PM pressured to clarify timeline on immigration
THERESA May is facing calls to spell out when she intends to meet her pledge to cut immigration to the tens of thousands.
The Prime Minister signalled on Thursday that she wanted to get net migration down below the 100,000 mark by the end of the next parliament in 2022.
However, appearing later on BBC One’s Question Time, Brexit Secretary David Davis said it was simply “an aim”, adding: “We can’t promise it within five years.”
Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Lord Paddick said the Conservatives needed to explain what the true position was.
“Theresa May and David Davis can’t both be right – which one is telling us the truth?” he said.
“This is a ludicrous policy that would cause enormous damage to our economy and devastate our public services like the NHS who rely on migrant workers.”
The Conservative manifesto states only that it is the party’s “objective” to reduce immigration below 100,000.
But asked if that would be by the end of the next parliament, the Prime Minister insisted that is what she would be “working for”.
Talking to reporters as she travelled around Yorkshire on the Conservative battle bus, Mrs May insisted there was no “magic bullet” to cut numbers.
Explaining why the “no ifs, no buts” pledge made by David Cameron had not been met while she was home secretary, the PM said the government had spent the first few years dealing with abuse of the system.
Home Office Minister Brandon Lewis earlier told BBC Two’s Daily Politics programme that the pledge would be met “over the course of the next parliament”.
When asked if that meant levels down to tens of thousands in five years’ time, he replied: “Over the course of the next parliament, yes.”
Asked if it was true that net migration would be down to the tens of thousands within five years, the Prime Minister replied: “That’s what we’re working for. We’re working to bring immigration down to the tens of thousands.
“But having been home secretary for six years, this isn’t something that you can just produce the magic bullet that suddenly does everything.
“What you have to do is keep working at it. “It’s a consistent working at it. “You have to make sure that people aren’t finding other ways, not to put too fine a point on it, to abuse the system – I mean, that’s one of the things we’ve had to do over the first few years was get a lot of the abuse out of the system.”
Net long-term migration – the difference between the number of people arriving and leaving the country – was estimated to be 248,000 last year.
In his new role as Evening Standard editor, Tory former chancellor George Osborne ran an editorial which said none of the senior members of the Cabinet support the pledge privately and that retaining it was “economically illiterate”.
Mrs May said: “The reason why we want to bring net migration down to sustainable levels, which we have set at the tens of thousands, is because of the impact that immigration has when it’s too fast and too high and uncontrolled on people.
“And it does have an impact on people, particularly at the low end of the income scale, in depressing wages at the lower end of the income scale.
“It can displace jobs and it puts pressure on public services.”