But while I’ve always believed in the benefits of migration and immigration, I’ve also always believed that immigration has to be properly controlled. Without proper controls, community confidence is sapped, resources are stretched and the benefits that immigration can bring are lost or forgotten. As I’ve long‑argued, under the previous government immigration was far too high and the system was badly out of control. Net migration needs to come down radically from hundreds of thousands a year, to just tens of thousands, and as we bring net migration down so we must also make sure that Britain continues to benefit from it.
There are those who say – in terms of these arguments you hear, there are those who say you can’t control immigration without damaging your economic policy and again I think this is wrong too. Let me give you two examples. There were some who said that our cap on economic migrants from outside the European economic area would damage business. But let’s look at what actually happened. The cap has played a part in controlling migration, but not one business request has been rejected because of the limit, and not one scientist or engineer has been turned down for lack of space. Our limit on economic migrants, which we set at 20,700, has been undersubscribed each and every month since it was introduced, with businesses using only half their monthly quotas.
Now another example, relevant in a university like this, is that when we said we would clamp down on bogus students, some people thought that would damage our universities, but the number of applications to study at British universities has actually gone up, including right here at University College Suffolk. Now, we want the best and the brightest students in the world to come and choose our universities, so we’ve said no cap on student numbers at our world-class universities. Our universities are able to get out there and market themselves around the world on the basis that any genuine student in any country in the world who earns a place at one of our universities and has a basic English qualification, they will be able to come and study here.
So, under my direction, all this is changing, and today I want to tell you how. Let me start with the system we inherited when the Coalition Government was formed. Under the last government, immigration in this country, as I’ve said, was too high and out of control. Put simply, Britain was a soft touch. Look at the numbers that have been coming in. In 2010 alone 591,000 people came here intending to stay for a year or more. Across the last decade that number is a staggering 5.6 million.
Now, of course, some migrants stay for a period and then return home and at the same time, of course, you’ve got a number of British people are choosing to live abroad. So, it’s right that we look at net migration: the difference between those coming and leaving. But this has been out of control too. Between 1997 and 2009, net migration to Britain totalled more than 2.2 million people. That is more than twice the population of Birmingham, and it was over a quarter of a million in 2010 alone. Now, it’s not just that the numbers were out of control; we had no real control over the skills of the people we were bringing in.
So, that’s how we’re changing immigration in this country. Getting net migration down radically. Making sure that the people who come here, wherever they come from, are coming for the right reasons. Breaking out of the old government silos and making immigration a centrepiece of our economic policy, so that we train our young people to fill more of the jobs being created in our economy with genuine incentives to work, and so we attract the hardworking, wealth creators who can help us to win in the global race.
The new British citizenship test is coming in today and, in my view, that sums up very clearly the kind of values that make us the country we are. We want people who are interested in what they can offer to Britain, to contribute to and to enrich our communities. That sense of fairness is what matters most. You put into Britain, you don’t just take out. And if you put in, we will stand with you. That’s how it is in this country. That’s how it should be and that is how it will be for anyone who wants to come here.
Mikael Lith 