A Labour government would cut net migration to a “couple of hundred thousand a year” within its first term, a shadow cabinet minister has said.
The shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Darren Jones, said the party intended to get net migration back to “normal levels”, as figures are “extremely high”.
The latest official figures published last week showed the difference between the number of people coming to live in the UK and those leaving had risen to 745,000, three times higher than the level before Brexit.
The increase is largely down to a rise in people coming to the UK to work in the health and social care sectors.
The Conservative party’s 2019 manifesto vowed “overall numbers will come down” and “we will ensure that the British people are always in control”.
But Rishi Sunak is under growing pressure to come up with an “immediate and massive” plan to cut net migration levels.
When asked on BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg if Labour could bring numbers down within the first term of a government, Jones said: “I think we probably would hope to do that, yes, but we’ve talked about a decade of national renewal.”
He said it would take “some time to fix the deep structural problems” left by successive Conservative governments. He also noted the Conservatives had “set targets and caps and have failed every single year”. David Cameron vowed to reduce net migration to “tens of thousands” a year in 2010. Theresa May also promised to bring net migration to under 100,000 a year, which she saidd was a “sustainable” level post-Brexit.
When asked what represented a reasonable level of net migration, Jones said: “The normal level is a couple of hundred thousand a year, but it depends on the needs in the economy.”
A Labour spokesperson later said the party would not set an “arbitrary target” on migration.
The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, had earlier told the Sunday Times Labour would increase salary requirements for workers coming from overseas. She said the party would change current rules that allow employers to pay migrant workers 20% less than the annual salary threshold of £26,200 for roles on the shortage occupation list.
Remarks by the home secretary, James Cleverely, urging people not to “fixate” on the government’s Rwanda deportation plan have angered many Conservative MPs who believe the prime minister is not going fast and far enough on immigration.
The chief secretary to the Treasury, Laura Trott, tried to play down suggestions of a cabinet split, but a Conservative source said: “They’re in total chaos right now.
“They physically can’t get a bill together. Alex [Chalk, the justice secretary] and Victoria [Prentis, the attorney general] have been clear on their views. Robert [Jenrick, the immigration minister] on his. The lack of a bill emerging is a symbol of how weak No 10 is at the minute.”
Trott refused to spell out new short-term plans to bring the numbers down, despite claiming immigration levels were too high.
“This year we brought forward a £600m plan to train more people to do social care in this country,” she told Kuenssberg. “So we are taking concrete steps, I’m not just saying here I want it to come down, I’m saying that we are taking concrete steps to bring it down.”
The former prime minister Boris Johnson added his voice to those urging an overhaul of the immigration system, as he echoed the former home secretary Suella Braverman in calling for an increase in the minimum salary threshold for UK visas.
Jenrick is understood to have worked up a plan designed to appease calls from rightwing Tories who are pushing for a ban on foreign social care workers bringing in any dependants, and a cap on the total number of NHS and social care visas.
