Keir Starmer pretends to be tough, but just weeks ago his MPs voted against our 10-year residency and economic contribution test for indefinite leave to remain. Now he says that immigrants who make no contribution should still be allowed to stay.
He is trying to take steal credit for recent substantial reductions in visa numbers that resulted from Conservative reforms in April 2024.
Starmer also suspended the Conservative plan for a £38,000 salary threshold for family visas. Will he now bring that back?
Today Conservatives are forcing a vote on a binding migration cap and removing the Human Rights Act from immigration matters. But Starmer and Labour will vote it down.
Starmer is the same man who wrote letters protesting against deporting dangerous foreign criminals and has overseen the worst ever start to a year for illegal immigrants crossing the channel. The idea that Starmer is tough on immigration is a joke.
Philp is referring to a Tory amendment to the border security, asylum and immigration bill, which is going through its remaining stages in the Commons this evening.
to end the international recruitment of care workers. In a statement issued yesterday, Jane Townson, CEO of the Homecare Association, which represents homecare providers, said:
International recruitment is a lifeline for the homecare sector, enabling us to provide vital support to older and disabled people in their own homes. Care providers are already struggling to recruit within the UK. We are deeply concerned the government has not properly considered what will happen to the millions of people who depend on care at home to live safely and independently.
And this morning Amy Clark, commercial director of a care home firm in Cornwall, told the Today programme that she did not think it was realistic for the government to expect care homes to recruit all their staff domestically. She said:
The big problem that we would have is if we weren’t able to recruit any overseas staff because recruiting locally is very, very difficult.
We try all the time to recruit locally. We put our wages up, we still don’t get applicants.
We’ve always paid higher than minimum wage, but that is becoming increasingly difficult, especially with the national insurance costs and also the national minimum wage increase and the pitiful uplift from the local authorities in relation to the social care funding.
figures, 1.2 million came to live in the year ending June 2024. During that period, 39,000 people arrived on small boats. Most of them tried to claim asylum, and this chart, from the ONS, shows the asylum numbers compared to people coming to the UK through other routes.
This is widely misunderstood. In its briefing on the local elections published last week, the campaign group More in Common released polling showing that many voters – and more than half of Tory and Reform UK supporters – believe more than 50% of immigration to the UK is illegal. (More in Common says the real number is closer to 10%.) Lib Dem and Green supporters are the best informed, but even around a third of them believe the ‘more than 50%’ fiction.
foreign workers should learn “our language”, Keir Starmer appears to have adopted elements of the populist language once closely associated with Nigel Farage.
It is the kind of language that generated criticism from Labour politicians when used by the Reform UK leader more than a decade ago.
a drastic package of changes to visa rules that he said would cut net migration by 300,000 a year. Today Labour, with Yvette Cooper as home secretary, is going further, but in the same direction. In some respects it’s a Cooperly announcement. But that does not mean it’s not a big deal, particularly for the Labour party.
Some of the commentary around today’s announcement has presented this as a kneejerk response to Reform UK’s huge success in the local elections. Starmer is certainly worried about Reform; in an interview published yesterday, he told the Sun on Sunday that even before the local elections “we were planning on the basis we were likely to be facing Reform at the next election” rather than the Tories as Labour’s main opponents. But Labour is also worried about losing votes to the Liberal Democrats and the Green and, if this was just a Reform sabotage operation, Starmer would have announced this before the local elections, not after. The plans that Starmer is announcing today are the culmination of policy that has been evolving ever since he told the CBI in a speech in 2022 that he wanted “to help the British economy off its immigration dependency”. At that point, if you had told him there was a real chance of Nigel Farage becoming PM by the end of the decade, he would not have taken you seriously.
The white paper has been subject to almost as much pitch rolling and advance briefing as a budget. The Home Office has already released three press notices about it – saying that “Britain’s failed immigration system will be radically reformed”, that the plans will “make it easier to remove foreign criminals committing crimes in the UK”, and that “international recruitment for care workers will end”. And here is Rajeev Syal’s overnight preview.
According to the No 10 overnight briefing, this is what Keir Starmer is due to say this morning.
For years we have had a system that encourages businesses to bring in lower paid workers, rather than invest in our young people.
That is the Britain this broken system has created.
Every area of the immigration system, including work, family and study, will be tightened up so we have more control. Enforcement will be tougher than ever and migration numbers will fall.
We will create a system that is controlled, selective and fair.
One that recognises those who genuinely contribute to Britain’s growth and society, while restoring common sense and control to our borders.
This is a clean break from the past and will ensure settlement in this country is a privilege that must be earned, not a right.
And when people come to our country, they should also commit to integration and to learning our language.
Lower net migration, higher skills and backing British workers – that is what this white paper will deliver.
Here is the agenda for the day.
8.30am: Keir Starmer holds a press conference about the immigration white paper.
2.30pm: Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
After 3.30pm: Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, is expected to make a statement to MPs about the immigration white paper.
3.45pm: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
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Source: theguardian.com
