Controlling Migration

Aidan Burley Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I think that we will have to look at that matter again closer to the September 2011 deadline. I simply say to the hon. Gentleman that the more exceptions to the rules that people claim, the less effective the overall rules will be. We are absolutely clear that, within the rules that we have set, there are groups of very specialist workers. A number of issues have been raised with me about people with very particular skills who are needed by certain industries, and who we believe can come in, within the routes that we are setting out.

[Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

Tony Blair’s adviser once said that the sharp increase in immigration over the past 10 years was partly due to

“a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural”.

Can the Home Secretary confirm today that so-called social objectives are no longer acceptable as a reason for immigration, and that it should be based instead on the economic benefits that immigrants can bring to this country?

[Mrs May]

As I said at the beginning of my statement, controlled migration can benefit this country economically, socially and culturally, but we are absolutely clear, in looking at the routes into the country for economic migrants, that the people who are coming in will bring a genuine economic benefit to the UK.