience of someone working on a farm or in a food processing factory that's providing decent accommodation, making a big effort to help people to integrate with other workers from different countries and so on and so on. Even where there might be completely legal kind of working arrangements, that borderline between a good employer and a less good employer can be very significant. Some people call social mobility moving up the occupational ladder. I mean, there's a lot of evidence out there. I mean, for example, from the census, even though it's a bit just five or six years old now, I mean, there is a big skill mismatch between education level and what EU migrants are doing. It's huge. There's a lot of variability and a lot of regional variation, blah, blah, blah. Okay, fine. But that is kind of just numbers and that can be commented on. The other thing is there's very little evidence that there's significant social mobility amongst this group. In fact, if you look at Ireland that have done a lot of research in this area, there isn't any hardly at all, and a lot of people return to where the country they came from because of this. And this, of course, was a choice of a lot of EU migrants in Ireland with the recession when it hit really hard there, right? So it is not the case that somehow they get here and they take these low skilled jobs because that's all they can get. Of course, they have aspirations, but those aspirations for the vast majority of these people, at least what the data says, are not realized. And what do they do? Well, they stuck in these jobs, as you call it, the poverty trap or whatever you want to call it, or they return home. And, of course, when they return home or where they're from or whatever you want to call it, we can't ask them questions because we don't have any information on them, so we're guessing about them. So the only way to really get a handle on a lot of these issues is to collect information on social mobility and then collect information about people that returned to the country where they came from, which seems not likely to happen on a large scale. Angela Hallam. I was going to make firstly the point that Robert just made about from the census that we know that EU accession migrants are very different in terms of the types of jobs they're in and that the census actually breaks down by degree level qualifications, whether people are in managerial posts or semi-routine or routine occupations. And the EA accession migrants are, there's a massive difference between them and all the other groups, so they're very likely to be in those skilled jobs. So we've got the evidence that says that, as Robert made the point. But I also wanted to flag up the impacts, the review of the impacts of migrants and migration into Scotland, which was published in October. And that found that there's a U-shaped pattern in wages for EU migrants, so there's a real cluster at the low skill end, but there's also a cluster at the high skill end and not much in between. And I think the point that Rebecca was making about Aberdeen is, in the case of Aberdeen, obviously it's quite a mixed environment but there's some very high skill jobs in the oil industry, there may not be so many going forward. So I just wanted to make that point. Christina. I wanted to point out, building on this discussion on social mobility, that one of the clear risks of Brexit, I think, is that that will further limit options for social mobility of EU nationals and potentially enhance vulnerability to exploitation. Because obviously if you don't have the full panoply of rights associated with free movement, you're much more likely to enter through some of the more rigid schemes, such as for example a tier two, which is linked to particular occupations and jobs, or perhaps a tier three, or a seasonal labour scheme where you have really quite limited rights and a very fixed term period of employment. So I think that that's one of the clear changes, so that even if post-Brexit we do see an attempt to preserve existing volume and composition of flows from the EU, which I think is likely, we will see much more vulnerability, especially of low skilled workers, but also more rigidity, I think, in schemes for recruiting higher skilled workers. I think it would probably be helpful for our record if somebody could explain the tier system. We would like to volunteer to do that.  The ones which I think are most relevant to a post-Brexit scenario are tier two, which is a range of different programmes, including intra-company transfers, the occupational shortage list, so that's a definition of the occupations which face acute shortages, and there is a special list for Scotland, but it's very minimally used, but I think that this is very important to think about tier two because I would imagine that one obvious route for trying to perhaps expand possibilities for recruitment of EU nationals post-Brexit within the tier system would be to expand tier two, and there there's an opportunity for Scotland to try to identify particular occupations or sectors which will face acute shortages and which need to preserve a flow of EU nationals into those occupations. Now tier two tends to be skilled or highly skilled. Tier three is low skilled but has not been activated since the points based system was set up because of EU enlargement, which is seen to fill the requirement for low skilled migration. There's also a temporary, tier four is temporary, sorry, tier five is temporary migrants, please correct me if I'm wrong. I think debates at the moment, for example there was a House of Commons debate on seasonal agricultural workers at the end of November, you might have followed this. I think again there's likely to be a move to try to expand seasonal worker schemes post-Brexit, precisely to fill the shortages which will emerge as a result of stopping free movement. I think again we're going to expect to see very strong lobbies from affected sectors. There's already a kind of mobilisation of the agricultural lobby to try to put in place some sort of replacement scheme. So generally we could see an expansion of the tier system, we could also see bespoke programmes or systems put in place specifically for EU nationals which give them preferential treatment. Those are two scenarios that are most likely to emerge. I think that less likely is a points based system. I think that fresh talent is a potential scenario because I think that there will also be an interest in providing incentives for EU students to continue to come to UK universities. I really think that we have to consider the full range of possible options for post-Brexit immigration schemes and not be too fixated on the points based system and fresh talent but look at the occupational and sector based schemes as well. Professor Key. I just wanted to pick up on this question around seasonal workers and link it back to my previous point about of course the economy and the labour force is important but it's not the whole picture and I think that also links to what Lorraine was saying earlier about particular local authorities for whom outcome agreements around population growth and the demographic structure of populations are important. Angus, one of the places we've been working is clearly a region that has a lot of need for seasonal workers but what's happened for EU migrants and what we found a lot of evidence for in what albeit is a qualitative piece of research is people who come over for seasonal work repeatedly and then stay and actually begin to develop a practice of permanent residence in Angus moving between different kinds of seasonal work and accessing the social rights they have as EU citizens in periods where they might there might be a gap in their employment. So actually we found a lot of people who may spend the spring picking daffodils, the summer working on the berries, the autumn lifting potatoes and the winter working in packaging and so on around the Christmas season. Those people bring families with them and have children and Professor Wright's point about fertility rates and the higher fertility rates amongst migrant populations plays in there so that a tiered system that is very much focused on the needs of the labour market ignores those extra wider issues about the migrant population and what the migrant population may be bringing to particular areas beyond narrowly defined labour market needs but actually looking more broadly at demographic profiles, communities, there are communities where primary schools have 50 per cent and above of their intake years the children of centuries to European migrants. What happens to those schools and those communities if those families are not there? Professor Wright. The other is tier 4 which is the student one so the EU, the post-Brexit EU students could be considered under that tier and whatever arrangements you want to make. You know one of the things I find sort of surprising is that you have this point-based immigration system right and what this will allow you to do is allow you to sort of economic side match people to jobs right that's what the whole thing is about more or less you know there's other forms of immigration refugees family unification you list them out that's fine but they're not part of that system um but why do you why is why is everybody so concerned that you know in the futures it may not be someone from Poland doing these low skilled jobs it may be somebody from Indonesia it may be somebody from somewhere else it should be the best person that has the appropriate skills to do that job so post-Brexit I hate to say this may give you an opportunity to put in a more rational immigration system that does a better job of matching people's jobs and reduce job turnover we are