Javid hints at softening of immigration policy

The new Home Secretary has hinted at a significant shift in policy on immigration, refusing to personally endorse the government’s 100,000 net migration target and opening the door to removing students from immigration figures.

Sajid Javid said the ‘tens of thousands’ target for net migration remained government policy because it was in the 2017 Conservative manifesto, but appeared to echo Scottish leader Ruth Davidson’s call for the subject to be re-examined.

Mr Javid added that the Home Office’s “hostile environment” policy towards immigrants will be reviewed in the wake of the Windrush scandal.

He called the phrase a “negative term, a non-british term”, and said there were lessons to be learned from the controversy. “I want to review aspects of the policy,” Mr Javid said. “I’ve already made some changes.”

The Home Secretary said at least 63 members of the Windrush generation, who arrived in the UK before 1972 primari- 0 Sajid Javid will take a fresh look at Home Office policy ly from the Caribbean to work, and are entitled to British citizenship, have been wrongly deported since 2002. Mr Javid says “all of them will be helped” but admitted only seven have so far been traced by the Home Office. He also said he was taking a fresh look at the cap on “tier 2 visas” which allow non-eu foreign doctors to come to the UK. Last week the The British Medical Journal said that between December 2017 and March 2018 more than 1,500 visa applications from doctors with job offers in the UK were refused as a result of the cap on workers from outside of the European Economic Area.