Government tensions on immigration provide an opportunity for Labour to change the debate

By Sarah Mulley

The tensions inherent in the government’s immigration policy have been highlighted during the Prime Minister’s trip to India. Yesterday’s comments from Vince Cable that he wanted the UK to have “as liberal an immigration policy as it is possible to have” sit in stark contrast to David Cameron’s insistence today that the government remains committed to reduce net immigration to the UK to ‘tens of thousands’.

The government is facing real policy tensions between its desire to support a private sector-led recovery and its intention to reduce net immigration by capping the number of highly-skilled migrants who can come to the UK to work. It is also facing up to the fact that the planned cap will not significantly reduce net immigration – it’s hard to see how the cap will satisfy those who want to see drastic limits on migration to the UK.

The public (rightly) want the government to be in control of immigration, but the pre-cap policy framework was working well (net immigration is falling fast, in response to changing economic conditions). A flexible migration policy doesn’t mean taking a laissez-faire approach to immigration – it’s perfectly possible for government to manage immigration, and even to take a view on what kind of level of immigration it wants to see, without setting a numerical cap.

The government is also facing a political challenge that will look familiar to Labour ex-ministers – how to reassure that public that immigration is under control while also managing the realities of migration policy. The coalition may be about to learn a lesson that Labour ministers learned in recent years – that immigration policy changes don’t necessarily assuage people’s political concerns about immigration. So the cap may be less effective at reassuring the public than the government hopes.

A cap on immigration is a bad policy, but Labour needs to avoid getting sucked back into a policy-focused debate about immigration. The way to deal with public concerns about migration is to change the political narrative, and engage with a wider set of issues including the labour market, housing, and the ways communities are changing. Labour needs to direct its policy energies to tackle these issues.

In the medium term, tackling wider social issues will help the UK manage migration more effectively. But changing the political debate in the shorter term is also important. David Cameron and Damian Green have said that they aim to take the heat out of immigration in the public and political debate, which is the right objective, but they undermine it when they argue that immigration is out of control, and therefore needs to be capped.

Politicians often assume that the British public is implacably opposed to immigration, and indeed opinion polls in recent years have consistently shown a high level of public concern about the issue. Very high levels of immigration in recent years have fuelled concerns about jobs, public services and population. But public opinion is much more nuanced than the polls suggest – people recognise the economic benefits of migration, understand the important roles played by migrants in public services, and enjoy the cultural diversity that migrants bring. A recent government survey found that 85 per cent of people thought their community was cohesive, agreeing that their local area was a place where people from different backgrounds got on well together.

Anti-migration groups have been highly effective at capitalising on the public’s concerns about immigration, but progressive attempts to highlight the benefits have been less successful. The key is for progressives to present a balanced narrative which acknowledges the impacts of immigration and takes seriously the need for control, but which also recognises the benefits of migration and defends the need for a flexible immigration policy. This may not sound like rocket science (it isn’t), but progressives have not, so far been consistent or persistent enough to shift public debate. The government’s policies are now mobilising a wide range of actors (including from business) who want to see the debate change – Labour, and progressives more generally, need to be ready to help.

Sarah is a senior research fellow at ippr, and has also written for Left Foot Forward on Vince Cable’s comments