Nigel Farage set out his vision for an “ethical” immigration policy on Wednesday, but there was confusion about whether he had ditched a 50,000 cap on new arrivals and how Ukip would decide who was allowed to work in Britain.
Launching his immigration message at an evangelical church in central London, the Ukip leader demanded a “return to sanity” on the number of people entering the UK, claiming that one house has to be built every seven minutes to accommodate an immigrant.
The key points of his policy were a ban on unskilled migrants
for five years and an Australian-style points system allowing in skilled migrants, which would be policed by an independent watchdog. Migrants would also have to have private healthcare and be clear of life-threatening diseases.
However, the substance of his speech was overshadowed by a row about whether Farage had dropped Ukip’s proposal to cap net migration at 50,000 - a policy unveiled at the party’s autumn conference.
In the morning, the Ukip leader made it clear that he no longer
supported the principle of capping numbers, saying his policy is now just a return to “normality” when it comes to immigration levels.
Speaking on the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Farage said: “I’m not putting on caps or targets. You need to have more flexibility than that … You cannot have anything in politics without people obsessing over caps and targets and I think people are bored of it.”
However, by the time of his speech, Farage insisted that he had not in fact “abolished” the cap or performed a U-turn and argued it was only a change of emphasis.
“It isn’t a U-turn ... we’ve looked at the figures very closely -
27,000 people would have qualified under the Australian-style points system to come into this country,” the Ukip leader said. “I can’t see us getting anywhere near 50,000.”
“Policies evolve, they develop, they move on... I don’t want the
emphasis from today to be what our cap is. What I want it to be from today is the fact that Ukip is putting forward a policy that will take immigration into Britain back to normal.”
Just last Friday, Ukip’s immigration spokesman, Steven Woolfe,
repeated the party’s policy that net migration would be capped at
50,000. But since then, David Cameron has come in for intense
criticism for missing his 100,000 net migration target – with the
actual figure almost three times that number.
At the London event, Woolfe then denied he had ever proposed a limit on net immigration, saying: “That was not necessarily a cap that we were looking at. We always said ‘up to’.”
Farage’s overall speech emphasised that Ukip wanted an “ethical”
immigration policy that did not discriminate on the basis of where a migrant might be applying from - whether inside or outside the EU.
Asked whether immigration could reach the point where he was
uncomfortable living in Britain, Farage said: “I want to live in a
country that is at ease with itself, where we speak the same language ... where our kids can play football with each other, and we all get on.”
The Ukip leader said London was “very close” to having a non-white majority and he hoped “as the years go by that ever more of them will not just be voting, but standing for Ukip as candidates”.
During the event, the party also admitted it has not yet worked out how it would define highly-skilled workers that would be allowed entry to Britain. The party floated the idea that immigrants would need both private health insurance and a job paying more than £27,000 a year but Woolfe said there would have to be other criteria as well.
“The rules under a points-based system are not just based on how much you earn... [The Australian] system is based on age, it’s based on qualifications, it’s based on the jobs you’ve got... All these factors we are putting into a commission that will eventually come up with all the conditions that are required. Then we will have to look at some of the key areas like the health service. Do we need additional doctors and nurses? Then the commission will be considering the criteria for that.”
Farage will be hoping to keep the issue of immigration in the headlines, given that a new ComRes/ITV poll showed that Ukip is more trusted on the subject than other parties. However, the party’s confusion over its policy will do little to improve its score for competence, with the same poll suggesting that 47% of people say it is not a credible party – up 11 points since last year.
George Osborne, the chancellor, accused Farage of making up policy as he goes along, but the Conservatives later came under pressure over the issue in the House of Commons.
At prime minister’s questions, Cameron was accused by the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, of breaking his promise to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands in a way that made the Lib Dem tuition fee pledge look like a “model of integrity”.
The prime minister said that the system, which allows immigrants from other EU states to claim benefits upon arrival in the UK, was to blame for the high migration figures.
“We promised to cut net migration and we cut it from outside the
European Union, but it has increased from inside the European Union, not least because we’ve created more jobs than the rest of the European Union put together,” he said.
