Well, this is a useful document and a valuable contribution to this debate, but, from the way in which the finance Secretary and others talk about immigration and its importance to the economy, I wonder how on earth we ever managed to survive before the year 2004, when restrictions on movement for eastern European countries were substantially relaxed or removed. The fact, which is inconvenient to their argument, of course, is that, for many decades up to the millennium, average net migration into the United Kingdom was about 50,000 a year. Since 2004, the average has been 225,000 a year for net migration. Now, that is a massive annual increase over and above what we’ve experienced throughout the rest of our lifetimes. I think nobody can credibly deny that immigration on such a scale and at such a speed is bound to create stresses and strains on public services, on land use, on transport, on jobs. At the moment, we’re in a relatively benign economic period, but, when the cycle turns, as inevitably it will, perhaps things will turn again. With the collapse in the exchange rates in recent months, that has already had a decisive impact upon these net migration figures, which were last, a few months ago, at a third of a million or more—now down to 0.25 million, but they’re still at 0.25 million. When the Office for Budget Responsibility did a study only three years ago, that was the figure they chose for the long-term future for net migration into Britain. It’s a fallacy to say, as the Cabinet Secretary said in his statement, or, not in a statement, in response to somebody earlier on, I think, that immigrants make a great net contribution to economic prosperity in Britain. That can only take a short-term view. Because migrants tend to be young, they tend to be at the earning part of their lifetime and they don’t make as much use of public services, particularly health services, as when they get older, and they certainly, of course, don’t qualify for pensions. If you discount the cash flow over an immigrant’s lifetime, we know from other studies that have been done, and I referred to one earlier on in my question to the First Minister by the Office for Budget Responsibility, that 225,000 net migrants a year, that adds 0.4 per cent to GDP but also adds 0.4 per cent to our population, and so there’s no net contribution at all in GDP per capita.

So, I’m not saying that immigrants are a cost to the country over the long term, but I am also saying that they aren’t actually a measurable benefit. So, in terms of national well-being there is no argument either way. But to ignore the scale and speed of current immigration, I think, is to risk instability in politics, which we’ve seen in other parts of Europe in a rather unpleasant way, and that’s the principal reason why I believe that we do need to have a proper system of immigration control. The paradox is that, of course, we do have this for the rest of the world that isn’t part of the European Union. Now, if the argument is, as I infer from what Steffan Lewis was saying a moment ago, that immigration is good, we should have more of it, and we shouldn’t put restrictions on it from the EU, why don’t we just open the floodgates to the rest of the world? Because the same arguments that apply to Europe will apply to the rest of the world too. Europe is 450 million people, taking the United Kingdom out of it. We’ve got billions of people around the world who could come and make contributions to the British economy if we had the same system of non-control that we have within the EU extended to the rest of the world. You can’t have it both ways. Either you’re in favour of control or you are not in favour of control. If we are in favour of control from the rest of the world, why should we not extend that to the European Union in a sensible way? I’m not entirely opposed, in principle, to having regional and national quota systems if they can be made to work. The complication is, of course, that we have a shambles of an immigration control system in this country. We’ve no idea who is coming into the country or, even more so, who is leaving it, and we can’t control movements within the United Kingdom. So—[Interruption.] Well, of course it’s true; we have no means of knowing where people are. In the last census just a few years ago, well over 0.5 million more people were found than the Office for National Statistics was expecting, and the census itself is not foolproof. So, until we have administrative systems that are capable of coping with the complications that this would bring in, I need to be convinced.

But I do think that this is a valuable contribution to debate, and I do think it’s something that the United Kingdom Government should consider. If it says that this can’t be made to work and explains why, then I will be opposed to this. But, if it can be made to work, and without undermining the fundamentals of what we need to achieve by controlling our borders, which I would have thought is the very essence of nationhood, independent nationhood, being able to control and decide who comes into your own country and on what terms. Otherwise, if you open the floodgates to the rest of the world as well, by having—[Interruption.] Well—