John Humphrys asks: is David Cameron's policy on immigration failing?
Polls show that immigration is one of the issues currently of most concern to the British people. David Cameron has promised to cut it. But figures released this week show that on the very measure of immigration he has chosen to target, the figures are going in the wrong direction. So is his policy failing? And how much does it matter?
It’s perhaps not surprising that so many people are concerned about immigration. Over the last ten to fifteen years there has been a historically large increase in the number of immigrants settling in this country. Furthermore, it’s forecast that Britain’s population, already over 60 million, is likely to keep growing at a fast rate for the foreseeable future, not least because immigrant families tend to have more children.
Of course the argument about immigration is not one-sided. Whilst many people worry about the strain large immigrant populations can place on services like housing and education and about the effect on social cohesion of the sudden introduction into communities of people who don’t speak English or know our customs, others argue that young, hard-working immigrants are a boon to the economy. They wonder how, for example, our building or hotel industries (not to mention the NHS) would cope without immigrant labour.
Nonetheless, there is a virtual consensus among the main political parties that immigration has been allowed to get out of control and that numbers need to be reduced. When he came to power back in 2010, David Cameron made a pledge to do so. But he gave the pledge in a very precise form. He said he would cut ‘net migration’, then running at over 250,000 a year, to ‘the tens of thousands’ by the time of the next election in 2015.
‘Net migration’ is simply the difference between two figures: the gross number of people who come to this country every year as immigrants and the gross number of people already living here who emigrate. But the Prime Minister was warned at the time that net migration would be a very difficult thing to control and therefore his pledge could turn out to be very hard to fulfil.
There are two basic difficulties inherent in trying to control net migration. The first is that one of the two ‘gross’ figures that affect the numbers is beyond control: the number of people emigrating is out of any government’s hands unless it actually wants to stop people leaving the country which, of course, no democratic government is inclined to do.
The other problem is that British governments have almost no control over a large element within the other gross figure, the number of people choosing to emigrate to Britain from other countries in the European Union. By virtue of its membership of the EU, Britain is committed to the free movement of people within EU boundaries and so has to accept EU immigrants. This leaves only non-EU immigrants as a controllable element within the policy of trying to limit net migration.
Nonetheless in the early years of the coalition, the government had some success in reducing the numbers. Between coming to power in 2010 and September 2012 it had reduced net migration from 263,000 a year to 154,000. But this week figures showed that in the year to September 2013 net migration had soared again to 212,000, putting the goal of reducing the figure to ‘the tens of thousands’ by next year apparently beyond reach.
This stark deterioration in the figures is wholly accounted for by the two elements in the statistics the government cannot control. Emigration fell by 23,000 (from 343,000 to 320,000) and immigration from the EU soared by 60,000 (from 149,000 to 209,000). There was a huge increase (66%) in the number of Italians coming to Britain and registering for a national insurance number and substantial increases too in the numbers coming from Portugal, Spain and Poland. The number of Romanians and Bulgarians almost trebled (to 24,000) even before the restrictions on their right to work here were removed.
The only part of the immigration figures that did show a fall was where the government does have some control, over non-EU immigration, which fell by 25,000 (from 269,000 to 244,000). This was hailed by the Tory immigration minister, James Brokenshire, who said: “Our reforms have cut non-EU migration to its lowest level since 1998 and there are now 82,000 fewer people arriving annually from outside the EU than when this government came to power.”
The political problem for the government, however, is that the Prime Minister nailed his colours to the mast of net migration rather than simply non-EU migration. So the headline figures seem to indicate clear failure. That certainly is Labour’s view: Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said that the net migration target was ‘in tatters’.
But in any case even the limited achievement of reducing non-EU migration is not applauded everywhere, even within government. The business department, which also has responsibility for higher education, has long complained about the aim of reducing non-EU migration because the cuts come disproportionately from among students, especially from countries such as India. In the department’s eyes, making it more difficult for foreign students to come here is tantamount to cutting off your nose to spite your face since our universities are, in effect, a very successful export industry, bringing money to this country in the form of foreign student fees. What is the point of undermining a successful export industry, they ask?
Not surprisingly then, Vince Cable, the LibDem business secretary, took a rather different view of the new figures. He said the aim of restricting non-EU immigration through quotas “contradicts our aims of getting Britain back on its feet”. And of the rise in overall net migration, he said: “Actually it’s good news because the reason immigration is going up is because fewer British people are emigrating and surely that’s a good thing – people are getting jobs here.” He said that nine of ten of all new jobs being created in Britain were being taken up by British people.
What seems clear is that if the Prime Minister really wants to get net migration right down he’ll need to find some way to tackle EU migration. But this is likely to prove very hard. The free movement of labour is one of the main principles of the EU (and of the single market). Some Tory MPs are arguing for it to be restricted and David Cameron has shown interest in the idea. But it was clear from Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, when she visited Britain on Thursday, that he will not find an ally in her. Although she has shown sympathy for David Cameron’s wish to restrict the opportunities for EU citizens to move to other EU countries simply to benefit from more generous welfare systems, it’s far from clear how much effect on the numbers that would have since most people move countries in order to work rather simply receive better benefits. So while Britain remains in the EU very little seems likely to happen to the EU migration.
This is precisely the point made by Nigel Farage, the leader of UKIP, for whom the latest figures will be a huge boon as the party meets for its conference in Torquay this week. He said: “Until we end the open-door immigration policies within the EU and take back full control over our borders, nothing can really be done. It’s all smoke and mirrors.”
- So is Mr Cameron’s policy of cutting net migration to the tens of thousands doomed to failure?
- Was it the wrong policy in the first place?
- Is the part of the policy that seems to be working (cutting non-EU migration) in fact self-defeating?
- Is Mr Cameron right to try to get the EU to limit freedom of movement within its own borders or is that unlikely to produce results?
- Should we leave the EU in order to ‘take back full control of our borders’ as Nigel Farage argues?
- Or should we be welcoming immigration rather than trying to curb it?
