The Prime Minister has repeated promises to cut immigration but stopped short of setting any targets.
Sir Keir Starmer pledged his Government would “reduce immigration – legal and illegal” but was unclear how this would be achieved as he set out a “plan for change” in a speech at Pinewood Studios near Slough on Thursday.
Immigration did not feature in six “milestones” he set out so voters could “hold our feet to the fire”.
Under repeated questioning from reporters as to why he had not included this commitment in the list, he said cutting immigration “will only be done with a serious plan” and – referring to “illegal” immigration – repeated his argument that the only way to do this would be to go after people smuggling gangs running the “vile trade”.
Afterwards, Conservative opposition leader Kemi Badenoch said the Prime Minister offered “nothing concrete on immigration – because Labour have no plan to control numbers” while Reform UK criticised him for not including “any measurable targets” on immigration in his milestones.
The British public want “a serious plan to ensure we’ve got control of our borders, not arbitrary caps, not gimmicks”, the Prime Minister said as he claimed immigration did not feature in the six pledges because reducing this was one of the “foundational things that a government must do”.
A document published to accompany the speech said the migration system “needs to be controlled and managed and we need strong borders”.
The Government is clearing the asylum backlog, increasing the number of people who are voluntarily returning to their home country if they do not have permission to remain in the UK, and stepping up efforts to tackle people smuggling gangs to curb Channel crossings, the document said.
It added that tackling skills shortages in the UK, reforming “our approach to the labour market” and “clamping down on employers who exploit the visa system” will help the Government to reduce net migration.
Labour committed to tackling problems within the immigration system in its election manifesto. But in the five months the party has been in Government so far ministers have been reluctant to set specific targets on numbers.
Nearly 34,000 migrants have arrived in the UK so far this year after crossing the Channel.
Home Office figures show 289 people made the journey in six boats on Wednesday, taking the provisional total for the year up to now to 33,973.
This is up 17% on this time last year (29,090) but down 23% on 2022 (44,174), which was a record high year for crossings.
Other figures show the cost of the UK’s asylum system has risen to £5 billion, the highest level of Home Office spending on record and up by more than a third in a year.
Meanwhile, some 35,651 asylum seekers were being housed in UK hotels at the end of September, up more than 6,000 since the end of June signalling the first quarterly rise for a year.
On Monday, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper vowed to “restore order” to the migration system and continued to blame the Tories for failures as the number of migrants arriving in the UK after crossing the Channel topped 20,000 since Sir Keir became Prime Minister.
Downing Street insisted fresh efforts to tackle Channel crossings are starting to show results, with Labour sources claiming the weather had played a “significant” role in the number of crossings seen this year.
Ms Cooper’s pledge followed the Prime Minister last week announcing a major overhaul of the immigration system as he described revised figures estimating net migration was nearly one million last year as “unprecedented” and “off the scale” and accused the Conservatives of running “a one-nation experiment in open borders”.
The difference between the number of people arriving and leaving the country hit a record 906,000 in the 12 months to June 2023, some 166,000 higher than previously thought, according to revised estimates from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The figures, covering the previous Conservative government’s administration before the general election, have since dropped by 20% and stood at 728,000 in the latest period for the year to June 2024.
The day before, Ms Badenoch admitted her party had failed on migration.
