Difficult times call for different messages. And that’s what the new Immigration Minister, Phil Woolas, seems to be offering as he tells today’s Times:
“This Government isn’t going to allow the population to go up to 70 million. There has to be a balance between the number of people coming in and the number of people leaving.”
Or at least it’s a different to what we’ve previously heard from this Government; they’ve never been quite so open about limits on immigration in the past. Whereas – as Tim Montgomerie points out over at ConservativeHome – it’s a message that the Tories have been peddling for around two years.
But questions abound about Woolas’s claim. Is this new Government policy? Is it materially different to their points-based system? What kind of timeframe are we looking at here? In short: will the action match the rhetoric? Watch this space.
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