Kemi Badenoch vowed a tough new approach on immigration today as she warned the UK ‘cannot sustain’ current levels.
The Tory leader insisted she would speak about the topic ‘without fear’ – admitting that in government the party had not done enough to curb numbers.
She laid out her intention of setting a hard annual cap on legal inflows, although she refused to say what it would be.
Ms Badenoch predicted that new official figures tomorrow – covering the year to June – will show a reduction after measures brought in by the previous government.
But she stressed that politicians have to ‘do right’ by Brits before considering how to help others.
‘Immigration is at a pace too fast to maintain public services. And at a rate where it is next to impossible to integrate those from radically different cultures,’ she said.
‘It is time to tell the truth. For decades the entire political class of this country has presided over mass migration.
‘We ended free movement but the system that replaced it is not working.
Ms Badenoch said that the Tories had to ‘learn from our mistakes.
‘We may have tried to control numbers but overall we did not deliver,’ she said.
The previous set of figures in May showed net long term migration – the number of people moving to Britain minus those leaving – dropped from a record 764,000 in 2022 to 685,000 last year.
Experts said it was driven by fewer foreign students arriving as well as more people emigrating, but noted that immigration remains ‘unusually high’ and above pre-Covid levels.
Further falls are expected this year after ministers restricted the number of family members that migrants can bring to live with them.
In her speech Ms Badenoch said ‘if immigration is too quick, there is no integration’ and ‘the ties that bind us start to fray’.
‘It doesn’t matter whether you are massively for immigration, or massively against it, without a shared national identity our country will suffer,’ she said.
‘When people come here they must buy into the values, customs, and institutions that attracted them here in the first place.’
Ms Badenoch railed against the ‘political class’ who had been ‘pretending that immigration comes only with benefits and no costs when we can all see the pressure on housing, roads, GPs, and wages’.
We must be honest. The failure of politics over the last thirty years has been to gloss over it or make it a fringe issue. That has to stop,’ she said.
Ms Badenoch said ‘we can no longer be naïve’, hinting at action on the European Convention on Human Rights – a key element of her rival Robert Jenrick’s campaign.
‘It’s nonsense that we have allowed a situation where judges deem safe countries to be unsafe,’ she said.
‘Where loopholes are wilfully exploited by opportunists. Where the latest legal ruses and wheezes are sent around the world on social media.’
Ms Badenoch insisted the figures tomorrow will ‘likely show a reduction in net immigration, and no doubt the new Government will try to take credit for that reduction’.
‘But that change is due to the reforms that the Conservatives made in our final months in power,’ she added.
‘For example, over the last 18 months, income thresholds for work visas increased by 50 per cent.
‘Restrictions were placed on care workers and students bringing family members into the country.
‘Labour may criticise our record on immigration, but remember, throughout the last 14 years, the Labour party were urging us to relax controls upon immigration.’
However, Ms Badenoch said that the numbers will still be a ‘world away from where we need to be’ arguing that ‘under a Labour government, immigration will remain far too high’.
