Shadow home secretary Chris Philp has said the Home Secretary’s plans to cut migration by 50,000 is “too little”. The Government plans to unveil its plans for a crackdown on the issue on Monday.
Put to him that Yvette Cooper plans to cut migration by 50,000, he told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme: “Well, that, frankly, is too little. The measures that the last Conservative government took late in its time in office, too late I would candidly acknowledge, will see migration levels drop by about four to 500,000, so her little 50,000 tweak, I think, is not enough.”
He continued: “We would go further and tomorrow we intend to push to a vote in Parliament a measure that would have an annual cap on migration voted for and set by Parliament to restore proper democratic accountability, because those numbers were far, far too high.
“That was a mistake and I think it’s actually bad for our economy to have very large numbers of low-skilled people coming into the country, low skill, low wage, and businesses have perhaps understandably reached that kind of low-skilled, low wage migration, instead of investing in technology, automation and mechanisation, and instead of getting some of the nine million working age adults in this country who are not working into the workforce.
“Now, our policy is much tougher than Labour’s. We’re going to put it to a vote tomorrow, but I suspect Yvette Cooper and Keir Starmer will vote against it.”
Asked what the Conservatives’ cap would be, Mr Philp said “we’re working on the detail to specify that number”, adding it will be “a further reduction of significantly more than 50,000”.
Ms Cooper said the Government is “not taking that specific target approach” when it comes to net migration.
But the Home Secretary indicated that ministers believe changes to certain visas could lead to a reduction of “up to 50,000” over the next year.
Asked what changes to the numbers she would like to see, the Home Secretary told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg: “We’re setting up plans for a substantial reduction in net migration.
“You’ll know that we’ve had many targets, promises from Conservative governments in the past, all of which have been broken.
“I think they undermined the credibility of anything that governments do and that’s why we’re not taking that approach. So, we’re not taking that specific target approach.”
Giving more details on certain visas, Ms Cooper added: “I can tell you specifically on those visas, on the changes to the skilled worker visa, to reduce lower skilled migration, combined with the changes to the care worker visa.
“Those changes will come in in the course of this year and those changes […] we expect to lead to a reduction of up to 50,000 fewer lower-skilled visas over the course of the next year.”