Tag: Lord Hamilton of Epsom

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Hamilton of Epsom on 2016-02-25.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of whether a member state can withdraw from the EU under (1) a Treaty agreed to under the ordinary revision procedure pursuant to Article 48 of the Treaty on European Union, or (2) under Article 54(b) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.

Baroness Anelay of St Johns

As the Government noted in its publication “The process for withdrawing from the European Union” (Command Paper 9216), the rules for exit are set out in Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union. This is the only route available in the EU Treaties to withdraw from the EU.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Hamilton of Epsom on 2016-09-06.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the answer by Lord O’Neill of Gatley on 5 September (HL Deb, col 849–50), what assessment they have made of the impact of immigration on wage rates and productivity in the UK.

Lord O’Neill of Gatley

As noted in the 2012 report by the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), the empirical literature suggests that the impact of migration on productivity may be mixed and heavily dependent on the type of migrant coming to the UK. Migrants may increase productivity either through a simple ‘batting average’ effect if they work in higher productivity roles relative to the average for non-migrants, or through increasing the productivity of UK workers through greater specialisation and knowledge transfer. In this report, the MAC established the key role played by skilled migrants in raising productivity. Further, the 2014 MAC report, ‘Migrants in low-skilled work’, found low skilled migrants have a neutral impact on UK-born employment rates, GDP per head and productivity. The impact of immigration on wage rates is also mixed, although a 2015 working paper by the Bank of England found an increase in the immigrant to native ratio has a small negative impact on average British wages.