Home Secretary Suella Braverman said she that she wants to reduce net migration to the UK down to the “tens of thousands” in order to fulfil the longstanding pledge of the Conservative party and to deliver on the promises of Brexit.
“Overall, we need to get net-migration down,” Braverman told Christopher Hope of the Daily Telegraph at the Tory Party conference in Birmingham on Tuesday, adding: “That is my unfiltered, unapologetic, unvarnished view. Overall migration needs to come down… 239,000 was the last number and that’s really the same as pre-Brexit numbers.”
“I’m not embarrassed to say it, I voted and campaigned for Brexit for soverereignty but also to reduce migration for a whole host of reasons, there are structural pressures that mass and rapid migration poses to our country, on housing supply, on house prices, on the number of GP places, on school places, we are dealing with more and more people and it is reasonable for the government to take a rational and pragmatic view on the numbers of people coming into this country.”
While the newly installed Home Secretary did not commit to a firm number or a time frame of accomplishing her goal, she said that it was her “ultimate aspiration” to reduce numbers of net migration to the tens of thousands, as has long been promised by the Conservative party. In 2017, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osbourne, admitted that the party never had any intention on reducing migration.
Although Osborne represents a wing of the Conservative power that was banished to the shadows — to some extent — after Brexit, it remains the case Braverman will have an uphill battle to fight if she wants to make any progress on immigration at all. The Home Office brief totally broke her predecessor Priti Patel, who was regarded as a right-wing hardliner on immigration when she got the job: by the time she left the role this year, she showed certain signs of having ‘gone native’ in the department, defending its poor performance on migration.
Braverman will have to persuade her present cabinet colleagues too. As reported today, some government departments want even more migration than the record-levels being experienced now, and that a fight on numbers may be on the cards.
Braverman, whose parents came to the United Kingdom from Kenya and Mauritius, said that she has “no qualms” about seeking to reduce migration, saying: “This is a common argument trotted out by the left, that because of the colour of my skin and my heritage that I have to think a certain way and I can’t declare certain truths on migration,” adding that it would be her “delight” to annoy the left on migration.
Under the previous administration of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the UK implemented a points-based immigration system supposedly muddled off of the Australian model.
However, crucially there were no firm caps within the post-Brexit reforms, meaning that while immigration from the European Union fell, more migrants came from the rest of the world. The move was widley seen as a “betrayal” of the Brexit movement and resulted in a record 1.1 million visas being issued to foreigners last year, alone.
Braverman said that she would specifically look to reduce the number of visas issued for workers and students in order to cut net migration, saying: “I think we need to look more closely at the kind of workers that are coming into this country, we frankly have too many low-skilled workers, I think we need to focus bringing in high-skilled workers. I think we have too many students coming into this country, who are propping up substandard course in inadequate institutions and I think poor universities are being bankrolled by foreign students.”
She also said that foreign students or low skilled labourers should not be allowed to bring in family members to the country under chain migration schemes for dependents, saying that such areas are the “levers” where the government can quickly move to reduce migration.
The strong comments from the Home Secretary were welcomed by Migration Watch UK chairman Alp Mehmet, who said in comments provided to Breitbart London: “Bravo, Mrs Braverman, for having the courage to commit to reducing immigration. It is what the majority of the public have wanted since 2010. None of the Home Secretary’s three immediate predecessors pledged to reduce net migration in the clear, unequivocal way expressed by her. All credit to her.”
Though the full data from last year’s census, including demographics, has still not been made available to the public, the government has revealed that the population of England and Wales has hit a record high of 67 million, with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) admitting that the population growth was mostly a result of immigration.
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