Immigrants: Now Brown wants more

In an incredible show of arrogance, the Prime Minister and his colleagues brushed aside a devastating report from peers which confirmed that migrants bring no economic benefit.

As a result, the peers demanded a limit on the numbers allowed in each year. But Mr Brown said the number of job vacancies has now increased to 675,000 and businesses can benefit from being able to “recruit more widely”.

At the same time, he suggested that Britons should train as curry chefs to fill gaps left by the imminent points-based system for migrants which will restrict some non-EU workers.

Critics said Labour was in denial and refusing to face reality, despite every economic justification for allowing record numbers to come here now lying in tatters.

Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of Migrationwatch UK, said: “The Government’s economic case for massive levels of immigration has been blown clean out of the water, but they still seem to be clinging to the wreckage.

“It is astonishing the Prime Minister does not realise that immigrants do not fill vacancies. They create as many as they fill, as the House of Lords confirmed.

“The Government claims to be relying on the points system that it plans to introduce, but a points system without a limit is, quite literally, pointless.”

Tory leader David Cameron said: “We want people to work here and come to Britain. The problem with the Government is that it absolutely refuses to set any sort of limit on immigration.

“If you want to control immigration you have to control that bit of immigration you are able to control. It’s still possible to control non-EU immigration.”

The report from the Lords Economic Affairs Committee, which includes economists and two former Chancellors, delivered a crushing blow to the Government after concluding that migrants bring no economic benefit.

It systematically dismissed each argument, including claims that migrants are needed to fill jobs and defuse a future “pensions timebomb”.

It said claims from ministers that immigrants added £6billion to gross domestic product were “’irrelevant and misleading”, pointing out that the “biggest winners” were migrants themselves.

The committee called for an “explicit target range for net immigration”, effectively meaning an annual limit. But Mr Brown insisted the new points-based system is the way forward, despite the Lords report questioning its effectiveness.

He said: “Most people who are proposing a cap are proposing a cap of only 20 per cent of possible migrants. Of course, many of these people are the highly skilled workers who are important to the economy.”

He went on: “I believe most businesses that have faced labour shortages, skills shortages – and in the situation we’ve had over the last 10 years there has been a very high level of vacancies, today there are around 675,000 – know the benefits of being able to recruit more widely.

“But what we have done for the last few months is introduce for the first time a new points system, like the Australian system, that will restrict the non-skilled people that come into this country from outside the European Union.

“What that will effectively mean is not just to put a cap on unskilled entrants into the UK, there will be nobody coming who is unskilled from outside the EU.”

His comments were echoed by Immigration Minister Liam Byrne.

The Lords report had already argued that the very fact job vacancies still exist showed that migrant workers are not the answer, as they only expand the economy, creating new gaps.

The claim that a cap will only affect one in five migrants, because most migrants come from within the EU, was also dismissed in February by the independent Statistics Commission.

It backed Migrationwatch’s argument that the real figure for immigration from outside Europe was more than two-thirds of the total because movements by Britons had been wrongly included in Government estimates.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said: “The Prime Minister is in denial. His minister’s previous assertions about this have been shown to be bogus. It’s either a sign of desperation or pure lack of grasp that he is repeating them.”

He added: “The points system is half an answer but it will not control the actual numbers. Our policy would ensure that Britain attracted not only the right people but also the right number of people.”

Mr Brown and Mr Byrne remained adamant the £6billion figure was a “substantial” income, despite the Lords dismissing its relevance. The Prime Minister also said gross domestic product per head, largely seen as a better indicator, had risen dramatically since 1997, from £13,900 then to £22,840 in the last year. But figures have already shown that the contribution to that from migrants is less than 60p a week.

Mr Brown said: “We have got to recognise that we’ve got to get the balance right, between the skills that our country gains from people who have these skills coming to our country and being able to offer them to our economy.

“I think most people in the City know we have benefited very substantially, not just from the inward investment that’s coming from international companies, but from key workers who come in. But we want to get the balance right.”