not in a situation where we we can discriminate we shouldn't discriminate on country of origin this is why they put these point-based systems in place to begin with because they wanted to get away from this form of discrimination and they wanted to attract people with the best suited skill so they widen the net so it's it's about what I don't agree with Christine I think these uh in the future whatever systems in place it will stop this high skilled immigration from a eight to the to Scotland to the UK to take up low skilled jobs and so be it the you know the challenges to say well where do we get these people that we need from and what how are we going to do this in a country like Scotland that has no say in immigration policy but we have a point space system in place and uh you know I think that's also that's a challenge and there's also an opportunity and um you know the current system we've got a little bit lazy about because we're not going to do anything right it's because people would know know that these jobs are there and they would show up and you know they have very high skills English language mainly a lot largely and uh we just continue on and we've taken this for granted and now we're have to we have to think about what we're going to do if that's not available Lorraine Cook I think our our fear is um around the point space system is it's it's a system that's focused on restriction and reducing migration I mean that that that is it's it's primary focus and our issue has been the lack of flexibility so um I mean we've got a lot of different examples of points based systems in Canada for example but in the UK it doesn't seem to have yes we have the scottish shortage occupation list and as Christina says I think there's a a couple of occupations on it um but we have that lack of flexibility to reflect Scotland's needs and local areas needs so that would be our issue and in terms of a system that is is creating more barriers if you like so if we look at the the shortage occupation list and the bar has been has rose throughout throughout the years so we look at social care so before there was social care on it but qualifications and such like salary skills have risen so that has come out of the tier 2 so that would be our issue in terms of that lack of flexibility and that focus on reduction and reducing migration in general but going back to Becca's point as well about the importance of the wider benefits that people bring bring with them we were responding to the migration advisory committee and it was about impact on services that that was what their inquiry was about and we sent out to local authorities and I have to say it was overwhelmingly positive there was that there are some English additional language in schools there are there are obviously some issues I'm not saying there's not but there was a lot of the feedback we were getting was about the benefits that people were bringing with them and in terms of the example Becca gave about small schools that are that remain open because of migrant families we'll have another question from Stuart McMillan it's some of the latter comments but it's the questions mainly aimed to Professor Wright with your comments a few moments ago do you do you think that there's a there's a possibility that something post Brexit and within the UK that there could be or should be a differentiation in terms of immigration policy then you said this yes of course I mean it's you know you can have shared responsibility for immigration I mean Australia Canada have had this for decades right it's a matter of just political agreement not technology right so again but I don't I don't see the probability of that happening increasing or decreasing with brexit because this has been clearly stated just the other day this is not going to happen right and let's not get too carried away with this occupationalist that Christine mentioned and she's correct because it's out of date as soon as it's published it's just a you know distraction away from the real issues of how do we attract the people that we need I mean we know who they are we don't need a list to read from but again no I don't I don't think this changes anything with respect to the scar situation with respect to having further responsibility about immigration it's just that means that we have to pay more attention to how to plug the gap that's I think is going to result when the door is shut to the rest of the EU sorry but I have a different view of this I think that it's inevitable that UK immigration policy will be in flux in the context of brexit something is going to have to change whether it's an expansion of the existing point space system or new bespoke programs and the reason I emphasize occupational or sexual shortages is not because I think this is a wonderful you know ideal scenario of immigration policy it's very rigid and it's it doesn't take into account the wider set of factors that are of concern in the Scottish policy making context I'm I'm it's a more pragmatic consideration that I suspect based on the record of the current government and the previous Labour government as well there is a let's say a fixation with labour market shortages and systems which define neat migration needs based on acknowledged shortages in particular occupations or sectors that's why I think this is an opportunity for the Scottish government to get better data on where those shortages are so that you know pragmatically in negotiations it can lever have some leverage to try to secure a more generous model or program which better suits Scottish needs which would be better than a highly restrictive approach which which substantially reduces EU immigration flows Angela Hall I just wanted to flag up that the Scottish government is doing work to look in greater depth at the sectors that my the EU migrants are working in and to get better data co better coordinated data about that and obviously some of that data is quite difficult to get quite a lot of data we get through the annual population survey we've got a lot of census data and we're digging deeper into that but obviously a key a key areas agriculture and there's there's there's difficulty getting a handle on that but our colleagues in rural policy are are are investigating agricultural census and they're they're commissioning more work to actually look at the agricultural sector and get a better grip on the contribution of seasonal migrants. Is that likely to be ready do you know? I can report back to the committee on the research the research the research I mentioned will be starting next year and I think it's reporting in 2018 but I can check on that but the sectoral better sectoral analysis is going on at the moment and we have some we have some annual population survey analysis which I can I can share with the committee later on that would be helpful. Yeah I think we would really appreciate that Rachel Hamilton with what Christina Boswell says about the evidence that we need to look at sectoral importance because we've had a lot of people coming here from different sectors who have expressed a need for EU migrants in their sectors particularly agriculture but I wanted to ask Angela Hallam we've got some information here based on figures from ONS and it basically says that we all know that hotel and restaurant industry has a great need for EU migrants within the sector and it's about a third of the current workforce however these figures don't suggest that agriculture, forest and fishing sector is considered statistically robust to include within these figures and I find that surprising considering the research that Professor Kay has done saying that it is of so much importance and of the evidence that we have gathered here within this committee. Obviously there is a great difficulty getting a handle on the agricultural system because migrants are coming and going and migrating from from from job to job as the season progresses but colleagues in rural actually looked at the agricultural census and which records the number of days that people are doing but not the number of actual workers that there are and their estimate came out as somewhere between 5,000 and 15,000 so that's why that's why we obviously need need better work to actually address this and that's in hand. Robert Wright. Sort of this you need EU migrants for this I don't understand this statement you have vacancies you have jobs that are not being filled by Scottish people or people from the rest of the UK they need to be filled by somebody it's not a need for EU migrants it's a need for someone to do the work right and that's the way you should think about it because I think that in the future you can't take it for granted that it will be an EU migrant so you have to think about well what can we do to fill that vacancy not what do we do to keep EU migrants coming to Scotland it's very different and this is you know I think you have to start thinking these ways if this brexit thing goes through as you know kind of a lot of us believe will because that's the problem the work needs to be done by somebody and domestically we don't have the people or the people don't want people don't want to do that work. Professor Key. Just to pick up on that point and I don't disagree with the fact that it shouldn't in some ways matter to Scotland whether it's Polish people or Indonesian people coming to do the work but I would like to once again iterate that migrants are more than economic units and if the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government are going to have a joined up policy approach to migration if we're going down a policy approach that says well we use the tier based system and we bring people from wherever they may be to do the jobs what do we