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Immigration: ‘Our country cannot sustain the numbers’ – Leader of UK Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch
Leader of the UK Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch has vowed to introduce stricter immigration policies as she warned that the UK ‘cannot sustain’ the current numbers.
Badenoch admitted that the past Tory governments failed to curb migration effectively but vowed to address the issue “without fear.”
“Immigration is at a pace too fast to maintain public services,” she said. “For decades, the political class has presided over mass migration… The system that replaced free movement is not working.”
The Nigerian-born British politician stressed the importance of integration, saying migrants must adopt British values.
“Without a shared national identity, our country will suffer,” she warned, criticising the strain on housing, healthcare, and wages caused by mass migration.
She pledged to review policies, treaties, and laws, emphasizing transparency and stricter visa limits.
Ms Badenoch predicted that new official figures tomorrow, covering the year to June, will show a reduction after measures brought in by the previous government.
But she stressed that politicians have to ‘do right’ by Brits before considering how to help others.
The Tory leader said: ‘We will review every policy, treaty and part of our legal framework, including the ECHR and the Human Rights Act. And in designing our detailed policies we will put the following elements at the core.
‘A strict numerical cap with visas only for those who will make a substantial and clear overall contribution. A fully transparent approach publishing all the data so for the first time everyone can see the real costs and benefits of different types of migration.’
The previous set of figures in May showed net long-term migration – the number of people moving to Britain minus those leaving – dropped from a record 764,000 in 2022 to 685,000 last year.
Experts said it was driven by fewer foreign students arriving as well as more people emigrating, but noted that immigration remains ‘unusually high’ and above pre-Covid levels.
Further falls are expected this year after ministers restricted the number of family members that migrants can bring to live with them.
Read Kemi Badenoch’s immigration speech in full.
Tomorrow, immigration figures will be released that should show a drop in net migration.
This is because of the changes we made in the last year of the Conservative government.
The figures we saw for 2023 were astonishing. They highlighted a big problem we must be honest about.
Even if we see a decline in tomorrow’s data, the fact is immigration, both legal and illegal, is too high.
Migration affects all of our lives in different ways. It certainly affected mine, and that is why I am happy to speak about it without fear.
I believe our country is a beacon of light that shines all over the world – a place of security, opportunity, and prosperity, where people are treated equally.
Millions want to come here, but we as politicians have to do right by the citizens of this country, before anyone else.
Our country cannot sustain the numbers we have seen. We are reducing the quality of life for people already here.
Because immigration is at a pace too fast to maintain public services, and at a rate, where it is next to impossible to integrate those from radically different cultures.
It is time to tell the truth.
For decades the entire political class in this country has presided over mass migration.
Since 1994, every year has seen more people arrive in this country than leave. Numbers climbed and climbed.
During the last Conservative administration, we promised to bring numbers down.
We did not deliver that promise.
We ended Free Movement, but the system that replaced it is not working.
Some of the increase in migration was for humanitarian reasons that few would disagree with – taking in refugees from Ukraine and British overseas nationals from Hong Kong.
But that was not the whole story.
We may have tried to control numbers, but overall we did not deliver.
Under my leadership, we are learning from our mistakes, and it is time for a new approach.
We need to change. Let’s break it down.
First: if immigration is too quick, there is no integration. The ties that bind us start to fray.
It doesn’t matter whether you are massively for immigration, or massively against it, without a shared national identity our country will suffer.
When people come here they must buy into the values, customs, and institutions that attracted them here in the first place.
Second: the political class cannot pretend that immigration comes only with benefits and no costs when we can all see the pressure on housing, roads, GPs, and wages. We must be honest.
The failure of politics over the last thirty years has been to gloss over it or make it a fringe issue. That has to stop.
Third: we can no longer be naïve.
It’s nonsense that we have allowed a situation where judges deem safe countries to be unsafe.
Where loopholes are wilfully exploited by opportunists.
Where the latest legal ruses and wheezes are sent around the world on social media.
Now, as I have said, tomorrow’s figures will likely show a reduction in net immigration, and no doubt the new Government will try to take credit for that reduction.
But that change is due to the reforms that the Conservatives made in our final months in power.
For example, over the last 18 months, income thresholds for work visas increased by 50%.
