Some uncomfortable truths about immigration

GEORGE Canning, Prime Minister in 1827, once said: “I can prove anything by statistics except the truth.” He could have been talking about this week’s net migration figures, which set so many pulses racing.

“Deeply disappointing” was how UK immigration minister James Brokenshire described the headline 330,000 figure, which represents the difference between the number of people entering and leaving the UK. His party has been promising to bring the figure below 100,000 for the last five years. The numbers are “reflective of borderless Britain and the total impotence of the British Government,” raged Nigel Farage.

The true headline figure, the number of migrants who came to the UK, is actually 600,000, creating even more of a headache for David Cameron and his ministers. It all just seems so unnecessary. The Tories, to appease the right-wing press and Eurosceptic wing of the party, have set themselves on a dangerous road that means endorsing, even encouraging, the view that the UK is a magnet for the world’s unskilled scroungers.

As well as being unpleasant and insulting, it’s an untenable approach that puts Britain’s fragile economic recovery at risk and makes a No vote in the forthcoming EU referendum more likely. The real story behind these figures reflects a modern European and global reality: people will move from country to country in search of the most enticing opportunities.

Almost 200,000 of the 600,000 came to the UK to study, paying our universities and colleges handsomely in the process; they will be expected to leave at the end of their courses, regardless of their economic potential.

Outside the EU, the nation with the highest number of people migrating to the UK was China, a global economic powerhouse overflowing with skilled and educated people; hardly scroungers. Elsewhere, almost one third were from within the EU, and two thirds had definite jobs to come to.

A study this year by University College London highlighted that recent migrants are much more likely to be young graduates working in the financial, technology and creative sectors than the keen but unskilled labour force of previous generations. In most cases we should be grateful that they chose to come to UK, rather than go to one of our competitors. Mr Farage is right in one sense, of course. No matter how often Mr Cameron bangs on about reducing net migration, his hands are tied. Being a member of the EU means accepting free movement of labour, full stop. Britain will not negotiate itself out of this position and remain a member of the EU.

And there’s only so long the business community will keep quiet while its party of choice handicaps it by perpetuating skills shortages. A pragmatic government would spell out the situation carefully to voters, focus on the positives and move the narrative on to focus on equipping public services to keep up with extra demand.

But, where migration is concerned, this is a government that allows itself to become increasingly trapped in a doomed ideological position that goes against its own free-market roots. Only time will tell whether it chooses to set itself free.

‘‘ This is a government that allows itself to become increasingly trapped in a doomed ideological position