Our immigration policy is failing all

Just who, in the week that record numbers of arrivals to this country were announced, is Britain’s immigration policy working for? Not for businesses, which find it hard to recruit. Not really for many of the migrants themselves, many of whom are well-educated but because of bureaucratic barriers find themselves in low-skilled jobs or banned from working altogether. And certainly not for voters, who feel betrayed on an issue where they have been promised control and reduced volumes by a decade of Conservative governments – a promise redoubled post-Brexit.

As a result the Government finds itself gravely exposed as immigration rises up the list of voter concerns, now sitting behind only the economy and inflation. The best indication of how bad things are is that people are now as worried about immigration as they are about the NHS. Such concern could well intensify further, as it did in the run up to the Brexit referendum. If it does, a return to front-line politics of Nigel Farage and the already dominant position of Labour could combine to catastrophic effect for the Conservatives.

The reason for such vulnerability is clear: the Government has long promised lower overall numbers and more highskilled workers, but delivered only the second part of that promise. The public is delighted that the NHS can recruit globally, but why are tens of thousands of people moving here as “dependents” to overseas students? Nothing infuriates voters, rightly, more than this charade. And the consequences go well beyond the numbers arriving on these shores.

A confused immigration strategy makes it impossible, for example, to formulate a coherent education policy for young Britons. How many should go to university? What about vocational training and apprenticeships? Where will we source the workers needed to fill the many low-paid jobs that still need doing? Absurdly, the number of medical student places is capped in such a way that we must hire vast numbers of doctors from poorer countries to meet our needs. Why?

This feeds into the second linked policy area: welfare. Too many Britons languish on benefits, which is not good for them or the national finances. Finding ways to get them working again will benefit both. But of course it is much easier to fill gaps in the labour force with migrants than address the perverse incentives of the welfare system, another of this Government’s great failings. The Universal Credit system is being misused by a bureaucratic state that wilfully fails to understand its true purpose. With the national finances in such a perilous state, that is no longer tenable.

There is another major problem. How can Britain absorb so many people if we refuse or are unable to build more homes, more roads and more GP surgeries? Our extremely liberal migration policy is incompatible with our broken welfare state and the fact that we can no longer seem to get anything done or built or repaired in this country.

These are policy issues – immigration, education and skills and welfare and infrastructure and housing – that are tempting to file in a box marked “too hard”, especially when many drivers of migration – like the war in Ukraine or repression in Hong Kong – are beyond the Government’s control.

But the Government can control efforts to get more people off benefits and into jobs. It can be far more effective at processing asylum claims and removing those who fail to meet the criteria. It can do better at focusing education on the needs of the economy. It can limit the overall number to a more manageable level. It can radically reform infrastructure provision, tapping pension funds, to allow the population to grow without ruining people’s quality of life. The alternative is yet deeper public disillusionment, and potential devastation at the ballet box.