Immigration and David Cameron’s ‘barmy’ pledge

Looking at the new immigration figures it is hard to see how David Cameron is going to be able to get anywhere very near his net immigration down to 1990s levels ambition.

Of course, the 2010 figures only cover some of the months post the 2010 election, but critics of the policy, many of them in the Coalition, say the aim of getting net immigration down to the “tens of thousands” is a challenge not matched by the toolkit  the government ‘s developed. The available tools relate to non-EU immigration  as the government can’t stop the movement of people within the EU.

One senior Lib Dem I just spoke to says this all proves  how “barmy” David Cameron’s original pledge was.  The Lib Dems haven’t adopted it, it isn’t in the Coalition agreement, even if the cap on non-EU immigration, part of the toolkit, is now policy. This particular Lib Dem said he was more convinced than ever that the Tories would end up “quietly dropping the pledge.”

But Damian Green, immigration minister, is pointing to positive progress, claiming the figures for net immigration have steadied under the Coalition’s rule.  And Government sources say there are other reasons to think they may just get there with the “tens of thousands” target. They haven’t yet announced the third arm of their policy for immigration control: changes to non-EU family immigration. The tightening up of student visas won’t bite until 2013. And, they claim, the current monthly figures for non-EU visa applications since the new rules came in from April this year, show applications sharply down.

One other piece of comfort for Tories in the Government with their eyes fixed on the target: Britain was a strong magnet for EU Eastern European immigration in recent years because other EU countries didn’t copy our open door policy. Now they have to as the transitional arrangements have expired. So Germany, with a growth rate above ours, may start pulling in a bigger share of Eastern European economic migrants looking for employment and we may start taking a smaller share.
That said, No. 10 will be worried about  these numbers because it is deeply worried by the “breach of trust”  issue with voters over immigration.  Somewhat unconventionally, David Cameron kicked off the May local elections campaign with a speech about immigration. It was an attempt to kick start the activists but also a response to Tory polling evidence suggesting that voters thought the Tory leader had completely forgotten his  campaign promises on immigration and done nothing in office . The 2010 figures do nothing to help the Tories build the reputation for controlling immigration they want to have established by 2015. They must wait and hope for that.

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