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Labour's Immigration Deception

by Don Clark - Secretary, Popular Alliance - 08:14 on 28 October 2009

The government has dismissed claims that it set up an immigration boom in an effort to make the UK more diverse and "rub the right's nose" in it.

Former Downing Street aide Andrew Neather alleged last week that this had been a "driving political purpose" of Labour policy from 2000.

Mr Neather, a speechwriter who worked for former Prime Minister Tony Blair and in the Home Office, wrote in the London Evening Standard last week that the government had relaxed controls in an effort to "open up the UK to mass migration".

As well as bringing in migrants to ease labour shortages, there had been a "driving political purpose", with ministers hoping to change the UK radically and "rub the right's nose in diversity".

Speaking in the Commons, shadow home secretary Chris Grayling said: "What, of course, Mr Neather, the former adviser concerned, said was that the policy of rapid expansion was done to put pressure on the right.

In his article Mr Neather said the "major shift" in immigration policy had come after the publication of a policy paper from the Performance and Innovation Unit, a Downing Street think-tank.

The published version promoted the labour market case for immigration, but Mr Neather said: "Earlier [unpublished] drafts I saw also included a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the government was going to make the UK truly multicultural.

"I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended - even if this wasn't its main purpose - to rub the right's nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date."

The "deliberate policy" had lasted from late 2000 until "at least February last year", when the new points-based immigration system was introduced, he added.

Popular Alliance Comment:

This does not surprise us one bit. Labour have lost so many of its original voters it needs to create new ones who feel indebted to the lax immigration and welfare policy of this government. It has taken 11 years to tighten up immigration controls but only of course to non-EU people. Bit too late I am afraid.

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