Priti Patel pledged to bring migrant numbers down yesterday although she was careful not to mention by how much.
The Conservatives were burnt by their promise to reduce net migration to under 100,000, which they never came near to in nine years in office.
The Migration Advisory Committee, the government’s official immigration advisers, did not provide a precise estimate either.
It expected a rise in migration from outside the European Economic Area but said that since 2016 there had already been big falls, with work-related EU migration dropping from 190,000 to 92,000 a year.
Jonathan Portes, professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London, said: “I estimated that a system like this might reduce migration by about 40,000 a year but the impact
