Suella Braverman has backed calls to reverse “mass uncontrolled immigration” as calls for net emigration intensified.
Speaking on the eve of the Reform UK party conference, the former Home Secretary insisted the British people must “finally be put first” following record numbers of arrivals.
Net emigration would see more migrants leaving the UK than arriving.
Mrs Braverman said mass immigration has “kept wages low” and fuelled a housing crisis.
It follows former Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick suggesting that Britain needs a decade of net emigration to restore control of the borders.
Mrs Braverman said: “I support net emigration. People have rightly had enough.
“The tide of mass immigration must not only end and be stopped but be reversed.
“Mass uncontrolled immigration has made us worse off.
“It has made housing out of reach for our young people, kept wages low and meant waiting times for doctors appointments take longer than ever before.
“We can’t continue like this. Our country is overwhelmed and the British people need to finally, be put first.”
The Office for National Statistics said net migration to the UK hit 906,000 in the year to June 2023, amid an influx of foreign students, a spike in non-EU workers, particularly in the health and social care sectors and the introduction of the Ukraine and Hong Kong refugee visa schemes.
Tighter controls on overseas workers and foreign students led to a fall of 435,000 to 431,000, from a staggering 866,000 in the year to December 2023.
The Tories in 2023 banned overseas care workers and foreign students from bringing their family members with them to the UK.
The salary threshold for skilled workers was also increased to £38,700.
In an explosive interview with The Spectator, published on Thursday, the former immigration minister declared: “Damaging though illegal migration is, legal migration is even more harmful to the country because of the sheer eye-watering numbers of people who have been coming across in recent years perfectly legally.
“It’s putting immense pressure on public services.
“I think the country now needs breathing space after this period of mass migration. The age of being open to the world and his wife, who are low-wage, low-skilled individuals, and their dependents has to come to an end. Reversing recent low-skilled migration will likely mean a sustained period of net emigration.
“I would support that.
“Of course, we stay open to the very best and brightest. We want the coders, the doctors, the serial entrepreneurs, the people who are clearly going to make a massive economic contribution to the country.
“How long would this last? A decade? ‘It could be, yes.”
Some 517,000 migrants left the UK in the year to December 2024, figures show. Analysis of ONS figures shows 466,000 left in the year to December 2023, 422,000 in the year to December 2022 and 433,000 in the year to December 2021.
But this is down from 523,000 in the year to December 2016, following the Brexit vote.
The number of people emigrating from the UK peaked in the year to March 2020, when 645,000 left.
Mr Jenrick, who resigned over Rishi Sunak’s approach to legal migration, turned his fury on Boris Johnson and Priti Patel’s immigration policies.
He declared: “At the Home Office I walked into a total bin fire. I think the points-based system that was created by the ministers at the time was the worst public policy mistake in my lifetime.”
In an interview with the Sunday Express earlier this year, Professor Brian Bell, the Government’s migration tsar, said slashing net migration to 0 is a “pipe dream” unless ministers enacted some drastic policies.
He said: “If you have net migration of 0 for the next 30 years, what you are actually saying is you want the population of the UK to fall significantly.
“The ONS predicted, and this is one of those predictions that is pretty strongly going to come true, the amounts of deaths and births of British people will essentially become negative. There will be more deaths than births because the fertility rate has gone down so much.
“If you have no migration, you will have the population of the UK falling and it’s quite dramatic – in the order of millions over the next 10-20 years.
“The alternative way – we could have net migration of 200,000 – 250,000 for the next 30 years – wouldn’t change the population.
“Net migration of 0 is really hard to achieve. In the last year, somewhere between 50,000 and 80,000 partners of British citizens came to the UK through the family route.
“Once they are here, they don’t leave. If you want net migration of 0, you either have to ban that, and say you are no longer allowed to fall in love with a foreigner, or you have to be sending out 50,000 to 80,000 people [on other routes].
“There’s quite a bit of immigration where it is quite hard to see how you change [things].
“And if you can’t, then net migration of 0 is just a pipe dream.”