Radical plan to reduce net migration drawn up by Home Office — only to be dumped by No10
A RADICAL plan to reduce net migration was drawn up by the Home Office — only to be dumped by No10.
The policy document written for the Cabinet — and leaked to The Sun — reveals a proposal for an emergency brake on visas to help cut the figure to levels promised in the Tories’ 2019 election manifesto.
It included what were described as “deliberate frictions”, such as capping entry visas, raising fees and increasing salary thresholds, to regain control of Britain’s borders.
Officials claimed there was a high probability that it would drive down immigration figures but warned there was a limited window to meet the 2019 promise by next year.
The document, dated August 2022, quotes the Tories’ pledge — made when net migration stood at 225,000 — that overall numbers would come down.
But it warned action needed to be taken immediately. Instead, The Sun understands, the plan was rejected by then PM Liz Truss.
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By May this year the net migration figure had rocketed to 606,000.
Rishi Sunak is under pressure from his backbenches to do more to get net migration down.
This week, 25 Tory backbenchers in the New Conservatives group published a 12-point plan to cut it to 400,000.
Mr Sunak has made a minor tweak to the rights of student dependants to come to the UK — but the rest of the plan has not been revisited.
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And a Government source says an increase in the £624 NHS surcharge paid by legal migrants to the UK was in the pipeline but any hope of meeting the manifesto commitment had now been missed.
The Home Office plan had gone much further however — giving the Cabinet two options.
One was to “pursue actions to reduce total inward migration”.
It said: “This could include capping some routes, changing thresholds (skills/salary), restricting the rights of dependants, and/or reducing the attractiveness of the graduate visa.”
The second option was not to make changes and instead to spin the line that “we have control of inward migration”.
But it warned: “A strong narrative will be required to explain the rationale.”
The document states the most effective policy lever would be an absolute cap or emergency brake and rated its certainty of success as high. But it warned there would be major effects on critical sectors of the economy that might be hard to defend.
Raising the threshold of skills required to the UK was also deemed to be highly effective — but warned restrictions on the lowest-skilled visas was “overwhelmingly likely to impact health and care workers”.
A Whitehall source said: “The plan was drawn up at official level during the transition from Boris to Liz.
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“The new PM rejected it and now it’s just sitting there gathering dust. The Treasury had kittens about it but if ministers actually wanted to get the numbers down, here is how they could.”
A Home Office spokesman said: “We will continue to strike the right balance between supporting the UK economy through skilled worker visas and upholding our commitment to reduce migration over time.”
