How do you reduce immigration while at the same time boosting growth? Labour’s recent immigration white paper sets out a supposedly clear answer. Since the recent “surge” in immigration was driven by the system shifting away from “higher-skilled migration”, it has “distorted the labour market” and undermined the UK’s productivity and GDP.
This argument, which has been made in increasingly shrill tones by the rightwing press and thinktanks over the past two years, was echoed by the prime minister, Keir Starmer, who tweeted that “the Tories ran an immigration system that relied on cheap foreign labour”. It sounds plausible. There’s just one problem. It doesn’t fit the facts, and the government knows it.
