MPs urge Rishi Sunak to Use Brexit freedoms to cap migration

Net migration should be capped at the ‘tens of thousands’, senior Tory MPs have told Rishi Sunak.

A report will this week urge the Government to use its Brexit freedoms to significantly reduce legal migration numbers.

It argues that an annual migration budget should be presented to the House of Commons, setting out all the trade-offs to be considered when it comes to migration, such as how many extra hospital beds or new homes will be needed for every 10,000 migrants.

Caps on both overall migration numbers and migration via individual routes would then be agreed by votes in Parliament.

Senior Tory MPs have told Rishi Sunak that net migration should be capped at the ‘tens of thousands’

Migrants crossing the Channel. A report will this week urge the Government to use its Brexit freedoms to significantly reduce legal migration numbers (stock image)

In the year to June 2023, net migration hit 672,000. Former immigration Minister Robert Jenrick, who co-authored the report, said: ‘For nearly 30 years politicians have promised to control and reduce legal migration, only for numbers to spiral. This has been corrosive to the trust voters have in our democracy. It must end. Now we have left the EU this can finally be rectified.’

The 100-page report, titled Taking Back Control, will be published by the Centre for Policy Studies think tank after Thursday’s local elections. It will highlight the lack of accurate data and how migrants impact the economy differently depending on where they come from.

Tory MP Neil O’Brien, who co-authored the report, said: ‘We need to make the system more selective. The current system is allowing too many people to come here who will either not work, or will do minimum-wage work [which is untaxed] in the grey economy.’

Read more