Sir Andrew said that “It is the usual government spin to claim these numbers as a success for immigration policy despite the fact that foreign immigration is virtually unchanged at about half a million a year.
What has really happened is that EU citizens have voted with their feet; the number leaving has doubled in the face of the deep recession in Britain but EU migration is something over which the government have no control whatever.
As for the government’s much vaunted Points Based System, it has had very little effect so far; work permit immigration fell last year by 16,000 or roughly 3.5% of foreign immigration.
The bottom line is that the population of the UK will exceed 70 million within 25 years even at these levels of immigration.”
