Comment

It would be a huge mistake if the next PM does away with immigration targets

Boris Johnson
The public consistently votes for lower immigration, and is consistently ignored

In 2010, as the Conservatives returned to government after 13 years in exile, George Osborne warned his colleagues. “Our promise to cut immigration is a big reason we’re here,” he said. “Support the Home Office in getting it done, or we won’t be sitting here much longer.”

As time went on, ministers’ support for immigration control waned with Osborne’s. While the numbers came down at first, they soon went shooting back up. Yet when the Tories faced the electorate again, in 2015, they repeated their pledge: annual net migration would be cut to the tens of thousands.

Today, net migration stands at 258,000 per year. And Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson want to drop the target. Boris refuses to promise to cut the numbers, and supports an amnesty for illegal immigrants. The target – and, perhaps, the Tory promise to reduce immigration – is no more.

What was once a bold statement of intent, a Tory think tank said this week, “now stands as a visible statement of failure”. Onward’s report, endorsed by two former immigration ministers, said: “The net migration target is neither delivering lower net migration or restoring confidence that politicians mean what they say about immigration.”

On its own a target is obviously not a mechanism for reducing immigration. A target matters only if you are trying to hit it, and ministers gave up on that a long time ago. Blaming a target when the policies to achieve it have been deliberately and cynically weakened makes no sense at all. But Onward is right to say that the tens-of-thousands promise shows that politicians do not mean what they say about immigration.

If Boris wants a more liberal policy, with no limit on the numbers of people coming to Britain, and immigration rates even higher than those over the last 20 years, he will have to make the case for it. Consistent majorities of voters – across every age group and every part of the country – disagree with him. They want the numbers cut.

But if Boris decides to do what the country – in particular Brexit and Conservative voters – wants with immigration, he needs a serious plan to reduce it. Onward’s proposals, to improve accountability with an independent “office for migration responsibility” and annual statements by ministers to Parliament, might prove helpful. The danger is that pro-immigration zealots would likely capture the independent office and use it to twist the statistics to suit their own ends.

This is why it is impossible to take the politics out of immigration. If you put it in the hands of liberal technocrats, they will always insist the economy needs higher and higher numbers.

Without clear and aggressive objectives to reduce immigration – set by politicians on behalf of voters – annual statements and independent offices will simply become a means of “managing” massive levels of immigration.

So when the tens-of-thousands target is officially buried, we will still need stretching objectives. We could have separate targets for EU and non-EU migration, for example, as long as we have free movement rules, or if we agree a preferential system for EU nationals in future.

We could have targets for family, study and work visas. We could have targets relating to migration, settlement and citizenship. We could aim to increase high-skilled migration at the expense of unskilled migration. But we must have a clear objective to cut immigration overall. Without that, there will be no pressure on ministers and officials to bring the numbers down.

And to do that, the Conservatives need to answer questions they have long dodged. If we are dependent on migration for plumbers, electricians and engineers, why do we neglect technical and vocational education? If we are reliant on foreign doctors and nurses, why is NHS workforce planning and training not better? If farming cannot find local workers to pick crops, why don’t we invest in technologies to end back-breaking and miserable work? If the hospitality industry cannot persuade young people to work in restaurants and hotels, isn’t one answer to pay them more?

And what is our attitude to foreign students? Yes, foreign students bring billions of pounds to the British economy. And yes, they are vital in making many of our universities the world-beaters they are.

But does this really mean every undergraduate from every higher education institute, regardless of their degree subject and classification, should have a guaranteed right to live and work in Britain for years after graduation?

If we answer these questions, we can set demanding objectives that allow us to reduce and control immigration. But if we continue to dodge them we will never get to grips with the problem.

The public consistently votes for lower immigration, and is consistently ignored. They deserve a government that listens, and has a plan to deliver what they demand.

License this content