May won’t hit target on slashing

welcome many European workers whose services are in high demand, including care home staff, fruit pickers and software experts.

And 45 per cent believe that prices would go up at firms which rely on migrant workers, such as taxis, care homes and food, if immigration were to be slashed greatly, researchers at Ipsos MORI found.

The findings came as senior business leaders pleaded with Mrs May not to gold-plate her promise to restrict immigration to “tens of thousands” by repeating it in the Conservative election manifesto.

One said key election promises would be “rendered meaningless” without a flow of young European workers to build homes and drive up economic growth and living standards.

Mrs May made her immigration intervention two weeks ago after Culture Secretary Karen Bradley declared that the issue should not be about numbers, casting doubt on whether the Tories would retain David Cameron’s policy of trying to cut net levels to the “tens of thousands”. Mrs May declared: “We have been very clear, as I was as home secretary for six years, that it is important that we have net migration that is in sustainable numbers. We believe sustainable numbers are the tens of thousands.”

However, fewer than two in 10 think Mrs May will succeed in cutting numbers this low, found the survey of 1,061 Britons. The vast majority — some 68 per cent — think she will not deliver.

In the most recent official figures, net immigration — the gap between the number coming in and the number leaving — stood at 273,000 in the year to September.

This morning, Home Secretary Amber Rudd refused to say if any figure would be in the manifesto. “We will set out in the manifesto some of our strategy for immigration,” she said.

Business leaders in a range of sectors united to warn Mrs May that choking off the supply of overseas labour would be counter-productive.

Brian Berry, chief executive of the Federation of Master Builders, said cutting off the supply of European bricklayers would stop construction longer, the service slower and people would have a hard time going out in the evening,” he said.

Mr McColl, who employs 18 staff from overseas out of a total of 20, at Mamuska, in Elephant and Castle, said: “Young people in Britain do not see serving or cooking as a desirable career choice.”