The PM’s migration figures don’t add up

ON the campaign trail yesterday, David Cameron hailed his feeble EU referendum deal and – with a straight face – said he was ‘convinced’ the Government would now be able to hit its target of cutting net migration to the ‘tens of thousands’. Do pull the other one, Prime Minister. For consider the devastating figures published by the Office for National Statistics yesterday.

Net migration (the difference between the number arriving and those leaving) was a staggering 323,000 last year – equivalent to a city the size of Coventry.

Meanwhile, net migration from the EU – which is entirely uncontrolled, on the orders of Brussels – was 172,000, including 55,000 Romanians and Bulgarians. But this may be desperately misleading.

For the number of National Insurance numbers given to the citizens of these two desperately poor countries – a measure many experts consider to be more accurate than the ONS figures – was more than 200,000.

And that’s not including the countless people who slip into Britain undetected to join the thriving black market.

So much for the sneers of the liberal Left, who accused Migrationwatch of scaremongering when it predicted up to 50,000 Romanians and Bulgarians would come here annually.

Add to this a 20 per cent surge in asylum seekers, to almost 39,000 last year, and the picture grows ever more troubling.

As the EU’s external border collapses, more and more migrants are pouring into the continent – many headed for Britain via Calais, where police yesterday had to deploy tear gas to stop a group of 1,000 from breaking into the Channel Tunnel. Which takes us back to Mr Cameron’s ‘deal’ with Brussels on immigration – which he risibly insisted would help to hold back the tide of migrants.

As Iain Duncan Smith said yesterday, the PM’s ’emergency brake’ on in-work benefits will do nothing to reduce net migration – and could even lead to a short-term spike in arrivals trying to beat the likely April 2017 introduction date.

But, even if Mr Cameron had been able to stop EU migrants getting benefits altogether, he would still have missed the point entirely. For the fact is that, while Britain remains a member of the EU, we are unable to decide who does and does not enter the country.

The numbers pouring in will continue to rise and the disillusionment of the public – whose concerns on immigration have been so shamefully ignored by the political class – will grow still further. Why can’t Mr Cameron be honest about this instead of burying his head in sands of delusion?

Yes, Britain must do all it can to help alleviate the tragedy of the human tide of misery sweeping across the continent. Yes, many of Britain’s existing immigrants contribute hugely to the UK economy.

But the fact is that our schools, hospitals and social structure cannot cope with numbers of this magnitude.

In Europe, we are witnessing a crisis of historic proportions. Germany alone was yesterday told that 2.5million migrants could arrive this year. Meanwhile, Austria and Greece are locked in a bitter feud over whether the Greek border should be sealed off from the rest of the EU which is threatening to tear the entire union apart. Even the European Commission – which is paralysed by inaction – is now warning that the EU’s immigration system could soon ‘break down’.

Put together with the catastrophe that is the eurozone, is this really a project Britain wants to be a part of when it wakes up after the referendum on June 24?

It is not xenophobic to want the right to control our own borders. Mr Cameron’s claim that his deal will allow us to do this frankly insults the intelligence.