Conservative leadership front runner blames low-skilled migration for fuelling housing crisis and deterring business investment
The case for ending mass immigration into Britain “could not be stronger”, Robert Jenrick has said.
The Conservative leadership candidate said the scale of net migration, which peaked at 764,000 in 2022, had created “profound challenges” for society.
Mr Jenrick was responding to a report by the Adam Smith Institute (ASI), a free market think tank, which recommended the abolition of all graduate visas.
Some 114,000 visas were granted to foreign students in 2023 while a further 30,000 were given to their dependants.
The report suggested net migration should be capped in the tens of thousands, a pledge made in recent weeks by Mr Jenrick as well as Tom Tugendhat, one of his Tory leadership rivals.
Mr Jenrick said: “It’s clear that mass migration has created profound challenges in this country.
“But as this report shows, the low-skilled migration we have experienced over the past 25 years is also propping up a broken economic model, fuelling the housing crisis, deterring business investment and storing up long-term fiscal costs for the taxpayer.
“The case for ending mass migration could not be stronger.”
Mr Tugendhat, meanwhile, said Britain “must shift to a high-wage, high-skill, high investment and low-migration economy”.
“This means a cap on numbers, no longer granting hundreds of visas, and fundamentally transforming our economy to end our reliance on low-wage overseas workers,” he said.
James Cleverly, who, as well as Kemi Badenoch, is also looking to succeed Rishi Sunak and lead the Conservatives, said migration was “far too high”.
Mr Cleverly said that during his spell as home secretary he had tackled the issue “within weeks” by announcing a policy package he said would reduce arrivals by 300,000.
Measures he introduced included raising the skilled foreign worker visa threshold to £38,700 and banning foreign care workers from bringing relatives into the UK.
“Migration has been far too high, which is why I brought it down within weeks of being home secretary,” he said.
“As this report rightly points out, we need an immigration system where GDP per capita is our barometer so that we transform our economy away from low-skilled, low-wage labour.”
The ASI said it also reached out to Mrs Badenoch to comment on its recommendations.
All four Tory leadership contenders are focusing heavily on migration after the party lost voters to Reform UK, which wants a “one in, one out” policy, at the general election.
Last month, the shadow housing secretary called for a “truthful” debate on the issue, noting she had been vocal in her criticisms of previous immigration policy that “wasn’t working”.
