Labour aims to halve net migration ‘in first term’

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Labour wants to dramatically cut net migration to a “couple of hundred thousand” a year in its first term a senior frontbencher has said, as the party piles pressure on Rishi Sunak over last week’s shock figures.

Migration levels are now three times higher than they were before Brexit, with 745,000 more people arriving than leaving last year.

The revelation prompted a furious row within the Conservatives as former home secretary Suella Braverman accused ministers of a “slap in the face”.

The government has said it will leave “no stone unturned” in efforts to reduce the numbers, now very far from David Cameron’s “tens of thousands” target for 2015.

Shadow chief secretary Darren Jones said his party would hope to bring net migration down to what he said were “normal levels” of a couple of hundred thousand within five years.

Asked if he hoped to be able to return to that figure in the first term of a Labour government, he said: “I think we probably would hope to do that, yes”.

But he added that the Conservatives had left “deep structural problems” after 13 years in power during an appearance on the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme.

He said: “We talked about a decade of national renewal, not because we’re being presumptuous about this election or indeed the next one but because we think the deep structural problems that we’ve been left from the Conservatives after the last 13 years is going to take time to fix, it’s going to take time to turn around.”

On net migration, he said the “normal level is a couple of hundred thousand a year but it depends on the needs in the economy”. But he shied away from setting a target, saying that the “Conservatives have tried to set targets and caps and failed every single year whilst they’ve had them”.

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper also told The Sunday Times her party would hike the salary requirements for workers coming from overseas – currently £26,000 – based on recommendations from the government’s migration advisory committee.

Mr Sunak is under pressure on the issue after immigration minister Robert Jenrick submitted proposals to No 10 to raise the amount to £35,000, alongside a host of other measures.

Meanwhile, No 10 said it was “committed” to its Rwanda asylum policy after James Cleverly, the new home secretary, urged people not to “fixate” on it.

He faced an angry backlash from Tories on the right of the party for the comments and others warning that leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, as many Conservative MPs want, risked undermining attempts to stop small boats crossing the Channel.

A cabinet minister played down any suggestions of a split between the prime minister and Mr Cleverly, insisting they were on the same page over the policy.

Laura Trott, chief secretary to the Treasury, told the Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips programme on Sky News that both men were “saying it is part of the plan, it is not all of the plan”.

Mr Sunak has pledged not to let a “foreign court” stop flights to Rwanda, with plans for a new treaty and emergency legislation he hopes can get flights in the air.