Shabana Mahmood must ignore Labour backbench grumblings and press ahead with her immigration crackdown, a party grandee has said. Former home secretary Alan Johnson insisted his successor must stop the “pull factor” attracting migrants to the UK.
Ms Mahmood's tougher measures, drawn up under Sir Keir Starmer, plan to double the time migrants must wait to obtain indefinite leave to remain (ILR), from five years to 10. She has said it would be applied retrospectively to people already here to prevent a flood of claims from the wave of migrants who arrived after the pandemic.
Johnson: 'Press ahead'
Mr Johnson said the reforms “really need to be done”.
“Don't listen too much to your Labour colleagues – press ahead,” he said.
“When you're doing something that really needs to be done, particularly on illegal immigration, you always get a kickback, and she's got to carry on.
“There are always things which could be amended as the Bill goes through; but the basic point is that you've got to stop this pull factor, and we have a system where there are a number of reasons why people want to come here – predominantly the English language, but coming here illegally and knowing you can disappear into the workforce much more successfully than any other country is one of the reasons.”
Backbench unease
But the plans have sparked unease among many Labour backbenchers, with sources indicating that the new Prime Minister could “tinker” with them in a bid to avoid his first rebellion.
Mr Johnson, who held the role under Gordon Brown from 2009-10, made the remarks in a groundbreaking new report from Policy Exchange, which includes interviews with 14 home secretaries from the last three and a half decades. The views of Lord Baker, Lord Clarke, Lord Howard, Jack Straw, Lord Blunkett, Charles Clarke, Baroness Smith, Baroness May, Amber Rudd, Sir Sajid Javid, Dame Priti Patel, Suella Braverman and Sir James Cleverly are all included in the report.
Clarke criticises Patel
In the report, Lord Clarke, who was home secretary under Sir John Major from 1992-93, hits out at Dame Priti for presiding over a surge in migrants during her time in the role when Boris Johnson was prime minister.
“It was Priti Patel, as home secretary, who introduced a visa scheme which was so lax and so generous that we suddenly increased the population of the country by 900,000 people in one year,” he said.
But Lord Clarke heaps praise one of her successors, Sir James, for getting it “sorted out”.
“James Cleverly has been given no credit for the fact that he pretty well sorted it out [high volumes of immigration] and reformed it, leading to the present collapse in net immigration as a result of his reforms,” he added.
