Join the debate, Prime Minister
Earlier this week, Boris Johnson said that David Cameron has contributed to a corrosion of trust in democracy. He pointed to broken targets on immigration – promises made by successive governments in the knowledge that they could not meet them and probably never intended to. This is the behaviour of a political class that does not trust people enough to give them the truth. It will take proper debate to break their silence.
Only now has the Office for National Statistics released data to clear up the discrepancy between official migration figures and larger totals of National Insurance numbers – in a jargoncluttered report that seems designed to make the reader give up in frustration. Those who persevere will be rewarded with the remarkable discovery that EU migration to Britain over the past five years was 1.5 million higher than previously stated. The ONS says that this includes people who visited Britain in the “short-term” and then left.
Many readers will regard the ONS explanation of why the Government under-reported the number as absurd. They will conclude that the Government had two figures to choose from: one that included all migrants and one that only included long-term migrants, and that they went with the latter because it was lower. Alas, this is the variety of obfuscation that voters have come to expect.
Over a decade ago, Labour predicted that low numbers would come following the entry of east European countries into the EU. When that proved to be untrue, there was a Left-wing pushback against any discussion of the consequences. Mr Cameron broke that mould by making a commitment to reduce migration to the tens of thousands. But a gulf has grown between rhetoric and reality. The reality is that within the EU it is impossible to stop the flow of people exercising a right to seek work in Britain.
Even outside the EU there is no guarantee that the movement would slow: businesses would continue to demand labour to address shortages in manpower and skills. And many politicians have privately decided that mass migration is a facet of globalisation, that it cannot be stopped and is beneficial. Reluctant to admit this conclusion, they have decided to avoid the subject or talk down the statistics. They have adopted attitudes commonplace among Eurocrats: contemptuous and terrified of popular opinion.
Crucially, their silence extends to discussion of how Britain is going to pay for this demographic change. Voters are already experiencing shortages of low-skilled jobs, nursery places and hospital beds. We recently reported that the number of school-aged children arriving in the UK from Europe has reached a record 25,000 in a single year. That is the equivalent of about 27 new secondary schools – or 100 primary schools – having to be built to provide extra capacity.
Mr Johnson is right. The refusal of politicians to talk frankly about immigration is breeding resentment. The EU referendum, however, gives Mr Cameron a chance to turn over a new leaf. His agreement to a TV appearance with Nigel Farage, although an entertaining prospect, is insufficient. He should debate with Mr Johnson properly, headto-head – and this newspaper would be happy to host. We trust that Mr Cameron would welcome the opportunity, as he has done with such aplomb before, to face his critics and help bring greater clarity to this debate.