BRITISH PRIME minister David Cameron has rejected Liberal Democrat complaints that a declaration in a major speech on immigration yesterday that he wanted to cut numbers to 1980s figures risks “inflaming racial tensions”.
In a speech seen as an effort to woo middle-class support in English local elections due on May 5th, Mr Cameron said he wanted “good immigration, not mass immigration”, adding that the influx of non-English speakers threatens social unity.
Some of the new arrivals are unwilling to integrate, creating “a kind of discomfort and disjointedness in some neighbourhoods” and damaging the ties in a community that had been “knitted together by all the rituals of the neighbourhood, from the school run to the chat down the pub”, Mr Cameron told Conservative supporters in Hampshire.
However, Vince Cable, Liberal Democrat business secretary, openly disagreed with Mr Cameron’s central pledge in the speech that a government cap on immigration “means net migration to this country will be in the order of tens of thousands each year, not the hundreds of thousands every year that we have seen over the last decade”.
Instead, Mr Cable said the two parties had agreed only to an annual, but unspecified limit and implied that Mr Cameron is seeking to use immigration to boost the Conservatives May 5th election hopes: “I do understand there is an election coming but talk of mass immigration risks inflaming the extremism to which he and I are both strongly opposed.”
Speaking later, Mr Cameron insisted he has displayed a “very sensible, measured and serious tone” on immigration since he became leader of the Conservatives, but accepted there are differences between the two parties.
Labour leader Ed Miliband said Mr Cameron’s actions in government fail to match up to his rhetoric, saying he should admit that the UK cannot stop immigration from former Communist countries who are now members of the EU that cannot be controlled by the imposition of immigration caps.
The conflict between Mr Cameron and Mr Cable is proof that this “is a coalition of convenience rather than a coalition of principle”, he said. “It’s hard to have a Government policy that is clear and coherent if your business secretary, who’s in charge of your student visa policy is . . . going out of his way to attack the prime minister.”
Some of the figures used in Mr Cameron’s speech, including one that 155,000 illegal immigrants are claiming benefits, have been questioned, since the Department of Work and Pensions estimates 8,500 such people will be affected by tighter qualification rules.
Equally, his claim that a third of all those allowed into the UK under high-skills visas are not occupying such positions has been disputed because UK Border Agency officials were unable to clarify the roles filled by nearly half of those who qualified. However, Home Office figures suggest 20 per cent of such visa-holders are in low-skill jobs, while a further 10 per cent are unemployed.