Call for action to limit immigrant numbers

Published on Saturday 18 October 2008 19:41

OPPOSITION parties have reacted with a heavy dose of scepticism to the immigration minister's call for a limit on the number of migrants coming to Britain.

In his strongest comments on the subject since taking up the job earlier this month, Phil Woolas said that increasingly tough economic conditions made immigration "extremely thorny", and he said the Government would not allow the population to expand endlessly.

The Conservatives said the Government needed to back rhetoric with action.

Dominic Grieve, shadow home secretary, said:

"Tough talk is simply not enough; they must now explain how they intend to deliver.

"Will they implement our plans for an annual limit on non-EU immigration, transitional controls on future EU immigration, and establish a dedicated UK border force to secure our borders?"

Former Labour minister Frank Field, who has called for tougher controls on immigration, said the Government's position was "moving step by step".

"I think the key thing that we must now look to the Government for is that they break the link between coming here to work and getting citizenship, thereby growing the population by creating more citizens," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

In an interview with the Times, Woolas said: "If people are being made unemployed, the question of immigration becomes extremely thorny.

"It's been too easy to get into this country in the past, and it's going to get harder."

The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the population grew by nearly two million people to 60,975,000 between 2001 and 2007.