Immigration ‘damaging quality of life’
Immigration is damaging the quality of life of millions of people in Britain and must be radically cut back, a backbench Conservative MP has warned.
In a pamphlet for the right-wing Cornerstone group, Julian Brazier says the government’s immigration policy has led to increased pressure on housing and a subsequent rise in housing costs, which is hitting many middle and lower income families hard.
While the government has promised to build more houses to meet this extra demand, the MP warns that this is threatening England’s countryside, causing water shortages and putting many parts of the south-east in particular at major risk of flooding.
“Overcrowding is a key cause of many of the factors which are destroying quality of life – mortgage slavery, overdevelopment, congested roads, water shortages, flooding and overstretched public services,” he declared.
However, the Home Office defended its immigration policy, insisting that unemployment was the lowest for 30 years because of its open labour market, and noting recent Treasury figures attributing up to 15 per cent of economic trend growth to the work of migrants.
A spokesman admitted immigration rules – which will soon be based on a new points based system that assesses the kind of skills Britain needs – required better enforcement, but pointed to recently published plans to overhaul the immigration department.
Today’s pamphlet was written as a submission to the Conservatives’ policy consultation on immigration, which shadow home affairs minister Damien Green said would herald a new debate on the subject that has traditionally been a controversial one for the party.
Former Tory leader Michael Howard came under fire for his anti-immigration and occasionally racist rhetoric at the last election – something that his successor, David Cameron, has said has no place in his new ‘modern, compassionate’ Conservative party.
However, the party appears to be relaxed about Mr Brazier’s contribution, saying it welcomed any efforts to inform the immigration debate, and the MP himself insisted he was not trying to return to the negative tone of last year’s campaign.
“There were concerns that in endlessly talking about immigration in the abstract, it was easy to portray us as racist instead of talking about the practical problems regarding immigration, such as the cost of living and road congestion,” he told politics.co.uk.
In his pamphlet, Mr Brazier notes that the government’s own analysis predicts an extra 200,000 homes will be needed each year between 2003 and 2026 to cope with rising demand, 31 per cent of which is fuelled by immigration.
But he says that pressure on housing and other services were managed in the past not by building new homes wherever possible, but by taking advantage of the large numbers of Britons moving abroad to keep the population under control.
Despite currently high emigration levels, however, there are still more people coming in to the country, Mr Brazier warned. He said that instead of trying to manage the effects of immigration, ministers should aim to cut back immigration to below emigration levels.
He recommends a tightening up on the issuing of work permits, and says it is “not too late” for the government to follow other European countries and refuse to accept citizens from Bulgaria and Romania, which join the EU next year, until some time in the future.
