STEPHEN GLOVER: If the migration forecasts are correct, this is a Tory betrayal on an epic scale

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Almost everyone who has examined the 2016 EU referendum has concluded that a desire to rein in mass immigration played a major part in the vote to leave.

The British people aren't racist. But the slogan 'take back control' resonated at a time when the number of immigrants, particularly from Eastern Europe, appeared to be rising year by year.

After the result, the Tory Party seemed finally to have got the message that something concrete had to be done. The 2019 Conservative manifesto promised that 'overall numbers will come down'.

At last, the Government — rather than Brussels — was in a position to determine how many legal migrants should be allowed to come here every year, though admittedly, the much smaller number of illegal migrants trying to cross the Channel in small boats can't be easily regulated.

Betrayal

What has happened? Have the Tories, armed with their new powers, fulfilled their pledge to bring down net legal immigration? No, they have not. But they haven't merely failed in this endeavour. They have made things far, far worse than they were before.

Suella Braverman (pictured) has been a member of the Cabinet since February 2020 — a couple of months after the Tories were elected on the promise of bringing down net migration

Next Thursday, the Office for National Statistics will report net migration — the difference in numbers between those who leave and arrive in the country — in the year to December 2022. The Centre for Policy Studies think-tank has looked at the number of visas the Government has handed out, and concluded that the figure will be between 700,000 and 997,000. And that in a single year!

Data already released for the 12 months to June 2022 showed net legal migration at a record 504,000. Note that the previous record, achieved in 2015, was 329,000. So the amount for 2022 could be three times higher than the pre-Brexit one, assuming that the Centre for Policy Studies knows what it is talking about.

If its forecast is correct, this is a betrayal on an epic scale, as well as proof of monumental incompetence. One marvels that the Tories, who are supposed to be moderately efficient administrators if nothing else, should have made such a hash of things.

Such is the background to yesterday's speech by Home Secretary Suella Braverman in which she chided the Government — of which she is a very senior member — for its failure to curb legal immigration. She should have the grace to accept a fair portion of the blame herself.

Mrs Braverman knows that a missile — the net migration figure for 2022 — is heading in the Government's direction, and that when it arrives next week there will be a massive explosion which could cause the ship to capsize, or even sink. It's too late for her to jump off, but she thinks she should at any rate express her dissatisfaction.

In fact, of course, Suella Braverman has been a member of the Cabinet since February 2020 — a couple of months after the Tories were elected on the promise of bringing down net migration — though it's true she became Home Secretary, with overall responsibility for immigration, only last September.

In her speech, Ms Braverman reasonably asked why we can't train more of our own lorry drivers and fruit pickers

Attacking your own government in public is seldom wise or justifiable — and not only because it undermines the convention of collective responsibility. It also advertises disunity at the centre of power. If there is one thing the public dislikes above all else in politics, it is a divided party.

If Mrs Braverman disapproves so strongly of the Government's immigration policy, and is unable to persuade her Cabinet colleagues to change direction, the honourable thing for her to do would be to resign. Her shock tactics are discreditable.

The fact remains that she is fundamentally correct. The Government of which she is a leading light has failed on a grand scale. And unless it quickly changes course, it will hand an enormous electoral gift to Sir Keir Starmer. Not that Labour would have done any better, but it merely has to point to Tory ineptitude.

The problem is that since 2019 no one at the top has made a concerted effort to curb immigration. Boris Johnson certainly didn't, having long been relaxed about it. A few days after the EU referendum, he doubted in a newspaper article whether 'those who voted Leave were mainly driven by anxieties about immigration'.

Under his leadership, the Government dramatically widened the range of supposedly skilled jobs that could be filled by immigrants, thereby watering down the Australian- style points system which the Tories trumpeted before the 2019 election. All that is necessary is an offer of employment at an annual salary of £26,200 (20 per cent below the median salary of £33,280) plus a limited command of English, and hey presto.

Visas

In 2022, work visas were handed out to 268,000 foreign workers and 155,000 dependants. I realise we are constantly being told about labour shortages — only yesterday I read for the umpteenth time about unpicked fruit and vegetables rotting in the fields — but foreign workers and their family members are coming here in huge numbers.

Meanwhile, the number of foreign students (traditionally included in net migration figures) has ballooned, with 490,000 of them being given visas in 2022, plus 136,000 dependants. Some of our universities depend on such people, which is why Education Secretary Gillian Keegan is reportedly opposing tighter restrictions. Believe it or not, some 20 per cent of students at Liverpool University are Chinese.

Then there have been — and here I doubt that many of us would object — around 200,000 visas awarded to refugees from Ukraine, and 58,000 to those escaping Chinese repression in Hong Kong.

The upshot of all this is that numbers in 2022 could be heading towards one million, and unless the Government takes radical action there's little reason to suppose that 2023 will be markedly better.

As a consequence, pressure on schools and the NHS is certain to increase, and of course on housing. When London Mayor Sadiq Khan was interviewed about housing shortages in the capital on Radio 4's Today programme yesterday morning, he characteristically failed to mention the effect of mass immigration.

Election

There is another point, which Suella Braverman rightly touched on in her speech. She reasonably asked why we can't train more of our own lorry drivers and fruit pickers. There are estimated to be five million economically inactive adults in the UK. Some of them could, and should, be encouraged to work, but they are unlikely to seek employment as long as migration continues on this scale.

Rishi Sunak has made much of stopping the small boats coming across the Channel

Rishi Sunak has made much of stopping the small boats coming across the Channel, and rightly so. But actually the numbers (some 46,000 in 2022) are tiny in comparison with legal migration. The Government has concentrated on the small boats while ignoring — or seeming not to care — about the soaring overall figures.

Is it too late? Very possibly. It is not even clear whether there is a majority in the Cabinet wanting to bring down legal migration, which may explain why Suella Braverman felt it necessary to make such an issue of it yesterday.

The election is not much more than a year away. Do the Tories want to lose it? It sometimes seems so. A betrayal of Brexit, by allowing mass migration on a scale never before seen in this country, offers Rishi a very speedy exit out of No 10.