Immigration

IN Labour's recent party political broadcast it was, of course, gratifying that Ed Miliband personally apologised for his party not having taken people's concerns on immigration seriously.

But the fact remains that up until this momentous 'mea culpa' decades of the centre left's subtle and not so subtle accusation that anyone concerned about immigration is a closet racist or bigot has sadly led to this issue now requiring urgent attention.

Some immigration is extremely good for our country, but over the last decade the numbers have spiralled out of control. You can trace the spike in net migration from 1997 when Labour came into office. The numbers rocketed to 200,000 a year.

These massive inflows have meant that in some parts of the country huge pressure has been placed on our NHS, schools and housing. Since the government came to office net migration has fallen by a third. So how have we brought it down so sharply?

There are three categories of immigration: Students, Family and Work. The art has been to focus on the desirable and to reduce the problematic. For example, with student immigration we continue to encourage overseas students to pay to attend our universities and to stay and work if they have the skills we need, but we have clamped down on the large number of bogus colleges that simply served as fronts for immigrants to come to work.

With the family route we are clamping down on sham marriages and have increased requirements for English speaking. We have increased the income threshold for spouses wishing to settle.

For work-based immigration we have set a non-EU cap and stopped non-skilled non-EU immigration entirely.

There is still a way to go but progress is being made. Labour's latest pronouncement will help – And I salute them for it.