Dame Meg Hillier

I hope that I am beginning to explain how some of these interactions—[Laughter.] I am only just beginning. [Hon. Members: “More!”] I fear I might be cut off, which is a great shame, because I had really looked forward to going into this in more detail. If the person completed undergraduate and postgraduate in Scotland, they would qualify for permanent residence simply by having been in the country. We might want to support that, but we ought to debate, it rather than sleepwalking into the challenges of having two systems set up for different purposes. That would be confusing for the individual and for the businesses employing them, as they might not know whether visas were needed. It would be very complicated. On the tax code, I have spent quite a lot of time considering how our tax system works, and every time a Chancellor of any party stands up at the Dispatch Box to announce something, it adds complexity to the tax system, which can be very confusing for people. One of the last things that we wanted to do in the previous Labour Government, but which was too complicated to deliver in time, was codify all immigration law into one Bill—but, boy, was that a big task. It is the sort of thing that a Government would need to start at the beginning of a 15-year Government. Perhaps I should suggest it to the Home Secretary, because I am sure that this Government have the prospect of seeing it through. People come to my constituency surgery—and to those of many other Members, I am sure—to ask for information about their immigration status. They could not possibly work through the system on their own without professional advice, which is costly. That is discriminatory, really. They find it very difficult. The more complication we add, the harder it will be.