do with them once they're in the country and what other policies are required to properly accommodate their lives in the round in the country what does that mean for for example the demographic profile of the country if someone from Poland because of its proximity because of transport because of EU further social rights that have allowed them to bring dependence and family with them have actually embedded in communities have had an impact on fertility rates have kept schools open where someone from Indonesia is much more likely to come as a single worker and not be able to form those sorts of ties or would be able to but that would require other policies to be structured around it than just a labour market. That's just not factually correct in a place like United States or Canada right they set the hurdle really high to immigrate right so people that want to immigrate you know commit to go and they stay that return up migration from Canada and the United States is very low because the hurdle is so high to come someone from Poland comes for three weeks is disappointed and goes home that's no many people come for three weeks and stay for 10 years that's right but it's clearly the case that what we know about return migration you know is much higher amongst this group than you know people that for example go from Malaysia and Philippines to work in the health sector in Canada so that's the numbers are there just so how do we square that with this with your opinion and Malcolm Wilson I think why why migration has worked for the agriculture taken for example agriculture and industry in Scotland is because it's simple because a farmer can get the the employees that he requires for a week for a month for a year it's simple it doesn't take any sort of working with governments working with officialdom or anything like that they're migrants flow on flow out it's it's just it's just full of jobs and if I take for example some of the employees in Fife I mean they tell me over and over again that their businesses just wouldn't exist if it weren't for migrants and I don't think that that farmers in Fife for whatever are going to be if it's complex and if it's difficult to employ employees from the Philippines or wherever you want to then businesses will go to the wall it works now because it's simple that's that's my view. Professor Boswell just a point about the probability or desirability of EU as opposed to other non-EU nationals occupying these temporary or seasonal migrations. The experience in Europe is that it's typical for countries to pursue have bilateral agreements with neighbouring countries and traditionally it's been central east european countries north african countries and so on to fill seasonal temporary labour migration needs and I don't see any reason why that wouldn't be the case and it has been the case under the source the seasonal agricultural workers scheme in the UK for example so I mean there are many reasons why it's more convenient to have these sorts of agreements with neighbouring countries where there are established patterns of pendular or circular migration established migrant networks and not least it might be part of a package of a political in a political context a package of agreements with countries such as Poland and other countries which have been typical sending countries for lower skilled employment so I see I think that's highly likely to continue that pattern whether it's ideal or not from an economic point of view I think that's likely to continue and I mean our research that we carried out some years ago on Polish and Romanian migration showed how these these mobilities are very pendular that people in a particular locale in countries of origin tend to rely on these forms of temporary migration to sustain local livelihoods and it's often a kind of family strategy if a member of the family goes and takes up say six months seasonal agricultural work in an EU country I think with high skilled migration as well there is a likelihood that we will see similar two-way agreements for example I think the UK government will have every interest in preserving the possibility of UK nationals to go and work in high skilled jobs in Germany for example and I can imagine that being the object of a bilateral agreement so I think there is strong political and also economic and cultural reasons why EU migrants may well be the preferred or inevitable sort of group which will continue to occupy these these types of jobs. I just wanted to make a point about agriculture labour market in general is obviously very subject to the state of the economy and migrants are a flexible source of workers during a strong economy but when there's a recession obviously there's fewer jobs around however agriculture is a constant and has a constant need for migrants. I'm aware there's a couple of members who haven't had the opportunity to ask a question yet so I'm going to Richard Lochhead first. Thank you very much and the evidence so far has been fascinating and I have to say however that I do note the confidence that many of you have that some pragmatic solution will be reached in terms of addressing any gap left by EU immigration being reduced given that for me the defining issue particularly south of the border of the Brexit referendum was immigration and therefore politics out of the border will no doubt overtake the pragmatism that many of the witnesses today seem to think will be put in place but we'll see what happens. I'm really stuck by the startling statistics in figure five of the paper before us. I'm not sure many people in Scotland appreciate the projections between 2014 and 2039 show that the number of children are set to increase by 10 per cent in England compared to a reduction of 5 per cent in Scotland and in terms of working age population that that category would increase by 13 per cent in England and go down by 3 per cent in Scotland. Sub-pollegies, the increase by 1 per cent for working age population in Scotland increased by 13 per cent in England. There's no equivalent statistic for reduction post-Brexit for England so that's a startling difference. If you look at the working age population, just to repeat that so we get accurate, a 13 per cent increase in England and a 1 per cent increase in Scotland so that's a massive difference. I guess my question is, in the context of the importance of immigration that's led to those projections or will influence those projections, there must be other factors or is immigration and attracting people from overseas going to the huge influence on these statistics? Kirsty McLaughlin, you're responsible for these figures. Do you want to start off? The projections that the three assumptions that go into her are fertility, mortality, life expectancy and migration. For Scotland, most of the increase is through migration because we've got lower fertility and the age structure of the population. I think that England has got a younger age structure so we're ageing faster in a way than they are because we seem to have a proportionately more baby boomers people born in this at 50s and 60s. Can I just come in there? As I said before earlier, this is kind of complicated to understand why you have these population dynamics but there is this thing called population momentum. Population change is very slow, demographic change is very slow. This is what Richard has highlighted, has been known for some time. We're looking at basically the population momentum in Scotland is for decline in population and decline in population growth but the momentum in the UK is for low growth and much higher growth in younger age groups. But if you look at the older population, say I'll include myself 55 and above, there's not a big deal of difference between the UK which is basically England, the biggest and Scotland but where the difference is in young people so if you're in the higher education sector, education sector is in for a bit of a shock and the expense one and the labour force because the labour force really is only growing in Scotland because you have more workers coming than leaving. The net migration of those people in that age group is positive so it's critical. Now how can we say well let's just say we're not going to have this opportunity to bring people in in the future or the situation changes now and we don't want to make the more the points based system more rational or something like this. Well I mean the things you can increase participation of people, that's a possibility right, you still have quite a low participation rates amongst women here compared to many of the country so that would generate more workers etc. There's lots of other things you can have a better, you can have education system that moves away from higher education to further education to more skills and you know there's lots of other, there's four or five other things you can do besides immigration but the bottom line here is the research that I've done and most other people that are economists is that without the immigration it's really going to be tough for these other policies to fill the gap so it's a multi pronged approach but this demography that we're looking at in these diagrams is being determined over four or five decades it's not going to change so this is what we're in for right so it's known in a way what is it known is how much the labour force is going to grow if at all. Professor Boswell to respond to the point about the scenario of the UK not being able to restrict EU immigration significantly and that's very much based on the experience since 2010 so the current government has been committed to reduce net migration since 2010 what has been the trend for non-EU immigration a rise of net migration so it has rolled out a panoply of measures