Sir Keir Starmer's immigration plans were slammed on Monday (Image: Getty)
Sir Keir Starmer’s immigration plans have been branded “a recipe for disaster” as critics warned of more mass migration in the years ahead. Speaking on Monday as 600 asylum seekers crossed the Channel, the Prime Minister warned the UK is at risk of becoming an “island of strangers” because integration has failed.
Sir Keir unveiled plans to ramp up deportations by increasing the number of offenders eligible for removals, overhauling how Article 8 of the ECHR is used in immigration cases, scrapping the social care visa route, requiring foreign workers to take graduate-level jobs, and boosting English language skills. The Home Office has predicted its changes will lead to 100,000 fewer people coming to the UK, meaning net migration could settle at around 240-250,000 by the end of this Parliament in 2029. Former immigration minister Robert Jenrick declared: “It’s a white flag for yet more mass migration – legal and illegal.
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More than 600 migrants are believed to have crossed the Channel on Monday (Image: Getty)
Ministers are under intense pressure to end the Channel migrant crisis (Image: Getty)
“For the boats to keep coming. For our borders to stay open. It’s another shameful betrayal of voters.
“Labour’s big plan on illegal migration? To ‘clarify’ the law on Article 8 of the ECHR – commonly used to avoid deportation.
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“But this does nothing to stop people using other routes, like Article 3, to stay here. If they were serious, they would disapply the Human Rights Act altogether.
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“Mass, low-skilled migration has been a disaster for Britain. It has made us poorer and more divided. Less investment. Lower wages. Higher rents. Longer NHS queues. More potholes. Bigger class sizes. Weaker culture.
“The bath is overflowing, and they’re turning down the tap slightly. The only way to fix this is a legally binding cap on visas, voted on by Parliament every year. Starmer says a cap has been tried. That simply isn’t true.
“The British people deserve better than this. We need action, not more consultations and delay. Like Blair, Starmer’s immigration policy is a recipe for disaster.”
Measures in Labour’s plan, dubbed “Restoring control over the immigration system”, include:
Increasing the threshold for the Skilled Worker Visa to graduate-level roles. Revoking visas for foreign thugs, shoplifters and sex offenders as the number of offenders eligible for deportation is expanded. Reforming citizenship rules by making migrants wait 10 years rather than five to apply for indefinite leave to remain, although workers who significantly contribute to society, such as nurses, doctors and engineers, could be fast-tracked. Requiring a higher standard of English across all immigration routes, including, for the first time, adult dependents required to display a basic understanding of the language. Closing the social care visa to foreign workers, amid fears it is being abused as a back-door route into the UK.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said on Monday: “The Prime Minister claimed this morning that all of a sudden he wants to control immigration. I must say, that came to me as something of a surprise.
“The Prime Minister seems to have undergone a miraculous conversion. He has apparently repudiated everything he has ever believed, or perhaps the Prime Minister is doing what he always does – saying whatever he thinks people want to hear at any given point in time. Perhaps the Prime Minister sees his -36% approval ratings and this paper is his desperate response."
The Shadow Home Secretary later added: “This plan is so weak that it barely scratches the surface.”
Statisticians at the Office for National Statistics have predicted net migration will settle at 340,000 per year from 2028.
But this could be higher, with current levels soaring at 728,000.
This is down from a record high of 906,000 in June 2023.
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Sir Keir hit out at the Conservatives for running a “One Nation experiment in open borders” because “the damage it has done to our country is incalculable”.
The Prime Minister claimed businesses had become addicted to cheap foreign labour, pushing down wages and increasing pressure on housing, the NHS and schools.
Sir Keir insisted his plan was not motivated by a desire to take on Reform and the Tories but “because it is right, because it is fair and because it is what I believe in".
He said: “Nations depend on rules – fair rules. Sometimes they’re written down, often they’re not, but either way, they give shape to our values.
“They guide us towards our rights, of course, but also our responsibilities, the obligations we owe to one another.
“Now, in a diverse nation like ours, and I celebrate that, these rules become even more important.
“Without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together.
“So when you have an immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse, that encourages some businesses to bring in lower-paid workers rather than invest in our young people, or simply one that is sold by politicians to the British people on an entirely false premise, then you’re not championing growth, you’re not championing justice, or however else people defend the status quo.
“You’re actually contributing to the forces that are slowly pulling our country apart.”
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the Government’s immigration plans were was based on several “core principles”, including that an immigration system must be linked to skills and training here in the UK “so that no industry is allowed to rely solely on immigration to fill its skills shortages”.
She added that it must be “fair and effective with clearer rules in areas like respect for family life, to prevent perverse outcomes that undermine public confidence”.
Sir Keir dismissed concerns that reducing immigration would hit the economy, saying the theory that higher numbers produced growth had been tested in the last four years, with “stagnant growth” despite the levels of net migration.
But chairman of Migration Watch Alp Mehmet said: “The Prime Minister’s remarks in his press conference to announce the Immigration White Paper had echoes of David Cameron and Boris Johnson and even a bit of Farage.
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“'We risk becoming an island of strangers,' he said.
“The paper itself includes a few crumbs of comfort, but not much on how a ‘significant reduction’ in migration is going to be achieved. Net migration, now the only driver of population growth, will continue into the foreseeable future, as we increasingly become an island populated by strangers, and poorer to boot.
“What a missed opportunity this is proving to be.”