Lib Dem MP Teather tells the Guardian of her anger that there are no "alternative voices" on immigration
In a major interview published by the Guardian on Saturday, Sarah Teather, the Lib Dem MP for London's Brent Central, has spoken out against the government's attitude to immigration.
Teather said that she was angry and concerned that there are no "alternative voices" on immigration.
"The reason I wanted to give this interview is that I'm angry there are no alternative voices on immigration. There is a suddenly this new consensus that has stifled the debate on immigration, and I find it truly terrifying," she explained.
The Guardian quoted her as later saying: "What alarms me is that the immigration proposals feel as if they're hewn from the same rock as welfare earlier in the year, where a lot of that again was about setting up political dividing lines, and trying to create and define an enemy. It's got to a stage where it's almost unacceptable to say anything else, and it bothers me that there is a consensus among the three party leaders that they are all making, well not quite the same speech – there are differences, significant differences – but there's a consensus. It's stifling the rest of the debate, making people afraid to speak. If you get to a stage where there is no alternative voice, eventually democracy's just going to break down, " she told the Guardian.
According to the Guardian, before a reshuffle last September, Teather sat on an internal ministerial group known originally under the working title of the "hostile environment working group". Teather said that she was so alarmed by the name, she tried to expose it publicly under a Freedom of Information request.
Now known as the "inter-ministerial group on migrants' access to benefits and public services", Teather says that it was set up on the explicit instructions of the prime minister and its job is to make Britain a hostile environment to unwanted immigrants.
In the Guardian interview, Teather also criticised government plans for GPs to be required to check the immigration status of patients, and landlords the status of potential tenants. On the latter, she said: "We're going to end up in a situation where if you look a bit foreign or sound a bit foreign, you'll struggle to rent a property from a reputable landlord."
She also criticised the impact on families of the strict minimum income requirement of £18,600 to be able to apply for a visa for a non-European spouse under the immigration rules, and revealed that the some Conservatives had strongly argued for the minimum income threshold to be £40,000.
Teather warned that government rhetoric of an immigration crackdown might, in fact, serve to increase rather than decrease public fears about the impact of immigration. "Language is one of the powerful things you have as a politician, and we need to consider that, " she said.
She pointed, for example, to the proposals for an immigration bond for visitor visas, saying it was likened to a bail payment in a briefing speech: "Well, that links immigrants to criminals in the public eye."