Restrictions were placed on care workers and students bringing family members into the country.
Labour may criticise our record on immigration, but remember, throughout the last 14 years, the Labour party were urging us to relax controls upon immigration.
Even though those figures tomorrow are likely to be a start in the right direction – it’s not enough.
We remain a world away from where we need to be.
Labour won’t get us there.
Under a Labour government, immigration will remain far too high.
We are already seeing the signs.
For example, the last Conservative Government committed to increasing the income threshold which a family must earn to bring relatives to the UK.
This reform alone was estimated to cut net migration dramatically, but the Labour Government have suspended that change.
The Home Secretary wants a returns agreement with the EU, but that’s the exact kind of agreement that saw us take more asylum seekers than were returned to the continent.
So Labour won’t change anything.
The Prime Minister himself once said that there is a “racist undercurrent” which “permeates all immigration law”.
And, of course, he and his Cabinet fought against the end of Free Movement.
They scrapped the Rwanda deterrent before it had even started.
And we are already seeing the inevitable result as more and more people cross the Channel, with significantly more arriving than last year.
Labour have no serious plan for ending illegal migration.
As the former head of the Border Force has pointed out, enforcement on its own will never solve the problem.
People know that if they can make it to the UK, they will be able to stay/
We must end that.
The result of Labour’s policies will be consistently high illegal immigration throughout this Parliament and insufficient action on legal migration.
But we are not in Government now, we are the Opposition, and our role now is to hold the Government to account.
Our Government’s primary responsibility must be to its own citizens.
Yes economists sometimes argue that immigration can increase a country’s wealth, but they are not thinking about the effect on individual people.
In Government there’s little detailed analysis about the impact of different types of immigration on living standards or on wage levels.
There’s even less analysis on the pressure on public services, or housing, or the welfare system, as a result of mass migration.
Sometimes there’s even a squeamishness about discussing the negative aspects of immigration.
This is not just a question of money. It’s a question of fairness.
And perhaps most importantly, most British citizens don’t want to change what’s good about our country.
Even those who have recently arrived don’t want to change these things.
They came here because of what our country is – a secure and free society.
Most people want to preserve that.
So we need a new approach.
We will not accept the claim that we can only deliver growth by accepting mass migration.
We need a new approach, which will mean that young people can build their lives in a country which does not have these pressures on housing and public services.
And a new approach that starts by asking why government doesn’t seem to be able to deliver that.
The answer is because the system is broken, and until you accept that, any politician, all politicians, are doomed to fail.
We have to get the diagnosis right.
So we will review every policy, treaty and part of our legal framework – including the ECHR and the Human Rights Act.
And in designing our detailed policies, we will put the following elements at the core:
A strict numerical cap, with visas only for those who will make a substantial and clear overall contribution.
A fully transparent approach, publishing all the data, so that for the first time everyone can see the real costs and benefits of different types of migration.
A reconsidered approach to citizenship and settlement – making the path to a British passport a privilege to be earned not an automatic right.
Zero tolerance for foreign criminals remaining in the UK.
And, of course, an effective deterrent for illegal migration.
Overall our plans will look at all immigration routes – family, study, asylum, and work – and at all ways people can enter the UK.
We will look at the access of migrants and any dependents to welfare and public services.
And we will need to improve the data and economic modelling that decision makers rely on.
But I want to end on something very simple.
We can argue about the effects of migration on the economy.
We can discuss the impact on public services and housing, and we haven’t done that enough.
But fundamentally – this country is not a dormitory or a hotel, it is our home.
We need to look after it.
I want to rebuild the trust between the Conservative Party and the British people, I know we have got a lot of work to do, but the first step is to accept that mistakes were made, and to learn from them.
As the new Party Leader I want to acknowledge that we made mistakes.
Yes, some of these problems are long standing – this is a collective failure of political leaders from all parties over decades – but on behalf of the Conservative Party it is right that I as the new Leader accept responsibility, and say truthfully we got this wrong.
I more than understand the public anger on this issue. I share it.
The Conservatives will develop a detailed plan for immigration to put before the British public before the next election.
They will have a clear choice. The policies of Labour, which are doomed to fail, or a new coherent plan.
It’s time to tell the truth on immigration. And over the coming months, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
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