For an “integrated, successful society you have to make sure there are enough school places and that hospitals aren’t overcrowded”, he said.
Advertisement
She will say: “Even if we could manage all the consequences of mass immigration, Britain does not need net migration in the hundreds of thousands every year”.
Participating in a recent debate on the Immigration bill in the House of Lords, Lord Bilimoria had said: “The Prime Minister (David Cameron) talks about Britain having to take part in a global race yet the government’s insistence is on following this madcap immigration cap policy and targeting bringing down the immigration level to the tens of thousands”.
Asked whether he agreed with Home Secretary Theresa May that social cohesion was impossible if immigration was too high, he said: “She’s right”.
Mrs May said the economic benefits of high immigration were “close to zero”, and it was putting pressure on health, education, transport and housing infrastructure.
Home Secretary Theresa May has delivered an uncompromising speech to her party conference pledging to crack down on immigration.
The cabinet minister pledged the United Kingdom would continue to welcome the “most vulnerable” refugees but said the present system rewards the “wealthiest, the luckiest and the strongest”.
“Shops workers, cleaners, the people who get up in the small hours or work through the night because they have dreams for what their families can achieve – the people without whom the London economy would simply collapse”, he will say.
May indicated Britain was spending 1 billion pounds ($1.52 billion) on humanitarian aid, refugee care and support for the governments of Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.
“This has been raised with the Saudis… we totally disapprove of of what they do in terms of the death penalty which we object to in every country”, he said.
“We have to do this [reduce immigration] for the sake of our society and our public services – and for the sake of the people whose wages are cut, and where job security is reduced, when immigration is too high”.
Institute of Directors director general Simon Walker told the BBC he was astonished by the home secretary’s “irresponsible rhetoric and pandering to anti-immigration sentiment”. During her five years in office, net migration has risen to a record 330,000 a year despite attempts to stem the flow.
She used her speech to argue that mass migration is not in the national interest.
Mr Cameron will say: “When a generation of hardworking men and women in their 20s and 30s are waking up each morning in their childhood bedrooms that should be a wake-up call for all of us”.
The Home Secretary should not be so fixated on an arbitrary and unachievable ambition, though she could consider changing the statistical base.
The speech was welcomed in the conference hall, but criticised outside it.
Mrs May also took a harder line than Cabinet colleagues such as George Osborne on the issue of students who overstay their visas after graduating, calling on universities to accept that “the rules must be enforced”.
Advertisement
In a surprisingly hard-line speech she promised a tough crackdown on those who abuse the asylum system while she said Britain was a “beacon on hope” to those who really needed protection.
