Letter to Daily Telegraph which was published 9th August 2016 in a cut-down version

The Home Office (report, August 6) is considering giving Dame Lowell Goddard £90,000 “in lieu of three months’ notice” and allowing her to stay on rent-free in her £2,000 per month apartment. This is astonishing even by today’s debased standards of public sector morality.

In the private sector if someone unilaterally breaks their contract it’s they who have to reimburse their employers for the trouble and inconvenience they have caused them. That is the whole purpose of notice periods. All the evidence is that Justice Goddard’s sudden departure will cause her employer much cost and inconvenience.

NB The sections in italics, containing the essence of the argument, were omitted by the Daily Telegraph, but the BBC Radio4 “Today” programme mentioned the letter that morning in its review of the papers.

A letter to the Editor of the Daily Telegraph which was published on 31st January 2001.

Barbara Roche, the immigration minister, maintains that new primary immigration is needed to overcome technology skill shortages (interview, Jan. 27th).  Last Monday the Home Office released data purporting to show that immigration has not placed a net burden on the social services.

It seems clear that the Labour Government is planning on breaking the 30-year-old implicit compact with the British people that there would be no further primary immigration.

As technology develops, there will always be temporary shortages in this skill or that, but these are pretty short-lived as students and their parents respond to market demand.

Currently, computation departments in the universities are awash with aspiring IT professionals.  In two or three years’ time, there is likely to be a glut.  American data show that, contrary to ministerial assumptions, so-called “high-tech” jobs have accounted for a mere four per cent of new jobs over a 20-year period.

The largest single category of job creation has been for building janitors; even waiters outnumbered computer technicians, systems analysts and computer programmers put together.  Left to itself, any shortage will normally be corrected by increasing the price of supply.  Currently, British industry attracts only about 50 per cent of British engineering graduates, as many choose to work abroad for higher salaries.  If employers are allowed to import people for whom current British salaries represent a fortune, this displacement will continue indefinitely.

The “ethical” dimension to which Mrs Roche referred in her interview should therefore start not with the needs of asylum seekers, but with the frequently expressed wishes of the British people that the demographic make-up of the population of this congested island should not be further changed without their explicit consent.  At the same time, employers should be told that imported labour will not be allowed to undermine the market for the products of our own education system.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published in March 1969.

Mr G L Lewis (Feb. 28th) challenges my figure of 11 dependants to one voucher holder.  The latest comprehensive information on immigration appears to be in HMSO publication dated April 1968, Cmnd 3594, where it is shown that for the year 1967 4,978 voucher holders entered Britain together with 56,399 dependants, a ratio of 11.3 to one.

These figures include 3,191 vouchers issued to citizens of countries which no longer have any connection with this country (i.e. the Commonwealth republics) accompanied by 38,430 dependants, a ratio of 12 to one.  From the West Indian islands which are still constitutionally linked to this country came 606 voucher holders and 11,255 dependants, a ratio of 18.6 to one.

Total numbers for 1966 are much the same although the ratio of dependants to voucher holders is somewhat smaller.  The figures for 1968 may be obtained by totalling the monthly figures published in the Daily Telegraph.  The latest figures which I have seen are for November (Jan. 18th) when 350 voucher holders entered together with 3,933 dependants (including Kenya Asians), a ratio of 11.2 to one.  Other months are much the same.

What most Britons want to know is how long this immigration is going on for.  I would not stand for the bullying of any man wherever from and of whatever status, nor would I agree to young children being separated from their parents or husbands from wives.  But this is quite different from a commitment to accept an unspecified number of dependants stretching indefinitely into the future.  Those who assert that we have a commitment should urge the Government to set out precisely with whom and where this commitment was made.