DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Is 700,000 migrants a year ‘taking control’?
Rishi Sunak will have to forgive the voting public if they greet his new promise to cut net migration with a weary sense of deja vu.
Tomorrow, the Tories will have been in power longer than new Labour and all five prime ministers in that time have given similar assurances.
One of David Cameron‘s inaugural promises was to bring the annual total down to ‘the tens of thousands’. Theresa May threatened a ‘hostile environment’ for illegal entrants.
In his 2019 election manifesto, Boris Johnson also pledged to get a grip of the soaring numbers – though with a distinctly more modest target of 250,000.
And where has all this rhetoric got us? In 2021/22 net migration was 504,000. When this year’s figure is announced next week, it is expected to top a staggering 700,000 – comfortably more than the population of Liverpool or Nottingham, and roughly eight times that of smaller cities such as Lincoln and Durham – in a single year.
Rishi Sunak will have to forgive the voting public if they greet his new promise to cut net migration with a weary sense of deja vu
There are some mitigating factors, of course. Numbers have been swollen by some 240,000 refugees from Ukraine and Hong Kong. But most of those will have been counted in last year’s total. How then can this year’s be so towering? Is this really what they meant by taking back control?
So can Mr Sunak do any better than his four predecessors?
He’s not setting any fresh targets and will say only that he wants a lower annual net migration total than the 504,000 he inherited. Hardly a challenging ambition.
To be fair, he has made some progress with France and Albania towards stemming the tide of small boats.
But important though it is, the cross-Channel route accounts for just a fraction of total migration.
What’s needed is a joined-up approach to restricting both illegal and legal routes.
One area that requires urgent scrutiny is the number of dependants being brought in by foreign students. In 2019 the figure was 16,047. Last year it ballooned to 135,788. Why was that allowed to happen?
Ordinary work visas are also remarkably easy to acquire, with almost any job qualifying if the salary is above £26,000.
A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, from a Border Force vessel
Then there is the asylum system, which has ground to a virtual halt. At the end of last year, 160,000 claimants were waiting for a decision.
All have to be housed (often in expensive hotels), given medical care and provided with schooling for the children. This piles extra pressure on communities and local services which are already overloaded.
Labour’s answer to all these things is simple. Just lower the borders and let everyone in. Party chairman Anneliese Dodds was typically insouciant yesterday about immigration rising even further. But the Tories must be better.
They must defy the European Court of Human Rights and get the Rwanda scheme off the ground, curb illegal Channel crossings instead of just talking about it and substantially cut legal migrant numbers.
For more than 13 years, Conservative Prime Ministers have made endless promises about controlling our borders. If he wants to regain the confidence of the electorate, Mr Sunak must finally deliver.
Set trans guidelines
The Mail has huge sympathy for head teachers having to deal with rising numbers of pupils who say they are transgender without any national guidance.
Most parents would not want boys identifying as female to use girls’ changing rooms and toilets. But there is no general code of practice to support heads if they prohibit them from doing so.
Ministers say they will provide one by late summer. Given this is such a charged and contentious issue, why is it taking so long?
