Does Labour have the guts to be honest about immigration?

Understandably, there is more concern about irregular Channel crossings on the south coast than Scotland, but there are also startling misconceptions about it. One person we spoke to was under the impression that the record high net migration figure of 685,000 last year was down to hundreds of thousands of people crossing the Channel on dinghies. In fact, the vast majority came on work and study visas, encouraged by the British Government. Some 31,000 came on small boats during the year ending March 2024, which is a significant number but a truly tiny proportion of the total - less than five per cent.

It's not surprising people think there’s been an “invasion” across the Channel, though, is it? Because that’s the word the former Home Secretary Suella Braverman used. For the last five years, Britain has been governed by a party that has cynically whipped up hysteria about the small boats, for purely political ends, using inflammatory words like “swarm” and promoting disgraceful ideas like “pushing back” fragile, overcrowded migrant boats towards France. The fiasco of the Rwanda scheme, with all those millions wasted, was a giant exercise in distraction – an attempt to make out that the real problem was “illegals” coming over from France, while knowing full well that the immigration figures were really made up of desperately needed doctors, nurses, care workers and their families, and overseas students willing to pay high fees to prop up university finances and subsidise British students’ fees.

Do you remember Suella Braverman ever talking about that, or Rishi Sunak describing how immigration would boost the economy and give him much-needed “fiscal headroom” so he could spend more on services? No, me neither. Foreign dollars, rupees and yuan help uphold British universities’ competitive edge and contribute a net benefit of £37.4bn to the UK economy, on Universities UK figures. To her credit, UK education secretary Gillian Keegan did argue that point, and ministers knew it full well. In private, they facilitated ongoing immigration because they knew the economy needed it, but in public? They bayed about it relentlessly, and small boats in particular.

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Ministers and MPs set out to give the outrageously misleading impression that these vulnerable, dispossessed people were to blame for high immigration levels.

Former Home Secretary Priti Patel famously said that the majority of those coming across the Channel were “economic migrants”, not genuine refugees, but it wasn’t true then and it isn’t now. The vast majority apply for asylum and three-quarters of them get it. They risk their lives to come by sea because the British Government has made it impossible to apply for asylum in Britain from outside the country and closed all other means of getting here.

Certain newspapers and broadcasters have done their best to put the record straight on all of this but it’s hardly surprising that their efforts have failed to cut through against a populist anti-immigration barrage led for years by members of the actual government.

But Labour has so far failed to deal honestly with the public about immigration either. Labour also devotes most of its immigration plan to the 4.5 per cent of immigrants who come across the Channel. It has a plan to improve skills among UK workers so recruitment from overseas is not required, but puts no timescale on that and does not explain how skills shortages are to be dealt with right now. It insists it wants to slash immigration, but doesn’t say how it will square that with its top priorities of economic growth and improving public services, when the independent Office for Budget Responsibility points to higher GDP and billions more in tax revenue due to immigration. Like the Tories, the Labour leadership has failed completely to make the arguments for why some immigration is actually a good thing.

None of this is to say that people aren’t right to be worried about net migration after it reached 685,000 a year, the size of Edinburgh’s population. Numbers are not expected to fall much below 350,000 a year over the next five years. When there is a nationwide housing shortage and nearly every public service is struggling for cash and staff, the logistics of managing immigration at this level is a worry.

Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman talked of an invasion (Image: PA)

But if it were simple to just cut it without damaging the NHS and the economy, the Tories - even the buffoons we’ve had since 2019 - would have done it. But it isn’t. They know it; we know it. So it’s time the public debate reflected that.

A meaningful public debate would set out just how dependent Britain really is on immigrants, to staff health and social care, and do jobs that not enough British people want to do. It would make the point that immigration does put pressure on public services, but also relieves it, by staffing the NHS and care services. People can see for themselves that “take back control” was a bad joke; they need to be included in grown-up conversations about the trade-offs involved. Getting the numbers down is an exercise in balancing benefits and disadvantages.

The riots that have disfigured many English towns show what happens when one-sided, anti-immigrant sentiment takes hold. In the interests of the country’s economy and wellbeing, Labour should reframe this woeful debate and start telling a more balanced story about the pros of immigration as well as the cons. The Tories have been living a lie about it for years. Labour must break the cycle.