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Rishi Sunak announced he would introduce an annual cap on migration if he were to win the general election as the Tories try to attract voters by adopting radical policies on some of the most divisive topics in British politics.
The new annual cap on visas for work or to join family in the UK would be determined via an annual vote in parliament following recommendations provided by the government’s independent Migration Advisory Committee. The MAC would be tasked with setting a cap that reduces every year over the next parliament, the Conservative party said, though the limit would exclude visas for study and seasonal work.
“We have taken bold action to cut the number of people coming to this country,” Sunak said. “The plan is working but migration levels are still too high so we are going further.”
Though the policy had been in the works for a while, its announcement came hot on the heels of Nigel Farage saying he would become the leader of Reform UK and run as a candidate in Essex. The rightwing party is running on a strong anti-immigration ticket.
Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: “This is a meaningless announcement from a Tory party which has trebled net migration since the last election despite promising to bring it down.
“All they are doing now is rehashing failed announcements from David Cameron and Theresa May, while doing nothing to tackle the skills shortages and their failures in the economy and immigration system which have pushed net migration up.”
Several polls have presented a devastating picture for the Tories. A new, detailed YouGov MRP poll for Sky News, released on Monday, showed that Sir Keir Starmer’s party could win 422 seats, with the Tories on 140, giving Labour the biggest majority of any party in more than a century.
Surveys consistently show migration to be one of the top three issues concerning voters. Sunak has come under severe pressure from the right flank of his party to meet the Conservatives’ pledge to slash migration.
Data shows that net migration fell 10 per cent to 685,000 in 2023 but inflows remained well above historical averages. The figures also showed the 2022 peak in net migration had been higher than thought at 764,000.
Last month, former immigration minister Robert Jenrick and former health minister Neil O’Brien released a report arguing for radical reforms to the migration system, including calling for an annual cap. They said this should be determined by parliament, with the MAC having an expanded remit to “advise on ways” to cut net migration to the tens of thousands per year.
But Ben Brindle, a researcher at Migration Observatory, said such a policy would put the MAC in a “tricky spot”, given that the cap would probably be more influenced by political factors than economic ones, and could lead to unintended shortages in certain labour markets.
However, Brindle noted the policy would probably be popular with the public and could cultivate more trust in the migration system.
The Conservatives have built a campaign strategy focused on recovering votes from Reform. One senior Tory official close to the campaign told the FT that prospective Reform voters were judged to be more recoverable than those who had fled to Labour and the Liberal Democrats. “It’s where the votes are,” they said.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak spent the first few days of the campaign setting out plans for mandatory national service as well as a pension “quadruple lock” — widely perceived as an attempt to ensure that the Tories’ more senior voters did not abandon it for Reform.
But Paula Surridge, a politics professor at the University of Bristol, said only one issue mattered to Reform voters. “Immigration is their absolute priority and other things aren’t going to move the dial.”
