Immigration in the Election 2: The Conservatives

All three main parties are keen to emphasise that they would be tough on immigration. The Liberal Democrats talk about a ‘firm but fair system’ while Labour emphasises its ‘tough but flexible’ Australian-style Points-Based System.

But the Conservatives have gone a step further and have made a cap on (net) immigration a headline policy. They have been reluctant to specify the details, so it’s not clear which immigration flows they would cap, or at what level. However, based on some reasonable assumptions about what an immigration cap might look like, ippr has produced a briefing paper.

To sum up our findings, setting a numerical limit on (net) immigration isn’t the simple idea that its proponents sometimes suggest – the changes in policy that would be required could cause the UK significant economic harm, and it would not be at all straightforward to limit immigration to a specific level.

Giving the reduction of immigration the status of a policy objective in its own right (which a cap would do) begs the question of what policy problem they're trying to solve. If it’s population growth, a cap would only make sense as part of a wider population policy, and presumably the real objective would be to reduce population growth, rather than immigration. If the concern is about public services, then it matters much less how many migrants come to the UK than how many go to the South East of England, or London, or Barking, or the catchment area of a particular school. A national cap with nothing to say about regional population distribution would not solve this problem.

So it doesn't make much sense from a policy perspective, but would a cap give the Conservatives a political ‘quick win’?

Actually, the Conservatives’ immigration policies may backfire on them. The public want government to be in control of migration and to be honest about the numbers. But control does not mean a drastic limit on net immigration. In fact, what often gives the public the impression that immigration is out of control is politicians making promises to ‘clamp down’ that they then can’t deliver. The immigration cap risks becoming one such promise unless the Conservatives can put forward a clear plan for how they would deliver it in government.

Sarah Mulley