Sunak distances himself from the conservatives’ pledge of net migration

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British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesday distanced himself from his Conservative party’s 2019 manifesto pledge to reduce net migration, amid a growing internal row over the government’s immigration policy.

Under the former prime minister Boris Johnsonthe Conservatives have vowed to reduce the net number of people coming to live and work in Britain as part of their presentation to voters ahead of the 2019 general election. “There will be fewer less skilled migrants and overall numbers will fall,” the manifest noticed.

But speaking to reporters en route to the G7 summit in Tokyo, Sunak on Wednesday refused to renew his party’s pledge and implicitly blamed his predecessor for high levels of immigration.

Immigration is moving up the British political agenda after net migration hit a record high of over half a million for the year to last June. The Office for National Statistics is due to release updated data next week, with analysts predicting the figure could exceed 700,000.

When asked if he intended to deliver on the 2019 manifesto promise, Sunak replied, “I inherited some numbers, I want to bring the numbers down.”

Pressed that he had kept his promise, he refused to do so, saying: “I said I want to reduce legal migration. I think that illegal immigration is undoubtedly the country’s priority, and it also shows all the work I’m putting into it. But also on legal migration we are committed to reducing these numbers”.

Senior Conservatives have this week expressed growing alarm at the government’s handling of the matter.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman argued that “mass” migration was “unsustainable” as she called on the government to crack down on so-called irregular crossings of the Channel and introduce limits on legal migration. In the meantime, level up secretary Michael Gove he warned that high migration is putting “inevitable pressure on housing and public services”.

Conservative MPs fear that if the government fails on the issue of reducing immigration, the party will be punished at the polls.

“People are right to be concerned about levels of migration, which have been on an upward trajectory since the early 2000s,” said a senior Conservative. “The last election is all that people have wanted to discuss on the threshold. I suspect the next election will be much the same.”

However, the government has also come under pressure from businesses grappling with staff shortages, as ministers balance the political need to crack down on migration and growing demands from sectors such as the horticulture industry to increase access to foreign labor.

Representatives from the agriculture and food industries gathered in Downing Street on Tuesday for a food security summit where Sunak pledged to invest £30m in new technology and increase the number of visas available to the agricultural industry each year from 10,000 to 55,000.

Ahead of the summit, the National Farmers’ Union has called for a five-year minimum rolling scheme, a more permanent solution to the seasonal labor shortage, which last year resulted in £60m of wasted produce due to lack of pickers of fruit and vegetables.

“Farming is a long-term game and if you can’t plan ahead and ensure you’re getting the labor you need, you’re not going to plant the crop in the first place,” said NFU vice president David Exwood.

Downing Street said Wednesday the visa announcement was aimed at giving businesses ‘clarity’ about staffing.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who has resisted pressure from the Home Office to curb the number of international students, told British Chambers of Commerce on Wednesday that the government, since the Brexit vote, has been “pragmatic when it comes to immigration requirements”.