to try to restrict non-EU immigration since 2010 and has spectacularly failed to restrict that immigration. I don't think there's any grounds for thinking it will be better equipped to restrict EU immigration. Liberal democracies find it very difficult to restrict immigration when it's beneficial to the economy. Issues of records say of course the projection for children in Scotland has to go up by 1 per cent by 2039 compared to 10 per cent for England and the reduction of 5 per cent projection for children in Scotland is post-Brexit but there's not an equivalent post-Brexit figure for England so it would be interesting to get that in the future. My follow-up question was going to be many people who voted leave for instance will say that don't worry if people are not going to come from Europe to work and live in Scotland, people can come from the rest of the world to live and work in Scotland and that's a big issue in NHS for instance wherever you say to people we rely on EU staff in our hospitals they'll say that worry those places will be filled by non-EU inward immigration or migration. So it's just to ask in light of Professor Bossel's comment is that the case is it going to be really easy to replace EU inward migration with non-EU inward immigration? That's a very complex question and would need some unpacking. I mean as I've said I suspect that there will be an attempt to try to preserve existing EU flows I mean it's possible that in the medium to long term those flows the supply will will will will actually reduce because currently quite a large proportion of EU immigration is from the southern EU countries affected by austerity policies and I suspect that in the you know over the next five to 10 years actually the level of intra EU flows is actually going to decline and that we will see a gradual replacement by non-EU immigration. Now whether it's going to be easy to attract non-EU immigrants to the UK including Scotland is a very complex question and it partly depends on how the Scottish economy is doing existing networks and communication flows as well as obviously how attractive the types of packages that are offered are and what the competition is with other economies who are trying to attract similarly skilled migrants so I think it's very difficult to answer that question. Perhaps one of our other colleagues wants to talk about some of the levers that can be put in place to try to attract immigrants to Scotland there are a number of soft levers but I would have thought that the package that's offered the package of rights and entitlements that's offered as part of a migration scheme would be influential certainly. The long-term population projections these are these ones that Chrissy put together I mean they assume that international migration will not be EU migration will be zero in the long term what that migration from the EU countries. So there's an implicit assumption that these people will come for immigrants will come from come come from somewhere else so it's kind of built in but I mean a person is a person that doesn't you know doesn't highlight this but you know the general view is and I sat on the committee at ONS that set these assumptions for the national projections and that's what we assumed right so we're not and I think the real issue I'll just say that I think important issue is a moral issue and I've said this before and I'll say it again to this audience is that should we be going into Poland and stripping out the youngest and the brightest to come and work in Scotland we are currently in an economic relationship with them right these economies are growing they're aging more rapidly than ours right and it's not like they have a surplus of workers so we are harming and I believe harming our colleagues that we're supposed to be in an economic relationship with and think about the we according to this these numbers I have just you know what 25,000 people right the global population is 8.3 billion right so the potential supply of immigrants to come to Scotland out there is infinitely and elastic we need 25,000 people from 8.3 billion is that a big challenge should we be going into Poland and getting these people or should we going further afield to tap into this huge stalk of people that would want to come here that want to come here we know that and the other thing to remember about this change this you have control you have managed immigration with the point space system and you have unmanaged because of the EU agreements so the government is trying to reduce net migration by pushing down immigration you don't know the counterfactual what happens with what happens if they didn't have that policy in place and then at the same time we see immigration from the EU rising it's already surprising it's like a teeter totty push down one side the other side goes up once controlled one's not controlled the only way you're going to reduce immigration and net migration is if you have control of every all potential sources of immigrants but yeah I don't know why the government said they could do this with that type of system they have in place and it's failed as christine said Ross Greer you wanted to come in yeah thanks community we've been quite understanding we're talking so far almost entirely in terms talking about EU citizens almost entirely in terms of their labour what they can contribute to the economy but these are individuals whose rights are currently at risk and I'd be quite interested in knowing because we've touched on immigration as well as inward migration professor right was the first to touch on it but quite interesting hearing from cone wilson anyone else who has any evidence of what the feeling is amongst existing EU migrant communities in Scotland the people who are already here do many of them expect that they will still be here in the in the coming years or people beginning to think that they might want to return either home or to one of the any of the EU 27 countries I think I think the beauty about you know that the European Union is that we stop talking about national borders and we start looking at people and you know the beauty is this flow and ebb of migrants and people from all different cultures mixing with one other and enjoying one others company and that's been one of the great things about Scotland that these people from from the rest of Europe feel that they're they're being accepted here I was down in Manchester recently I mean the mood down there is totally different there's a fear with that amongst migrants and the rest of the UK you know Scotland well and five anyway and I suppose that speaks for the rest of Scotland there's not this fear amongst migrants that suddenly they're all going to be put on boat since back to Poland or whatever there's been a broad political consensus in Scotland to try and make that message as much as possible and that's exactly what I was hoping for encouraging professor key I'd like to pick up on a few of these points and one is uh Christina the Boddwell's point about soft leavers and what would encourage people to come but it also indeed what would encourage people to stay because Scotland does seem to have a consensus not just that we want people to fill temporary gaps in the labour market but that certainly and certainly in some local authority areas we want people to settle and to stay and to make Scotland their home and and this is not just my opinion this is based on quite extensive qualitative research albeit qualitative research into the experiences of people that are here that show that their social rights that were available through the EU made a big difference to that and it goes back to my question about if we are having people coming from Indonesia or some other part of the world what social forms of support and what kinds of policies for integration what sorts of accompanying packages around family migration around settlement around access to education and healthcare would be needed by those people from different places which may or may not be the same as those that have currently been available to EU migrants but I think that's something that would need to be looked at in the round as these policies are discussed and not done as an aft of thought once people are already here and we find that it doesn't fit neatly with what might already be in place or indeed might not be in place to pick up on the point about the intentions of EU migrants who are currently here and I would certainly agree that many people have been positively influenced by the political leadership within Scotland by the different message that is being given in Scotland I do think there's an importance to avoid complacency in Scotland that this is simply a better place for people to be actually many Scottish areas have a much more recent experience of multiple multicultural diverse communities within them which lower some of the community level interactions and community level networks that people can access when they're living in Scottish places certainly there's not been the spike in hate crime reported but anecdotally people have reported discomfort problems problems for their children at school albeit at a much lower level I think the other thing to bear in mind is this assumption about whether people will or won't go home is not as straightforward as that so for many people the path home is not an easy one if you've lived in Scotland for the last five to six seven eight years you have perhaps a Scottish partner you have a child maybe born in Scotland whether or not whether Scottish partner or another Polish partner you have no property left available to you in a central East European country that economy is not an easy one to go back into so people may remain without necessarily feeling