Immigration Controls

I am responsible for a lot of things, but I am not, thank goodness, responsible for what the chair of the Home Affairs Committee chooses to say—at home or abroad. The points-based system has meant, for example, that we have been able to bar low-skilled workers from outside the EU. In fact, if tier 2 of the points system for skilled migrants had been in place last year, there would have been 12 per cent. fewer in this category coming here to work, and we now have detailed plans on the table, put forward by the independent migration advisory committee, to reduce by nearly one third the number of jobs available to migrants via the shortage occupation route.