Starmer Blames Brexit for Turning Britain Into ‘Open Borders Experiment’

Sir Keir Starmer accused the Tories of using Brexit to turn Britain into an “open borders experiment” after it was revealed that net migration hit a record high of nearly one million last year.

On a day when revised figures showed net migration reached 906,000 in 2023, the Prime Minister pledged to announce plans “imminently” to reduce companies’ reliance on foreign workers.

Speaking at a hastily-arranged Downing Street press conference, he said he wanted to reduce net migration “significantly” as he blamed the Tories for allowing it to get “completely out of control”, with numbers quadrupling since 2019 before Brexit.

“Failure on this scale isn’t just bad luck. It isn’t a global trend or taking your eye off the ball. No, this is a different order of failure. This happened by design, not accident,” he said.

“Policies were reformed deliberately to liberalise immigration. Brexit was used for that purpose – to turn Britain into a one-nation experiment in open borders.”

His comments came hours after the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revised its figures for net migration – the number entering the UK minus those leaving – for the year ending last June from 740,000 to a record high of 906,000. This surpassed previous estimates of the record high of 764,000 for the year ending December 2022.

The ONS said the revisions resulted from more data becoming available, better analysis of the number of refugees from Ukraine and improved information on the migration behaviour of people arriving from outside the EU.

The figures did, however, confirm that net migration was falling, down 20 per cent to 728,000 in the year ending this June, largely due to Tory measures including a ban on foreign workers and students bringing dependants, and increases to the skilled worker salary threshold.

They came after Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, admitted her party had failed on migration, saying there had been a “collective failure of political leaders from all parties over decades” to grasp the issue. “I more than understand the public anger on this issue. I share it,” she said.

Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, told The Telegraph: “Today is a day of shame for the Conservative Party. Our handling of immigration let the country down badly. The public are right to be furious. Repairing the damage won’t be easy. We will only begin to rebuild trust once we own up to our failures and fundamentally change.”

Referring to Mrs Badenoch’s speech, Sir Keir said the “chorus of excuses” had begun, but not the explanation that the “British people are owed”.

The Prime Minister said the Government would reform the points-based immigration system to require companies employing foreign workers to also train British people.

Under a white paper to be published in the new year, bad bosses who breach visa rules or employment law such as paying their workers below the minimum wage will be banned for up to two years from recruiting foreign staff.

He said: “Let me say directly to the people watching, where the last government failed you, this one will not. They drove immigration numbers up. We will get them down.”

However, Sir Keir refused to set an “arbitrary” figure on when or by how much net migration would be reduced, and said he was not prepared to set an “arbitrary” cap on numbers.

“The days of fiction and pretending there are easy answers are over. These are the days of hard graft,” he said.

Asked about the cultural impact on communities of such large numbers of migrants entering the UK, Sir Keir declined to comment, instead pointing to the need to boost skills training to reduce the need for foreign workers.

Home Office figures showed the cost of the UK’s asylum system has risen to £5 billion – the highest level of spending on record, and up by more than a third in a year.

The number of migrants being accommodated in hotels also jumped by 20 per cent from 29,585 to 35,651 in the three months to September, after Labour won the election.

Sir Keir said: “We must bring the cost of asylum down and we have a manifesto pledge to bring the cost of hotels down, to end the use of hotels, which we are driving hard at. The way to do that is to increase the processing of claims. Among the reasons that so many people are in hotels is for a long time the claims weren’t being processed.”

Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said: “We know the numbers are too high and that is why Kemi Badenoch has set out that under her leadership, we will learn from past mistakes and adopt a new approach, to lower immigration.

“This means a strict cap on numbers, making citizenship a privilege not a right, zero tolerance for foreign criminals and an effective legal deterrent for illegal migration.

“It is abundantly clear that Keir Starmer, a man who believes immigration controls are racist, has no plan and no desire to tackle the high levels of legal migration, nor will he confront illegal migration.”

“Starmer has no credibility on this issue. He has ruled out a legal migration cap and, since he became Prime Minister, Channel boat crossings are up 23 per cent. And we learnt today that 6,000 more asylum seekers are in hotels despite Starmer’s promise to end hotel use.”

On Thursday night Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg said the Conservatives had “failed badly” on immigration.

The former business secretary disputed Sir Keir Starmer’s claim that the policy constituted an “open borders experiment”, but took responsibility for the failure to reduce numbers.

He told the BBC’s Question Time: “There was not an open borders experiment, but immigration policy failed and it failed very badly. It failed to do what the British people had wanted.”