Government "dishonesty can't go on" amid soaring migration to Britain, a former immigration minister has warned.
MP Robert Jenrick says the UK must "take control of migration and bring numbers back down" after a new report found that immigration has failed to enhance the economy and worsened the housing crisis in the UK.
According to the former immigration minister - who co-authored the report with former housing minister Neil O’Brien - high migration to Britain has made integration "impossible" and previous governments have "lied" about tackling the issue.
The new data from the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), found that migration to the UK is putting pressure on housing, public services and infrastructure.
Government "dishonesty can't go on" amid soaring migration to Britain, a former immigration minister has warned
GB News
Jenrick - who quit the government over its approach to both legal and illegal migration - said immigration was not making the country "richer".
In a video, he said: "For the last 30 years, Government after Government has been elected on the promise to bring immigration down only to do the opposite.
"And poll after poll after poll shows that the overwhelming majority of the public want to see immigration sharply reduced. This isn't a party political issue, it's something that the overwhelming majority of people agree on."
During the video - given exclusively to GB News - a clip of Tony Blair says: "I think now is the time to make the argument for controlled migration."
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A second video shows Gordon Brown saying: "To manage and control immigration.
"We've introduced what's called the Australian style point system, and that means you can't come into the country unless you've got a skill to offer."
David Cameron also appears in the video when he says: "I believe that will mean net migration to this country will be in the order of tens of thousands each year, not the hundreds of thousands every year that we've seen over the last decade."
In response, Jenrick said: "I resigned as immigration minister because this dishonesty can't go on. We've repeatedly been told that our current levels of immigration are an economic necessity, but that is not true.
Robert Jenrick - who quit the government over its approach to both legal and illegal migration - said immigration was not making the country 'richer'
PA
"A lot of the people who have come here either work in very low wage jobs, or they don't work at all, and over their lifetime, quite a lot of them will actually take out more in public spending than they pay in tax."
In the report released yesterday, Jenrick and O’Brien called for the Home Office to be split up because it is "incapable" of securing Britain’s borders.
They said immigration was one of voters’ top concerns, however the Home Office had "fallen short on this front" and while staffed by "many good, hard-working people", it had proven itself "simply too unwieldy to function effectively".