particularly comfortable about remaining and the repercussions of the loss of their social lives social rights are likely to play out at local authority level rather than necessarily at national level so I think there's a whole sort of mosaic amaze of policy making and of policy actors that need to be involved in looking at these potential outcomes and thinking about what they will actually be and I would very much pick up on on Rosgrius point about treating people as people and not as economic units in order to understand that policy landscape. There's quite a bit of evidence out there on people's intentions to stay or not stay there you know and that's and as very soon yeah I know it doesn't matter but it's always there's very low low reporting of people that's stayed for a long time and you know there's other countries that have policies in place that kind of answer that respond to some of your issues so we just have to learn from the experience of others and you know I mean I think it's an exaggeration to say that Scotland is more positive I just think they're less negative than the rest of the UK if you look at these surveys and stuff it's you know they're all sort of below 50% but they're just higher than usually what's reported in England so saying that you know this is a country that is really positive towards immigration with the man and woman on the street I think is a major exaggeration it's still negative but less negative than other parts of the UK. Emma Harper In my previous background I was an economic migrant in California working with nurses, doctors from South America, Africa, Indonesia, wherever you know so obviously the post Brexit there needs to be an immigration policy that needs to be changed so that we can accommodate skilled people which are you know people from all over the world for our older population and we need GPs, we need nurses, we need carers so I'm interested in clarity on what tier do they come under or what has to happen post Brexit to I guess address our immigration what does it need to look like? Professor Boswell I mean in the case of health professionals it could come under an expanded occupational shortage list under tier 2 as we've discussed or one could imagine learning from other countries such as I mean there's the example of for example sectoral based schemes where you identify particular sectors or occupations as particularly in need of labour and then you allow people with the relevant qualifications to enter the country and seek work within that sector for example the German green card scheme of 2000 where an SPT green government decided to expand opportunities for ICT specialists coming to Germany and they had to show that they had particular qualifications and then they could look for work on the German labour market now that kind of scheme is a bit more flexible than a occupational shortage type scheme where you you have to have a particular job offer okay so there's there's a type of scheme where the employer has to meet certain criteria i.e. this is an occupation which has been identified as facing acute shortages and then is able to recruit from overseas for a specific job and then there's a more flexible system where you say people in this sector or this occupation can come here to look for can have a permit to look for work in this sector so those are two possible ways of trying to address sectoral shortages obviously you also have more flexible and the spectrum of flexibility the most flexible you can have is a human capital based system where you simply say and this is more similar to the canadian australian points based system where you say if you have a crew a certain number of points based on your qualifications or your other other sorts of characteristics associated with your human capital then you can simply enter and look for any job and I think the risks of those is that it is more susceptible to de-skilling and then there are also issues around whether you can have a devolved arrangement for any of these systems and that raises various issues around retention and whether once people have stayed for a certain period of time and have accrued permanent residency rights for example whether there's a concern that then they would leave and relocate to other parts of the country and so on but there are a range of options that could be explored and I do think they need to be explored yes. I wonder if I could just pick up on that point when we took evidence in the committee a few weeks ago from the Secretary of State for Scotland David Mundell he touched on the issue of different immigration needs in different parts of the country he didn't suggest that Scotland would have its own immigration system but he did acknowledge the different parts of the country different immigration needs would it be possible to design a system for Scotland without it being an independent country? I think as Rob already indicated such models do exist in Australia and in Canada and I think there has been quite a lot of debate on the idea of a devolved points-based system that I think even actually in the context of the Brexit referendum if you will recall Michael Gove actually wrote a letter to the First Minister suggesting that in the event of Brexit Scotland could then have a similar kind of devolved regional points-based system it does appear that the Theresa May's government is less favourable to that kind of devolved approach obviously the fresh talent initiative was an example of a devolved policy that could be explored again and I know they're removed to try to reinstate that and then I think the third precedent within the UK would be the Scottish occupational shortage list where at least in principle there is leverage for Scotland to identify additional occupations facing acute shortages so again that's a that's a possible possible devolved scheme yes We had a discussion about this when we visited London and we spoke to London assembly members and there's quite a lot of work being done in London about the idea of a London visa now their issues are different from ours in that they don't we've got this big demographic issue but one of the things that came out of those discussions are because we're moving to income tax powers in Scotland we actually know who's living and working in Scotland in a way we're even better placed to set up our own Scottish system than they would be in London two other quick points on that so one is that yes I think that you know obviously there are practical issues associated with those sorts of schemes but I think they are you know they can be overcome just to point out you know the swiss have a cantonal based scheme where cantons have quotas in place and then can bids there's a certain kind of free pool which can be allocated across cantons so that's another scheme that perhaps could be looked at but just one final point which is that for so long as the government the UK government retains a net migration target obviously it's going to have an overarching goal of trying to reduce immigration across the UK so one of the priorities I think would be to improve the data allowing us to develop robust data about net migration to Scotland and to other areas of the UK because I think once we have that in place it would be more politically viable to say yes you know England or parts of the UK are seeing a reduction in net migration Scotland in Scotland it's steady or perhaps slightly increasing but that's Scotland so that need not be as politically compromising to the Conservative government. All right, Angela Hallam did you want to sorry Lorraine Cook? Yeah just going going back to the flexibility or the Scotland having its own points based system and the important something Becker raised about the importance of a holistic view of an immigration system that also takes into consideration wider rights as well and so if we're looking at the visa system there has been an erosion of rights in terms of access to access to health access to different services so it is still crucial to look at it in a more holistic way as well as very much labour shortages so hand in hand. Angela. Yes I just wanted to make a quick point about the impacts of migration review identified that actually we need better information but actually I mean we've got quite good information sources and Kirsty may want to comment on this because I know that NRS have done a lot of work on improving data sources but I mean the important thing is making better use of the data we've got and extending that to collect the information that we actually need. I don't know if you want to make. Can I bring in Kirsty just at that point? The source of the information for the moves to the rest of the UK were dependent on GP registration or we don't have a population system here in INDEX so we have to rely on the kind of moves or GPs to actually record people moving cross-border. What we are doing to try and improve the data sources is using administrative sources so you know trying to get access to data you have no idea how difficult it is to get access to things like DWP and HMRC data which would give us a lot of information which would help us know who's where who's moved and so on. We're starting to use he's a data to try and understand students better because they are a really difficult group to capture and their moves as well. Data linkage is another area we're looking at if we can link data in a safe environment taking account of all the privacy aspects. That allows us to do a lot more analysis as well and to try and determine where the moves are and the characteristics of people so there's a lot of work going on in the background to improve the data sources but it does take time just to try and get access to data and then go through all the privacy