Tories urge PM to to tackle 'unsustainable' legal migration ahead of election

Tory MPs have urged Rishi Sunak to clamp down on “unsustainable” legal migration which pressures public services ahead of a general election.

Slashing legal migration was a key pledge in the Conservatives’ last manifesto, with the party promising that “overall numbers” of migrants would come down from their 2019 level of about 226,000 people a year.

But net migration in the year to June 2023 was 672,000.

Former Cabinet Minister Sir John Hayes said: “Immigration is a critical issue for the country and people expect us to cut it as we promised to do.

“We’re being flooded by people which produces immense pressures on public services and changes the shape of communities.

“It’s not in the incoming people’s interest and it’s not in the indigenous population’s interest to maintain immigration at the unsustainable level it is.”

A rise in non-EU immigration to the UK has been driven mainly by migrants coming for work on health and care visas, statistics have suggested.

The Prime Minister has insisted his plans to make it harder to bring overseas family members to the UK will go ahead in full in 2025 – after the election.

Mr Sunak rowed back on reforms in December that would block migrants joining households earning under £38,700.

Ministers announced the minimum salary level will be raised from £18,600 to £29,000 in the spring instead.

Tory MP Sir John Redwood said: “For years now, we have been told there is a temporary shortage of care workers, of farm workers, of a range of lower paid skilled jobs that needs the short-term fix of more legal migration.

“These temporary shortages often become permanent fixtures of our jobs market. To stop this, action needs to be taken to make the jobs attractive to people living here, and to offer them the support and training they need to do the jobs.

“It worked well with the driver shortages that resulted from the rush to online shopping over Covid where a combination of better wages and more training for people living here eased the shortages quickly.”

Strategists have concerns that failures to tackle legal migration could prompt Britons to vote for Reform at the election, which is expected to take place in the second-half of the year.

Both parties will go into the next general election with the same promise to give British people priority access to social homes, it has been reported.

Some 80 per cent of Express readers polled on our website said the party has a shot when the country goes to the polls.

Some 18 per cent said no, while two per cent did not know. More than 11,000 people had voted in the survey as of yesterday morning.

Jonathan Gullis said: “It is right that the Prime Minister continues to go further and harder to clamp down on legal migration as well as stopping illegal migration.

“It is so important that the British people see that we have control of our borders and we are the party of Parliament that will always stand up for the people’s will in this regard.”

Tory MP Philip Davies MP called it “essential” that immigration numbers come down, adding that rules introduced under ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson after the UK left the EU were “clearly too lax”.

He said: “However, Rishi Sunak has acted swiftly to increase the amount people need to earn to come into the UK, and taken action to prevent dependents coming into the UK with social care workers and students in order to reduce immigration levels into the UK.

“I am sure the vast majority of public support him acting to reduce the level of immigration to the UK which was unsustainable”

Mr Sunak is also under pressure to tackle illegal migration, which he hopes his Rwanda Bill will help achieve.

As of 21 January, 621 people had crossed the English Channel in small boats in 2024.

In 2023, 29,437 people came to the UK this way.

That was a big drop from the 2022 total of 45,755, which was the highest number since figures began to be collected in 2018.

Mr Sunak says that “stopping the boats” is a key priority.

On legal migration, a Downing Street spokeswoman said: “We are doing work to better prioritise the skills and talent that we need to grow and support our economy with the British workforce.

“We’ve set out the toughest measures on legal migration to reduce those numbers.”