UK NEWS

CAMERON: WE WILL CAP NUMBER OF IMMIGRANTS

David Cameron vowed that a cap will be imposed on immigration

Friday July 30,2010

By Martyn Brown

A CAP will be imposed on immigration, the Prime Minister vowed yesterday, insisting that voters want more controls over the number of people entering Britain.

David Cameron said he wants to cut net immigration to levels last seen in the 1990s, claiming that would kill off controversy over the issue.

But he is having to play down a cabinet rift after Business Secretary Vince Cable said the cap on numbers coming from outside the EU must be flexible.

The Prime Minister said yesterday: “The people who voted for us wanted to have control on immigration and a reduction in net immigration and that is exactly what they are going to get.”

He added: “It never was a political issue in the past. I don’t want it to be a political issue in the future.”

Mr Cameron said the Government is discussing its plans with other countries. “Everyone is able to make representations about how the cap will operate, but a cap there will be,” he said.

‘The people who voted for us wanted to have control on immigration’

David Cameron

The Prime Minister’s comments were welcomed by Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the think-tank MigrationwatchUK.

He said: “The Prime Minister has got it right. The public have put up with mass immigration for quite long enough. They look to this government to get the numbers down as they have promised and it looks like they will do this.”

The cap is due to come into force next April following a consultation. The latest Home Office statistics reveal the number of immigrants granted British citizenship in the last year of the Labour government soared by 33 per cent from 149,070 to 197,870. The figure for April last year to March this year is more than five times the number when Tony Blair came to power in 1997.

The jump came despite the introduction of a points system for non-EU workers in 2008 trumpeted as a way of controlling immigration by Gordon Brown.

In the same 12-month period the number of foreigners given the right to settle in the UK also rocketed by 40 per cent from 153,020 to 214,345. Though not citizens, they can stay indefinitely.

These included 90,595 – up from 62,540 – given grants of settlement linked to jobs, despite more than two million people in Britain being unemployed. Asylum-related grants of settlement increased from 2,695 to 2,720 while those for family formation and reunion rose from 61,650 to 73,605.

Britain will be the most populous country in Europe by 2050, according to official projections as the population swells from 62.2 million to 77 million.

The forecast is from the Population Reference Bureau, a US body which supplies data to governments around the world.

Britain’s birth rate has soared in recent years. Immigrant mothers have accounted for more than half of the increase, but the fertility rate among British-born women has also risen sharply.

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