panels and that sort of thing. Did you want to come in on that point? I don't need a list because we know where the shortages are because these are the jobs that immigrants are taking and that's being pretty stable over the last ever since you know we had data that we could look at so we know and and I just want to come back to this this is a very important thing because we know we're going to need more healthcare workers in the future more doctors more nurses because the population is aging we have we're going to have very slow growth and out reduction in young people so we're not going to be able to train them up to do this so you have to make a decision so where the so what they did in Canada for example there was two types of nurses you'll know this a nurse is a higher education degree a nursing assistant is a college degree right they don't generate nursing assistants anymore they stopped training young Canadians up as nursing assistants and they come from abroad and they are a special category within the immigration system so it's if you have a shortage the hospitals indicate this and then the immigration system reacts and that you know those are that's a political decision about what you're going to teach young people and you know this is old news as Christine says and you know it's a political issue about whether you want to share policy between two levels of government or not the technology is there it's been proven it's been in place in Australia and Canada for a long time sure there's problems with it may not work perfectly but you know it seems to work and they've expanded it and there's two ways of doing it one is you'd completely devolved immigration the other is you share it with for example provincial nominee programs and things like this it's just a matter of agreement it's not a matter of any difficulty or technology and it seems to work and now every single province in Canada and the three territories have these arrangements with the government so you know the federal government so it's it's workable but it's the political issue okay i'm just going to bring in Lewis mcdonald thanks very much there was a i wanted before we move towards conclusions i wanted to come back to a wider question around migration from the european union because we've talked a lot about poland and polish workers quite rightly because they are by far the largest group but if you take polish workers out of the picture then there are twice as many people from the original or from the eu14 as there are from the other accession countries and christina boswell made a brief reference to migrants from southern europe as a result of austerity policies in in those countries but i wonder if there's anything else we should understand about what's clearly quite a substantial part of the migrant population which is not coming from central and eastern europe and and is it appears from the facts that have been put in front of us to have a different pattern of qualification and employment from the the polish example that we've been talking about i wonder if there's anyone would want to say anything about that population there's very little research to date unless like you know other members of the panel might correct me i think there's very little research to date on the profile of eu15 migrants in particular particularly those from southern european countries affected by austerity i think we can say based on experience of previous flows that i mean there's there's typically and this is this is a stylised model but there's typically what's what's often called a kind of what inverted u shape in trends in migration from particular areas so typically you start with pioneer migrants who might be self selected because they have good language skills or are confident in being able to manage well within a new environment and then once they've established themselves typically there's a so-called herd effect apologies for the for the jargon here whereby others nationals or people from similar locales might follow them thinking well that's you know there are opportunities in that country and then you see a kind of increase in migration flows between particular locales and then over time there's a kind of saturation effect whereby it then becomes less attractive now this i just haven't you know this is a typical kind of model of how an evolution of a migration system between different places obviously this is highly stylised it's ideal typical etc but arguably we are seeing something a little bit like that in relation to eu sorry a8 immigration so there's been a substantial rise in immigration from the a8 accession countries since 2004 i think with Romanian and Bulgarian the a2 immigration flows we're still seeing a rise but i think you know that the populations of those countries are not so substantial that we will see an indefinite rise i think we probably will see some petering out to some extent and with the with the southern European countries that now comprises about half of all EU immigration flows to the UK so that's quite substantial it might well rise in the next few years but then over the longer term i think we can assume that as those economies pick up in the next five to ten years again we will see an ebbing of that flow of migration and i suspect that you know within the next uh you know 10 or so years we will see a return of levels of entry EU migration to um uh in a sense normality so EU mobility freedom of movement was never intended to comprise substantial flows from poorer to richer regions it was meant to be a kind of partnership of broadly speaking of equals where income disparities were not significant enough to generate large scale flows and i suspect we will eventually return to that kind of scenario um but for the moment i do think you know the EU 15 especially those from southern countries are likely to remain a significant portion of immigration to the UK but that's that's very general terms and i think they may well be empirical research which uh which could underpin some of these general claims and i just wanted to stress that the impacts review which looked at the impacts of migratory migrants and migration found that all almost all the recent evidence is on the access the migrants from the accession countries but uh if we if we look at the sort of characteristics of migrants um from the from the census um if you are thinking that that if you're dividing the ea recent and ea established and looking at the ea established to get a better idea of that group uh they're much more similar to other populations in terms of employment patterns age um qualifications um and experience it's the it's the recent migrants that are different i think it's the point that that struck me was that the annual population survey figures suggested that migrants from the EU 14 tended to be older they tended to be more likely to be in education and health and much less likely to be in agriculture and hotels and their employment rates different as well so i was i was and i think christina boswell's point about some about the difference between normal and abnormal flows of migration perhaps is relevant here what what and i'll be interested in in comments on that i also wanted to make the point that actually housing tenure is different um people who've been here longer and much more likely to be owner occupiers and much less likely to be private rented which the questions i thought was important to to to to ask on the record clearly quite a number of EU migrants particularly people who've migrated earlier and and from longer established EU countries have applied and obtained permanent residence status in the UK and i just wanted to confirm that there's if there's any view on that i presume that permanent residence status once granted cannot be revoked but i just wanted to confirm with witnesses that that is indeed the case given given the questions that have been asked about people feeling welcome and feeling secure uh who are here we haven't seen a great rush for people applying for permanent residency there has been a few and there has been a few that have come and asked questions about how it's done and all the rest but i mean there hasn't been a stampede or anything like that and that's my experience anyway and the same with um um sorry to drag no but we haven't seen any rush now that's all right there's going to have to be a cut off date somewhere along the way isn't there we're going to have to say well after this date the free movement stops so that's when you're going to get your spurt when that's announced so it's very important i mean we at economics we fixate on this about how you announce and when you announce right so this will be the big rush but so one day before one day after there's going to be some difference and this is where you're going to get this happens right and it's going to be i think it'll be pretty big but it'll be one off so it'll be a bulge right and indeed i mean i you know i'm from canada my mother's english so i could write of a boat here so but i became a british citizen because they can change the rules anytime they like basically and uh you know they concerned me because my career was here so i became a british citizen so i think you're going to see this but it only will occur once the announcement is made brexit is going to happen blah blah blah clause 50 and there's a date where you can't come work and live here as you could before if you're from an EU country if that's what happens did you want to go back in no sorry um ritual just want to make a point um that uh i think it's important that uh we give the same respect to uh UK nationals uh working in the EU and um we haven't mentioned that today um but you know their acquired rights are just as important