Britain should copy Donald Trump and slash migration to boost economic growth, Robert Jenrick declared.
The Shadow Justice Secretary branded former Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair the “founding father of mass migration” as he slammed Whitehall’s approach to economics.
And he championed the policies of US President Donald Trump, who has demanded low levels of highly-skilled migration – the opposite to what the UK has done over the past 20 years.
Mr Jenrick: “Tony Blair was the founding father of mass migration, that it is an unalloyed good for our country economically. And it was literally baked into the OBR, not just the OBR, it was baked into the entire political, economic elite view of our country.
“If you want high economic growth, you want low migration.
“That is essentially the policy that Donald Trump is pursing in the United States, where he is bringing down, successfully, migration to the US and at the same time, economic growth is rising.”
Migration will lead to another five million people living in the UK in just seven years, according to alarming projections.
The population will surge to 72.5 million – up from 67.6 million – by 2032, heaping more pressure on the NHS, housing, roads and schools.
Statisticians at the ONS predicted net migration will settle at 340,000 per year from 2028.
But this could be higher, with current levels soaring at 728,000.
This is down from a record high of 906,000 in June 2023.
Migration will account for “the entirety of the population growth” as the difference between births and deaths is “projected to be around zero”.
Net migration is currently around 431,000 a year.
By contrast, Donald Trump has made it far more difficult – and expensive – for international students and foreign workers to move to the US.
In a bid to encourage American firms to hire domestic workers, Mr Trump slapped a $100,000 fee on the H-1B visas.
But the US leader insisted he still wants to hire highly skilled foreign workers in specialised fields.
Many companies use H-1B visas to help fill their workforces.
And Mr Jenrick told how many firms in the UK have relied on the “easy lever” of foreign workers, rather than training British workers.
Mr Jenrick added: “Most people work in distribution centres, in food processing factories, in jobs where, for the whole of my adult lifetime, they’ve watched their employers reaching for the easy lever of foreign labour.
“They’ve imported people, firstly from Eastern Europe and then from other parts of the world.
“And correspondingly, they’ve watched their employers not investing in them, in their skills, in their wages, and not investing in innovation and technology that would drive productivity, to the point where they feel for, they feel that the economy is just bouncing on the bottom.
“They can also see that their businesses are not changing, that we have the lowest robotic, something of any major developed economy in the world today, the lowest number of robots per capita of any European country.
“Why is this? It’s because we’ve just reached for the easy lever of foreign labour.
“I honestly believe, truly believe, and I think that report began this debate that if we can bring those numbers right down, we’ll actually drive economic growth and a renaissance in our economy.
“It’s the logical conclusion of the policies that Chris Philp and Kemi have set out – net emigration, where more people are leaving the country every year than are coming in.
“Then we choose the right people, believe and to come, make this country the grammar school of the Western world.
“Once again, the coders, the serial entrepreneurs, the consultant doctors, for sure, but no more low wage, low skilled migration.”