Tougher controls to be unveiled to crack down on illegal immigrants in UK

Tougher controls are to be unveiled on Thursday by British prime minister David Cameron to crack down on illegal immigrants in the UK, including powers for police to seize their wages as criminal earnings.

The measure, so soon after the Conservatives won a majority in the House of Commons, is a signal from Mr Cameron that he intends to take a stronger line on immigration controls now that he is free from the influence of his one-time coalition partners the Liberal Democrats.

Local councils will be given new powers to bring to heel landlords who rent properties to groups of illegal workers, while banks will be required to check any bank accounts they have against official records.

Employment agencies will be banned from offering jobs to workers abroad without advertising the posts in the UK, while a labour agency will be set up to penalise employers’ worst abuses of migrant labour.

“A strong country isn’t one that pulls up the drawbridge . . . it is one that controls immigration. Because if you have uncontrolled immigration, you have uncontrolled pressure on public services,” he will say.

Some of Mr Cameron's rhetoric is deliberately designed to soothe fears among voters about immigration before they will be asked to vote in a European Union membership referendum by 2017.

His tough language on immigration comes after a warning on Wednesday from the Confederation of British Industry that a UK exit from the EU would simply “create a rod with which to beat ourselves”.