as anyone that's coming here and it hasn't been mentioned today so it was sort of i wondered if anyone wanted to make a comment on that point i think that's something we're looking at in detail next next week acquired rights obviously the experts here are people who are experts in migration into the UK but i mean if anybody wants to come in and comment on that that's fine is Stuart McMillan did you have some questions you wanted to yes it's just uh i mean some of it has been touched upon but um but i'd just like to take it on a bit further and that's just in terms of the the costs of providing services to to migrants who have came here um is is there a feeling within the panel that uh that the costs have either far outwead the benefits of migrants coming or the actual benefits of migrants coming which is actually far outwead the costs of migrants coming to that's uh i think the benefits certainly outwead the costs the migrants who are coming to Scotland are they're young they're healthy um they're wanting to be in employment and obviously there's a lot of evidence that shows that and they're actually their use of of health services low because they're young they're healthy um i mean i think the evidence suggests that the longer that they stay in Scotland the more likely they are to become more like the Scottish population and in terms of public health um as their eating habits and uh use of alcohol changes there may be but but certainly they're they're young they're taking jobs um they're they're integrating and then there's a quite a lot of evidence that they're not a strain on public services and obviously the education services are needing to change to adapt to to language language provision in schools and there's some evidence on that but there's no there's no link there's no clear link between migration and crime for example um so so yes the the benefits certainly outwead the costs there's there's very good evidence for that and i think all my colleagues would agree lorraine cook from causula i would have to say the feedback we are getting from local authorities i would agree with um angela very much um as i said earlier we responded to the migration advisory committee and it was impacts on services um and what we were getting was overwhelmingly positive that the only caveat was um english's additional language but it was very much um that there's this but look at the benefits that the people are bringing to the area as well angela harm there's also some evidence to suggest that um that children in schools benefit from having pupils in the schools alongside them who are english as an additional language on that latter point i mean my my own thoughts on on the issue in terms of education is that similar with the curriculum for excellence that we do have in scotland and trying to make and and allow younger people to be more rounded individuals and more understanding of issues that are taking place then surely migration inward migration is going to be that benefit and there's also going to help with the teaching of through the cfe also just to add from a small piece of research i did several years back in collaboration with causula in glasgo there was a strong feeling amongst um educational authorities that um having pupils from elsewhere around the world in classes particularly in areas of multiple deprivation where scotish born children might have fairly limited experience of life beyond their beyond glasgo and never mind you know in the wider world that having pupils from elsewhere assisted with aspirations and and possibilities for scotish born children as well um this is obviously an important issue but um you know there's a lot of misinformation about this but there's there was a huge study done at ucl that actually showed the opposites of what you're suggesting in fact immigrants pay much more into the system than they take out much more and it kind of makes sense even at a simple level because most immigrants are young and they're working so is a scotish young person who's working getting more putting in more to the system than they're taking out no then why would an immigrant be and the thing is the fertility rates are you know okay the between the scotish population and the you know Polish population is a is not the statistic because the people are younger here so they're having more children so this is why you get you know sort of maybe some extra demand for some education services or whatever but there there's no evidence of this that somehow they're stealing jobs from scots or they're you know sponging on the welfare state in fact it's the opposite by significant margin if you believe this research and that's another you know in the end of the day it's another reason to say that immigrants are very important economically because of this so the rhetoric that we get from the anti-immigration law is the actual opposite of what some of the research says and this is very good stuff supplementary from Emma Harper just a quick clarification really because I think Rebecca came mentioned it earlier one of the national farmers union guys said to me on Monday night why can't we just train our own to be dairymen and I think the answer is nobody wants to do that so that's why we need our our immigrants whatever country they come from to be our dairymen is that correct found employers even some employers in Angus saying that they'd made a deliberate attempt to recruit local people to offer training packages for local people and so on and there was no uptake so that would that would concur with that that there are some jobs where local people even if there's unemployment in the area even if there's a need for employment amongst young people in the area there's some jobs they're not going to take up okay thanks. Nominum of labour market mismatch and it can be a result of a mismatch of skills a mismatch of preferences or a mismatch of locations so it might just be that these are remote areas where people don't want to relocate for employment even if they are currently unemployed so this is a known problem. I mean I had a perhaps if we're drawing to a I mean I wanted to make a wider point going back to the issue of public opinion and the politics of immigration in Scotland if I may. Yes please. So I mean I have a sense that you know obviously we've seen very recently in the you know the climate and the debate around immigration in the rest of the UK in particular in the context of the Brexit debate has been very highly charged very heated and I think there are both risks and opportunities for the Scottish debate when we look at that when we observe what's happened in the rest of the UK so I think the risk is I don't think we should be complacent that Scottish public opinion is so you know significantly different from the rest of the UK and I think you know in the event of a Scottish government making a case for a slightly distinct or perhaps more liberal approach from then the rest of the UK there are risks that immigration could become more politically salient in Scotland than it is at the moment and there's also the permanent risk that it could be an object of party political mobilisation so you know we know that there is a constant temptation for centre right and populist right parties to mobilize on anti-immigrant platforms so I think you know that could be a scenario in Scotland and I think we have to think seriously about how we can in gender foster a more responsible and well informed debate on immigration in Scotland and I think one part of that has to be trying to secure some kind of buy-in across the political spectrum in Scotland for a shared and progressive vision on immigration in Scotland and one that's informed by evidence about immigration and I know there is a kind of anti-expert post-truth kind of dynamic at the moment in the context of immigration debates and we have to think very carefully about that but I do think there's a real opportunity right now there's a window of opportunity for Scotland to do things differently and to have a more progressive informed and open debate on this issue. Colin Munson, you're nodding at that? I feel that what you're saying is happening now, that's why the feeling is out there from migrants that Scotland is a good place to be because we're not anti-immigrant, we have the open debate about it and we always talk about the positive aspects of migration rather than the negatives. Professor Kaye, I would agree with that but I think that to pick up on what Christina is saying to me it seems there's a really important need to have that informed evidence-based progressive popular debate with the settled population so there's the political leadership and migrants look to that and see that. We can't ignore the fact that there are large numbers of people within the Scottish population that don't necessarily share those progressive views, don't necessarily express them on a day-to-day basis in their interactions with migrants and that that could shift quite quickly. One of the things that we're seeing is that in schools where there's a large migrant population there seems to be a tipping point and which mainstream parents feel that the ethos and culture of the school has been taken away from them and I think this is something that we've got to be very very careful about and somebody said to me about migration as a whole and other parts of the UK has reached that tipping point and that's why you see much more negative negativity than the rest of the UK. Scotland for the most part hasn't reached that tipping point yet so I think we've got to be very very careful and just watch what we're doing and sort of carry on as we are. I think that would fit precisely into the idea of this being a moment of opportunity because it doesn't have to be a tipping point and I don't think it always is a tipping point in other parts of the UK. I think if you look at London and the way that it has acted as an exception where London has the highest possible levels of migration diversity and so on and that it's often in the neighbouring regions where there's lower levels of migration that people are most prone to believe anti-migration rhetoric then that's also a danger for Scotland that we actually have regions with a relatively low number of migrants a relatively low lived experience of what that means but vulnerable to the negative discourses that say they're going to come they're going to come and this is what will be the outcomes of that. I just wanted to echo what everyone's been saying about about this time being one of opportunity but the caveat that we do need to we do need to remember that attitudes are not fixed and that they can change really quickly and we should avoid complacency. I mean there is some evidence that greater exposure to migrants actually increases tolerance and understanding but if people feel overwhelmed you've got a very fine line there. That's a good point to end on and I'd like to thank all the witnesses for coming. We're over time and I know that you've got other places to be so thank you very much for coming and contributing today and I will now bring the session to a close and go into private session.


