We must restore trust on Immigration after years of broken promises

I know that trust in politicians is incredibly low and it’s not hard to see why when for years, successive Conservative governments promised that immigration would come down and then allowed it to go up.
David Cameron promised it would fall to under 100,000, Theresa May went one step further to say it would fall to the tens of thousands. After promising to bring the numbers down, Boris Johnson’s government failed to make any progress. The British people heard empty promises and only saw failure from their leaders. In 2023, inward migration reached over a million people a year.

The consequences of this are plain for all to see. Public services and housing access have been placed under too much pressure and our economy has been distorted by perverse incentives to import workers rather than invest in skills for our domestic workforce. This has tragically contributed to one in eight of our young people not being in either employment, education or training.

As a country we therefore must get out of the habit of looking first to immigration to solve skills gaps rather than training up our own. This week Labour introduced proposals to change that by linking the immigration system to skills and training requirements here in the UK. This will mean that no industry or business will be allowed to rely solely on immigration to fill the gaps in their workforce.

We will raise the skill level – stopping lower-skilled migration and ensuring we attract only the brightest and best to Britain. And businesses will be supported to invest in workplace plans, so they can map out the skills they need and build their domestic workforce sustainably.

Labour’s welfare reforms will encourage people to re-train or upskill and bodies like Skills England will work with businesses to shape technical education to meet the needs of the economy and the Growth and Skills Levy will provide businesses with the tools they need to train their own staff. Taken together, the Government’s programme will encourage investment and training in domestic skills, put more money in local people’s pockets and bring down net migration from the unsustainable levels we inherited.