Cameron "basically agrees" that immigration is a "constant drain" despite Office for Budget Responsibility saying UK needs immigrants to offset ageing population
Speaking at a Q&A at Bentley Motors yesterday, Prime Minister David Cameron said he is confident that by the end of the current government, people will be able to look back and say it had "a much tougher approach on immigration" than previous ones.
At the Q&A (published here), Cameron was asked why the UK seems "to have a weak policy on immigration when it's a constant drain."
The PM replied by saying he basically agreed and said the UK immigration policy in the past decade had been "completely lax", with net migration running at around 200,000 a year.
"So, across that decade, that is 2 million extra people coming to our country. Now I think that is more than we are able to absorb. I think the pressure that puts on public services is too great. I think the pressure it puts on some of our communities was too great," Cameron said.
He added that while net migration had decreased by a third compared to the 200,000 figure, he wanted to see it come down faster, and said the government will keep taking all the actions necessary to make sure that happens.
Cameron's message for voters was clear: "[T]his government has an immigration policy that is for every single department to act – on housing, on health, on education, on legal aid – so that we are no longer a soft touch."
The message comes despite the widely publicised recent research by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) saying that migration has a positive impact on the sustainability of the public finances.
You can read the OBR report here.
The report caused headlines such as Britain needs millions more immigrants to reduce strain of ageing population in the Telegraph, Ageing Britain 'needs an extra 7m immigrants' in the Express and Britain needs 7million MORE immigrants over 50 years to 'meet the cost of caring for the elderly' in the Daily Mail.
As the headlines make clear, the OBR report found that the UK faces increased state spending on pensions and social and health care for its ageing population and this would be offset by allowing more than 140,000 immigrants into Britain a year.
The Telegraph quoted the report as saying: "There is clear evidence that, since migrants tend to be more concentrated in the working-age group relatively to the rest of the population, immigration has a positive effect on the public sector's debt dynamics."
Picking up on Cameron's latest comments, the New Statesman today published a memo to David Cameron noting that "immigrants aren't a 'constant drain' on the UK - they're the reverse".
The New Statesman article says that every study on the subject has shown that migrants contribute far more in taxes than they receive in benefits and services.