PULL THE OTHER ONE, DAVE
Another set of devastating migration figures, but PM still insists the numbers can be slashed
DAVID CAMERON yesterday insisted he could cut net migration to below 100,000 – despite new figures showing it remains close to record high levels. The Prime Minister said he was ‘convinced’ the Government could fulfil his promise to reduce the number to tens of thousands a year.
But in the 12 months to the end of September, there were 323,000 more arrivals than the number leaving – an increase of 31,000 in a year. Of the arrivals, 257,000 were EU migrants.
The Office for National Statistics figures were seized on by those campaigning for Britain to leave the EU.
But Mr Cameron said his welfare brake and change to benefit rules would have an ‘impact’, adding: ‘I’m convinced if we do all of that we can make a real difference and reach the targets that I’ve set out.’
Yesterday it emerged that:
Around 630,000 National Insurance numbers were issued to non-British EU citizens in 2015 – seemingly at odds with ONS data that said 257,000 EU migrants arrived in the year to end of September.
Employment minister Priti Patel said the figures proved ‘ we cannot control
our borders’ while we remain EU members and Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith warned Mr Cameron’s reforms could make Britain’s migration problems worse.
Immigration from Romania and Bulgaria is increasing, with some 55,000 citizens arriving in the year to last September;
Asylum applications rose 20 per cent from 2014 to 2015.
Home Secretary Theresa May acknowledged that ‘immigration at this level puts pressure on public services, on housing, on infrastructure. It can hold down wages and push British workers out of jobs’.
But she said the PM’s deal to reduce in-work benefits for new EU workers would ‘reduce the pull factor of our welfare system and make it easier for us to deport people who are abusing our generosity’.
Miss Patel, campaigning for a Leave vote, said: ‘More than half of the people coming here have come from the EU, showing that we cannot control our borders while we remain members … The proposed deal will do nothing to reduce the level of immigration from the EU.’ The Prime Minister, visiting a defence factory in Preston, claimed leaving the EU could make it harder to control migration than it is now.
‘The countries outside the EU that have full access to the single market … have to accept the free movement of people,’ he said. ‘If we left the EU … we wouldn’t have the welfare restrictions I’ve just negotiated.’ The ONS figures showed net migration has been running at more than three times the PM’s target of 100,000 for three years.
For the year to the end of September 015, the figure was down 13,000 on the level over the previous six months, but the ONS said this fall was ‘not statistically significant’.
There were 73,000 non-EU immigrants, down from 89,000 in the previous 1 months.
But the difficult news for Mr Cameron and the Remain camp lay with the apparently unstoppable momentum of immigration from Europe. There were 8 8,000 NI numbers issued to foreign citizens in 015, up 8 per cent in a year – 09,000 to Romanians and Bulgarians.
The rate of EU immigration is now well ahead of levels recorded after 004, when Poland and seven other Eastern European countries joined the EU, giving their citizens the right to work in Britain.
Lord Green of think-tank Migration Watch UK said: ‘These figures show that there is no sign of any let up in the severe pressures of immigration on the UK. Unless a sharp reduction in immigration can be achieved we will face a continued rapid rise in our population for the indefinite future.’
Madeleine Sumption, of Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, said: ‘Free movement within the EU is not the only driver of recent high levels of net migration, but it has played an important role. Whether Brexit would reduce migration will depend in part on the treaties and policies that followed.’
Comment – Page 16