Of Brexit job fears

“He doesn’t want deals with China or Mexico because he thinks that sucks jobs away from America.

“He might look at parts of the EU in the same way, but he is not worried about British people going to America or massively undercutting American trade.”

However, he was dismissive about Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson’s call for an “open Brexit”, prioritising business needs over cutting immigration.

He stated: “The reason we don’t want a Norwaystyle deal is the issue of sovereignty and also migration — most people want some sort of control on migration.

“The problem is EU citizens have more rights than UK citizens, determined by the European Court of Justice. One anomaly is being able to bring a non-EU spouse into the country.”

Mr Kamall added he would like to see a pointsbased system, despite the prime minister firmly ruling out the option as unworkable.

He said: “I’m personally relaxed about immigration and I think we have had the wrong debate for years in Britain.

“We should be talking about our skills shortages — even if we got all our long-term unemployed back to work, we would still have skills shortages.

“Where we have shortages, we should look at immigration and I would like to see a points system, as it can be flexible.”

“The ideal UK scenario is where we leave single market”