Whitehall ‘ is blocking bid to cut immigration’

EFFORTS to slash the number of migrants coming to Britain have been hampered by support for mass immigration within the Civil Service and the BBC, a report said last night.

Sympathy for relaxed border controls at the Treasury and other Whitehall departments were a major obstacle to the Government cutting net migration.

And a “strong bias” within the BBC posed “difficulties for an effective immigration policy”, the report by pressure group Migration Watch UK said.

Both issues were partly to blame for a failure to hit David Cameron’s target of reducing migration from “hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands”.

Migration Watch’s chairman, Lord Green of Deddington, said: “The battle for public opinion has been decisively won in the face of a powerful immigration lobby.

“This is the first time that a government has made a serious effort to get numbers down.

“They have undeniably made valuable progress but continued strong efforts, led from the top, are essential.”

The report said there was “pro- immigration bias” in “parts of the Civil Service, notably the Treasury, perhaps linked to a reluctance to tackle a sensitive subject”.

It also highlighted “a strong bias in the BBC in favour of immigration, combined with a reluctance even to address the case for reducing immigration.”

Home Office attempts to tighten borders had led to a drop in immigration from outside the EU “but this was largely counterbalanced by an increase in EU migration”, the report said.

‘‘ With hindsight, however, a target confined to non- EU migration would have avoided the risk of a very rapid increase of EU migration such as, in fact, occurred when it doubled between June 2012 and June 2014.”

It added: “In future, however, it would be more appropriate for a government target to focus on those elements that it can directly influence and therefore be expressed in terms of non- EU migration.

“As is well known, current EU obligations make it very difficult to mitigate.”

Negotiation of these obligations would be essential in coming elections.

A BBC spokesman said: “We believe our coverage of immigration is in the right place and we cover this complex issue in depth.”