It's never embarrassing to go for someone for a Muslim brother or sister, my dear brothers and sisters, and ask them for marriage, even sisters. I know there's a stigma on the sisters. For the boy it's okay for him to go and ask, do some research, get recommendations or express interest in getting married, but unfortunately there's a stigma on the sisters. Because if a sister expresses her interest that she wants to get married, immediately what happens? Other sisters, especially married women, put her down. Oh, are you suggesting that you're desperate? Astaghfirullah. What do you mean? Subhanallah, you're the married woman, you were in her shoes just a few years ago, and you were waiting for someone, or you were waiting for the opportunity. If a sister expresses her desire to get married and she thinks ready, it is a grave sin in the eyes of Allah, to judge her, to put her down, to discourage her, or to associate any sort of stigma with her. This is completely unacceptable. Allah says it's one of my signs, and one of the purest of God's creations, Lady Khadija A.S. She was the one who expressed her interest in Rasulullah A.S. If this was something to be looked down upon, something inappropriate in the eyes of God, the Prophet A.S. would have told her, Khadija, this is inappropriate. I'm a man of honor, and how dare you express your interest? I should express my interest. We have Rasulullah A.S. here as an example. In fact, the Holy Qur'an has verses addressing the Prophet A.S., telling him, Ya Rasulullah, if a believing woman comes expressing her desire to get married, be welcoming. Don't say no. I condemn this. What do you mean?   This is a flawed understanding and mentality, my dear brothers and sisters. Therefore if someone comes to you, especially our dear sisters, if a sister comes to you and she's asking for advice, be encouraging. Do your best. Don't associate any stigma to that person. This is something unacceptable in the eyes of Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala. So the second method is to go and ask the elders of the community, experienced people, active people, well-connected people to give you some recommendations. I know many people who had successful marriages through this way. Now let's talk about the most important method our youth are experimenting today, my dear brothers and sisters. I will tell you today our youth what they're going through and why usually they get disappointed or they fall into a dangerous path. When the youth find some initial interest in one another, what normally happens? Normally you see, for example, the guy has an interest in one of the girls and they get to know each other very briefly. Then they exchange numbers. Then their intent is to get to know one another, to know each other's personality. And they start talking one week, two weeks, one month, three months, six months, one year. I've known some brothers and sisters, they've been talking for two years and they still have not made a decision whether they want to get married or not. Are you waiting for Jibra'il to come down and give you something? Two years, an entire year, and you know what ends up happening? After two years of talking to each other, one or two of them are so emotionally attached to one another that when one of them decides, you know what, this is not going to work out. I change my mind. My circumstances have changed. I want to leave this marriage or this commitment, not the marriage, but the idea of getting married to one another. And what happens to the other side? And usually it's the girl. She's broken. She's devastated. I've seen girls who are traumatized for years because of an experience like that. You don't need six months and a year, two years, my dear brothers and sisters, to really get to know someone. Even if you're talking to that person for a long time, you're trying to understand their personality. First of all, do you think they will really show you their personality? The minute I know somebody's interested in me, I become a professional actor. That's the human being. You think they're going to show their true colors? They show their true selves, their true character? Don't be naive. You cannot discover the true character of a person when they know you're interested in them and you're talking to them to get to know them. They will show you their good side, their rosy side.  Because I've heard many brothers and sisters after they get married, they kind of get shocked and they come and they say, say it. My husband or my wife completely changed after marriage. They flipped 180 degrees. I say to the brother Habibi, calm down. Your spouse did not change suddenly after marriage. Your spouse is the same spouse. The problem, you were in love, you were asleep.  That's what happened. Now you had the opportunity to see her real personality because after marriage, she stopped acting. She's now safe. She's married with you. There's no way right out of it really. So she showed you her true self. Yeah, but for one year I was talking to her. Yeah, and she was acting for one year. And you were acting too. And that's why the nice statement, there's a nice statement that says, love blinds you, but marriage is an eye opener. Once you get married, then you know, you know, there was one poor son. He was asking his father, he had heard about these crazy arranged marriages. So he asked his father, he told him, father, is it really true that in some parts of the world, the husband doesn't really know anything about his wife until after he gets married to her? He tells him, my dear son, that's not just in some parts of the world. It's everywhere. And it happened to me and your mom. I thought I knew your mom until after I married her. When I discovered I didn't know her. We're actors when we know someone's interested in us. It's not the safest way to talk to that person for a few months in order to know whether they have the appropriate qualities that you're looking for, my dear brothers and sisters. The way for you to know who has the appropriate qualities is to research and not be too influenced by feeling, by having feelings for one another. Before you have feelings for one another, you think someone might be good. Go and do the research. And the best place to do that research is friends. Reach out to their friends. If I'm a selfish person, my friends know. Maybe sometimes even my parents don't know, believe me. Because parents usually see their children positively. But my friends, they know. If I'm an angry person, if I'm a God fearing person, if I'm a kindhearted person, if I'm an easygoing person, my friends know these qualities. If you really want to know the character of this potential spouse, go to the friends. Now, maybe some of you might find it awkward for you to directly go to their friends. Have someone else. Let a friend go to their friends. Let your sister go and approach them and ask them. Give us an evaluation of your friend. Does he have these qualities? Is there any concerns? Now, I know some of the friends will say, but I'm not going to betray my friend if somebody asks me about him. I'm not going to reveal their faults. Islam says when it comes to marriage, never mislead anyone. It's a big sin to mislead anyone. Because people are basing lifelong decisions on your testimony. So don't say, no, it was my friend. I had to say good things about him or say good things about her. No, this is unacceptable in the eyes of God. If someone comes and you know they're not fooling around, they are really serious, they have pure intentions and they ask you, don't mislead them. If you don't think your friend has those good qualities, be honest. Either tell them what the problem is or just say, you know what? I'd rather not give my opinion, but don't mislead them. Revealing them is a grave sin in the eyes of Allah swt. And Islam is so sensitive about revealing the faults of others that it's a major sin to reveal and expose others except when someone is asking you for marriage advice. The hadith says that's an exception. Don't mislead someone, be honest with them. If there's really a major concern with your friend, don't tell them, yes, this would be a good opportunity and I approve of it and my friend is really a great person because then you will mislead them. If that marriage fails, Allah will hold you responsible on the day of judgment.