DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Welcome words on immigration, Mrs May - now for action on the issue voters desperately want dealt with after years of broken promises and lip service

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Yesterday, in an impressive and statesmanlike first appearance at Prime Minister’s Questions, Theresa May brought some welcome clarity to her government’s intentions on the crucial issue of immigration.

In characteristically straightforward language, she said the referendum sent a ‘very clear message’ and that the public want ‘control of free movement’.

To erase any possible doubt, she added: ‘I also remain absolutely firm in my belief that we need to bring net migration down to sustainable levels, and the Government believe that that means tens of thousands ... and that is precisely what we will ensure that we get.’

German Chancellor Angela Merkel chats with British Prime Minister Theresa May upon her arrival at the Chancellery yesterday in Berlin. Mrs May repeated her message on immigration to Mr Merkel during their talks

She repeated this message later in Berlin, standing alongside Angela Merkel, for whom free movement is a sacred principle, and made clear it would no longer apply to Britain, whatever the outcome of the Brexit negotiations.

Significantly, Mrs May spelled out what her Home Secretary Amber Rudd refused to do only a day earlier, and restated the target of reducing net migration – currently running at an utterly unsustainable 333,000 a year – to the tens of thousands.

Adding to the mess on Tuesday was, unsurprisingly, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who must think voters have very short memories indeed.

Having challenged David Cameron over the target during the referendum campaign, he now rejects the idea, warning it would lead to ministers ‘disappointing’ the public when they failed to deliver.

The Mail would like to offer a simple solution – just meet it!

Both Miss Rudd and Mr Johnson, and for that matter any other wobbling Tory MPs, would do well to remember that the tens of thousands promise appeared prominently in last year’s Conservative election manifesto.

Instead of sowing confusion, Miss Rudd should focus her efforts on reducing the level of non-EU migration, currently some 180,000 a year.

This regrettable episode might be written off as the growing pains of a new government, but it nonetheless displays a worrying lack of a coherent message from two of Mrs May’s most senior lieutenants.

It also shows a troubling failure to understand why keeping the target is so critical. As the chairman of MigrationWatch Lord Green argues, it is ‘invaluable’ to achieve ‘policy focus’ in Whitehall. In addition, the public can hold politicians’ feet to the fire if net migration rises.

Mrs May’s only caveat, that it will ‘take some time to get there’, is sensible, as it acknowledges how wildly out of control the situation is.

The public understands this will not be easy. But what voters desperately want, after years of broken promises and politicians paying lip service to their concerns, is action and results.

A rotten industry

Peter Hope, Vauxhall Motors Customer Experience & Corporate Strategy Director, at the Transport Select Committee this week where he was grilled about the spate of Zafira B vehicle fires

The admission last year by the German car giant Volkswagen that it deliberately installed cheat software to falsify emissions tests ranks as one of the worst corporate scandals of recent memory.

Since then, worrying revelations have emerged about other car firms, including Mitsubishi, prompting investigations in the US and Europe.

This week Vauxhall admitted it first received reports that one of its Zafira B people-carriers burst into flames in February 2009, nearly seven years before it recalled the faulty vehicles. Even when the scale of the problem emerged, the firm carried on claiming it was faulty repairs and not a design flaw causing the fires.

It is hard to resist the conclusion that something is rotten across much of the industry, and that its bosses have acted with shameful cynicism towards their customers by deceiving them about what they were buying.