KEIR Starmer has claimed the Tories ran a “one nation experiment in open borders” in the UK, as new figures revealed the Home Office was spending a record amount on the asylum system.
The Prime Minister called a press conference on Thursday to seize on the publication of new immigration statistics and said that employers who break immigration rules will be banned from hiring foreign workers.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) found that net migration – the number of people entering the UK minus those emigrating – was 728,000 people, in the year to this June.
This is a fall in the level of net migration, thought partly to be a result of tough rules introduced by the Tories including a ban on allowing foreign care workers to bring over relatives.
Speaking in Downing Street on Thursday, the Prime Minister accused his predecessors of “running an open borders experiment” as he pointed out the “nearly one million came into Britain” in the year to June 2023.
He said that the unprecedented levels of net migration overseen by the Tories had been “by design” as the Government sought to “plug gaps in our workforce”.
Starmer said the Tories had left the UK economy “hopelessly reliant” on immigration.
Labour have announced plans to reduce immigration, including banning employers who refuse to “play ball” on immigration laws from hiring workers from abroad.
Home Office figures also released on Thursday showed that spending on the asylum system had reached £5.38 billion – a record level.
A Labour spokesperson said that the party had begun to reform the department, with officials interviewing “10,000 people per month, compared to 2,000 under the Tories” in a bid to clear the asylum backlog.
Deportations of people with “no right to be in the UK” were up by a fifth, the party added.
Human rights campaigners have said too many people were still waiting too long for decisions on their asylum claims.
Steve Valdez-Symonds, director of refugee and migrant rights at Amnesty International, said: “Today's data shows a significant rise over the first three months in the number of people awaiting a decision on their asylum claims, with the asylum backlog now standing at 133,409.
“The previous government left the asylum system in complete disarray by refusing to make decisions on people’s asylum claims.”
In a warning to the Government not to close the door on people fleeing war and persecution, Valdez-Symonds added: “There’s no compromising on the need for asylum in a world torn by conflict, authoritarianism and oppression.
“The UK must play its full and fair part in providing safety for people forced to flee abuses rather than continuing the last government's long and disastrous attempt to evade this responsibility – as the last government showed, anything less only leads to disaster.”
